SaaStr

NOVEMBER 5, 2020

The companies that create the SVPs you’ll need, especially in Sales and Marketing, are still mostly based in the SF Bay Area. Top execs are looking for new spots in 2021. As crazy as things are now, we’ll almost certainly see a return to some sort of pre-Covid like normalcy by the second half of 2021. are all here.

Sales Hiring 349

Sales Hiring Sales Recruiting Scale Scaling 349

SaaStr

JANUARY 26, 2021

There’s nothing wrong with hiring folks from the competition. Only hire them if you still would if they worked somewhere else. — Jason BeKind Lemkin (@jasonlk) January 26, 2021. The time will come when you are first tempted to hire someone from your competitor. Hiring from your Competitor.

Sales Hiring 285

Sales Hiring Interviewing Engineering SaaS 285

SaaStr

MARCH 4, 2021

But, I know many of you have never hired a head of marketing before. And if you hire the wrong type — the more common type — then instead of more customers, you may end up with just a bunch of Blue Pens with your logo on them. And both types of marketers are exactly the wrong hire for you. That hire fails.

Sales Hiring 357

Sales Hiring Scale Marketing Branding 357

SaaStr

MAY 30, 2023

Hiring has way slowed down, but many folks are still hiring, albeit at a reduced rate. 56% of you aren’t hiring, or barely hiring. And very few of you are doubling headcount, vs everyone in 2021. But a good chunk of you are still hiring, albeit in moderation. The post 43% of You Are Still Hiring.

Sales Hiring 273

Sales Hiring Headcount Engineering Revenue 273

SaaStr

JULY 11, 2024

How Do You Sift Out the Bitter and Broken Individuals When Hiring? If it’s a role you’ve never hired, find someone great at it and have them do your final interview. For sales, product, or customer success, the best question you could ask is, “What would you do your first couple of weeks?” Don’t hire those people to lead.

Sales Hiring 282

Sales Hiring Scale Marketing Interviewing 282

SaaStr

SEPTEMBER 19, 2021

If you want to hit the plan for Q1'22, You need to be hiring all the sales reps you'll need then … Now. — Jason BeKind Lemkin (@jasonlk) September 15, 2021. To make the hires you need now, for next year. But you have to hire them NOW, not in January. How many Customer Success Managers.

Sales Hiring 284

Sales Hiring Scale Headcount Acquisition 284

SaaStr

NOVEMBER 27, 2021

Is your CS team growing as fast as your sales team? — Jason BeKind Lemkin (@jasonlk) November 29, 2021. If this is your first SaaS company, you may not have ever hired or built a Customer Success team. This one isn’t nearly as risky as a VP of Sales , or a VP of Marketing hire. reactive) help.

Sales Hiring 246

Sales Hiring Customer Success Scale Customer Lifetime Value 246

SaaStr

NOVEMBER 27, 2021

Is your CS team growing as fast as your sales team? — Jason BeKind Lemkin (@jasonlk) November 29, 2021. If this is your first SaaS company, you may not have ever hired or built a Customer Success team. This one isn’t nearly as risky as a VP of Sales , or a VP of Marketing hire. reactive) help.

Sales Hiring 245

Sales Hiring Customer Success Scale Customer Lifetime Value 245

SaaStr

MARCH 22, 2022

According to author Dan Schawbel, in 2021, 70% of job seekers said they want to work for a company that demonstrates a commitment to diversity and inclusion. I really appreciate you coming to talk about how to attract, hire, and build a more diverse sales team in your organization. You can see all of Jessica’s slides here.

Sales Hiring 261

Sales Hiring Sales Recruiting Scale Sales 261

SaaStr

FEBRUARY 5, 2021

Would you still hire them if they hadn't last worked at [insert logo here]? — Jason BeKind Lemkin (@jasonlk) February 5, 2021. You’ll be very tempted to hire someone with a seemingly magical rolodex. You’ll be very tempted to hire someone with a seemingly magical rolodex. And don’t just hire one.

Sales Hiring 332

Sales Hiring Sales Enterprise Pricing 332

SaaStr

MAY 5, 2021

Did you hire a good enough VP? 4 part test: – who great did they hire in the first 60 days? — Jason BeKind Lemkin (@jasonlk) May 4, 2021. Hiring your VPs as a founder is tough. How do you know, quickly, if you’ve hired a “good enough” VP? Sales — for a VPS.

Part-Time VPE 223

Part-Time VPE Sales Hiring Sales Recruiting Metrics 223

SaaStr

JANUARY 23, 2021

And I gave him an insanely great VP of Sales candidate. But like any candidate, this VP of Sales wasn’t perfect. He said he’d hire him … with a great package … but only as “Head of Sales” Not VP. And this VP Sales candidate met with another CEO I know well. A real gift.

VP of Engineering 348

VP of Engineering Sales Hiring Scale Engineering 348

SaaStr

MARCH 18, 2025

Colin joined Wiz in February 2021 when the company was near zero revenue. As Colin describes it, “I went to the CEO and asked to generate more revenue and hire more people, which is counter-intuitive to the standard approach where revenue leaders may sandbag to over deliver and crush numbers.”

Scale 174

Scale Sales Hiring Scaling Headcount 174

SaaStr

NOVEMBER 30, 2021

Is your CS team growing as fast as your sales team? — Jason BeKind Lemkin (@jasonlk) November 29, 2021. What should be growing faster — your sales team or your customer successteam? The answer can vary, but if you’re well enough funded, it may well make sense to grow the success team even faster than sales.

Sales Hiring 316

Sales Hiring Sales Engineering Investment 316

SaaStr

NOVEMBER 22, 2021

I've never seen a great VP of Sales hide from a miss. — Jason BeKind Lemkin (@jasonlk) November 22, 2021. We’ve talked a lot on SaaStr over the years about how to hire a great VP of Sales — and how to course-correct if you’ve made a miss hire. Nothing gets better in 1 sales cycle. Sales is tough.

Sales Recruiting 300

Sales Recruiting Sales Hiring Sales Marketing 300

SaaStr

JANUARY 12, 2024

We just wrote up how some of the biggest changes of SaaS are now coming, specifically in Customer Success and Sales. It probably won’t go back to 2021 levels, but it will be some kind of growth. The hiring won’t bounce back the same way, and people won’t grow their team at the same rate the company is growing.

Sales Hiring 318

Sales Hiring Customer Success Scale AI 318

SaaStr

APRIL 20, 2022

This famous quote from self-help author Robert Collier applies to every sales organization because excellent results come through repeatable activities, not one-off wins. Let’s look at some numbers: Number of job openings in December 2021: 12 million. Number of people who quit their jobs in December 2021: 4.3

Sales Hiring 272

Sales Hiring Scale Retention Sales 272

SaaStr

JANUARY 9, 2024

The 1000+ unicorns of Covid fueled this, with ample capital to hire, hire and hire. Things really were easier for many of us in 2021. The other day I interviewed yet another other great AE who had recently become a Director of Sales. Not just hire and manage people?”. Before They Hire Anymore.

Sales Hiring 310

Sales Hiring Interviewing Startup Customer Success 310

SaaStr

AUGUST 4, 2021

Ask them what those top 3 are before you hire them. — Jason BeKind Lemkin (@jasonlk) August 4, 2021. So with that, let’s add to our classic Top 10 Interview Questions for a VP of Sales and also our Top 9 Interview Questions for a VP of Customer Success with … Our Top 10 Interview Questions for a VP of Marketing!

Interviewing 356

Interviewing Sales Hiring Marketing Branding 356

SaaStr

AUGUST 9, 2024

Hiring for Customer Success When Braze was looking for their first customer success hires, you couldn’t find a CSM with seven years of experience in software because those people didn’t exist yet. Every incremental hire with a small team matters, so it’s worth being clear on what you want.

Scale 290

Scale Sales Hiring Scaling Startup 290

SaaStr

JANUARY 17, 2023

So anecdotally, it seems to me sales productivity startups are one of the biggest impacted by the current macro environment. I sold a sales tool in 2008-2009 when the global economy was in total meltdown, and I’ll tell you, we sure didn’t stop selling. But folks are still growing their sales teams. I say No.

Sales Hiring 273

Sales Hiring Sales Startup Investment 273

SaaStr

DECEMBER 9, 2020

Email will continue to be an effective way for entrepreneurs to connect with their audience and meet them where they are in 2021 and beyond. These days, it can really feel like the Old Bag of Sales Tricks is starting to just not work anymore: With maybe 500x the SaaS vendors of 10 years ago, there’s so much noise.

Sales Hiring 356

Sales Hiring Outbound Sales Team AWS Engineering 356

SaaStr

AUGUST 13, 2024

1: Don’t hire a VP (or anyone in the early days) that you aren’t 95% sure is great. Founders between a million and $250M are talking about lowering the bar for hiring because they aren’t sure if the person is great or they’re trying to fill a gap. A great Head of Sales will move the needle. You can’t do that.

Sales Hiring 306

Sales Hiring Part-Time VPE Venture Capital Fractional VPE 306

SaaStr

JANUARY 24, 2021

“My CEO Told Me To Stop Selling So Much” Recently, I met with a sales leader I’ve known for years, and he told me The Most Curious Story. The sales-driven customers are very profitable on a CAC basis, since their lead cost is $0, and so the ‘Magic Number’ or CAC/CLTV ratio is very favorable.

Scale 343

Scale Sales Hiring Scaling Construction 343

SaaStr

NOVEMBER 9, 2020

Maybe: – Go grab that office lease at half off – Hire Bay Area VPs now while they'll work anywhere. My top suggestions: Hire those “Bay Area VPs” now while they’ll (still) work with startups HQ’d anywhere. Go hire those VPs now that aren’t in your city. Make the hires.

Underperforming Technical Team 332

Underperforming Technical Team Sales Hiring Travel Cloud 332

SaaStr

MAY 28, 2024

If you’ve read SaaStr or have been around for the last decade, you might be familiar with some of the repeated GTM mistakes founders tend to make, but the world of hiring, people, scaling, and workplace expectations are significantly different today than they were before March 2020. Don’t make the hire. They weren’t getting any leads.

Sales Hiring 306

Sales Hiring Scale AI Search AI 306

SaaStr

NOVEMBER 10, 2022

And importantly, in the boom times of late 2020-early 2022 … in many cases, all hiring discipline was lost: Everyone lowered the hiring bar, which reduced efficiency. Sales teams hired way, way ahead to hit huge plans, and in many cases, ended up with a tough combo of lower quota attainment and higher comp structures.

Sales Hiring 322

Sales Hiring Pricing Cloud Startup 322

SaaStr

JANUARY 9, 2021

With over 500,000+ people tuning into our live events in 2020, we’re getting going on the full calendar of 2021 SaaStr events. and we’ll have tons of leaders in sales, marketing, and product. All-in, we have room for about 350+ speakers and 1,000 mentors spread across our 2021 events. What is your format? Panels (Ex.:

Sales Hiring 205

Sales Hiring Scale Outbound Sales Team Interviewing 205

SaaStr

FEBRUARY 28, 2022

A few ideas on how to help the sales team make this your best year so far: Hire dedicated sales / revenue ops. Many of you will have little to no dedicated help in sales operations , even up to $10m ARR or beyond. If that’s you, or your VP of Sales, or even your VP of Marketing … it can sort of work for a while.

Scale 246

Scale Sales Hiring Sales Enterprise 246

SaaStr

NOVEMBER 25, 2023

Jameson Yung, SVP of Sales at Gong, and Sam Blond, Partner at Founders Fund and previous CRO at Brex, share five tactical ways to get back to growing and hitting revenue targets. Create/ track a leaderboard so i f someone is below average in sales, it’s objective. If you look at the number of Sales vs. Marketing.

Sales Hiring 275

Sales Hiring Underperforming Technical Team Revenue Sales 275

SaaStr

DECEMBER 1, 2023

Hiring a VP of Sales isn’t new, but the conversations have evolved as the world has. SaaStr’s own Jason Lemkin shares the top 10 mistakes he sees during the hiring process during Workshop Wednesday, held every Wednesday at 10 a.m. The last 18 months have seen the biggest changes in the VP of Sales in his SaaS career.

Sales Hiring 157

Sales Hiring Sales Recruiting Sales Interviewing 157

SaaStr

JANUARY 30, 2023

They focused on building a payment platform that empowers international talent and independent contractors to get paid on time in a compliant way while also ensuring that companies can hire international talent and make payments efficiently. Interview personally and define hiring values to build your team.

Sales Hiring 273

Sales Hiring Payment Services SaaS Payments Scale 273

SaaStr

MARCH 20, 2024

They discuss Sam’s learnings at Founders Fund, what the 2024 playbook looks like, hiring and motivating sales teams, and a handful of audience questions. For folks in SaaS, what got confusing in 2021 is that growth blew up so much in SaaS that the venture bar got lower. On the sales side, people hired way too much.

Sales Hiring 300

Sales Hiring Sales Recruiting Scale Headcount 300

SaaStr

JUNE 27, 2024

In 2021, they grew from 50 people to 650 people in one year, and now they have over 1,100 people in 170+ countries and tens of thousands of customers. As it grows, it changes significantly, especially as you move from hiring people who can do everything to hiring more specialized roles.

Scale 260

Scale Sales Hiring Scaling Sales Recruiting 260

SaaStr

JULY 22, 2021

Make the sales team ask. — Jason BeKind Lemkin (@jasonlk) July 21, 2021. More here: SaaStr | Customer Success Is A Single Digit Hire. Hire someone to own customer marketing. In fact, it’s still their #1 source of new customers. A few related thoughts: So first, track it. Then, set a goal. Do it for rea l.

Sales Hiring 358

Sales Hiring Scale Customer Success Branding 358

SaaStr

SEPTEMBER 9, 2022

Back in the day, premium comp for some software sales execs made simple and easy sense. Traditional software had 90% gross margins, and the classic enterprise sales reps, the best ones, could close a million or more dollars a year. Sales reps in low NRR and high churn environments got paid almost the same as enterprise reps.

Scale 345

Scale Venture Capital Sales Hiring Sales 345

SaaStr

AUGUST 26, 2021

— Jason BeKind Lemkin (@jasonlk) August 25, 2021. How to go from 2 sales reps to 20. Hire a BigCo VP much earlier than $10m ARR, they almost always fail. You can hire 1 or 2 reps at a time. You don’t have to be hyper-organized, or really how to manage budgets, or how to hire 10 reps at a time.

Sales Hiring 322

Sales Hiring Scale Startup Scaling 322