Sales Hacker

APRIL 5, 2021

In 2020 I was building my sales team at Livestorm , and at the time we were going through a big hiring boom. For the first time in my life, I was in charge of vetting and hiring new team members at scale. This was a big challenge for me because I am very passionate about hiring without bias. First impressions still count.

Sales Hiring 92

Sales Hiring Sales Recruiting Company Culture Interviewing 92

SaaStr

JANUARY 4, 2023

A nice sweet spot for a mix of inside and outside sales. #3. Okta is seeing higher SMB churn and more ROI scrutiny, but is also benefitting from some customers wanting to centralize on fewer core vendors. Slowing headcount growth — like lots of others. And that’s up from 118% at IPO. #2. It only grew 4.5%

Scale 284

Scale Headcount Sales Hiring SMB 284

SaaStr

OCTOBER 17, 2023

The framework above is a lean canvas to help you understand your customers’ needs post-sale. Chances are: You’ve hired your first Head of Sales, and you’re probably about to see a lot of growth on the sales side. Headcount maybe goes from 2 or 4 to 10. What is the highest form of product market fit?

Scale 159

Scale Sales Hiring Customer Success Scaling 159

SaaStr

SEPTEMBER 3, 2023

By freezing headcount for a year. Mathematically, if you keep the headcount flat and continue growing 50% like Monday or 30% at $2B like Hubspot, you get wildly more efficient. Companies are waiting too long to hire a CFO or VP of Finance. Don’t wait too long to hire a VP of Finance. How did they do that?

Sales Hiring 236

Sales Hiring Headcount Finance Technical Review 236

Tom Tunguz

JULY 21, 2022

Management teams expect to reduce operating expense by 20% predominantly through headcount reductions or hiring freezes - everyone from sardine startups to public megalodons. Account executives selling mission-critical software should breathe easy. Software does more with less.

Sales Hiring 143

Sales Hiring Headcount Software Finance 143

OpenView Labs

FEBRUARY 10, 2020

From its bootstrapped founding in 2002 all the way to a $5 billion valuation in 2016, Atlassian famously had no sales people. ‘No No sales’ became nearly as synonymous with Atlassian as ‘no software’ was with Salesforce. Atlassian now has a sales team. Public PLG Businesses Are Doubling Down on Sales.

Sales Hiring 57

Sales Hiring Scale Headcount Sales 57

Intercom, Inc.

MARCH 12, 2019

A little over a year ago, I got the opportunity to start a new team within our sales organization – a team of Relationship Managers dedicated to growing our current customers at scale. The opportunity emerged out of a shift in how we practice sales. Starting a new sales team is not unlike doing improv.

Sales Hiring 171

Sales Hiring Sales Recruiting Underperforming Technical Team Scale 171

The Angel VC

JUNE 25, 2015

For most SaaS startups, the VP of Sales (along with the VP of Marketing) is one of the most crucial hires they need to make. Unless you have a no/low touch sales model and you're growing virally (a.k.a. hunting rabbits or deer ) or a field sales team (a.k.a. hunting rabbits or deer ) or a field sales team (a.k.a.

Sales Hiring 185

Sales Hiring Sales Recruiting Scale Headcount 185

SaaStr

AUGUST 13, 2021

At least break out who is handling all the key functions, and how and when you are hiring to fill them: Sales lead, Marketing lead, Product lead, Engineering lead. And call out clear metrics that you are counting on — ACV, # Customers Over Time, Cost of Sales & # of Reps, etc etc. Know and Share Your Churn and NRR.

Scale 276

Scale Sales Hiring Venture Capital Headcount 276

Intercom, Inc.

JUNE 21, 2018

Whether you’re at an early-stage startup that’s just made its first sales hires, or part of a fast-moving sales team in a large organization, the key to success often comes down to efficiency. Then, the sales team went to work. In his opinion, the hiring process is a preview of their sales technique.

Sales Hiring 183

Sales Hiring Scale Sales Recruiting Technical Advisors 183

SaaStr

FEBRUARY 11, 2021

In SaaS, #1 most common misfire, with a bullet, is the VP/head of sales. It goes something like “You’ve Got to Get Past the Carcass of Your First VP of Sales” or “It’s The Second VP of Sales When You Really Start Selling” or variants thereof. Because in SaaS start-ups, it seems like the majority of first VP Sales fail.

Sales Hiring 363

Sales Hiring Scale Sales Recruiting Sales 363

Intercom, Inc.

NOVEMBER 14, 2018

There are many parts to a high-performing sales organization – the right people, processes and strategy, to start. That’s not to say there’s no art to practicing sales. Much of what defines our most outstanding sales reps is their ability to deeply understand our prospects’ and customers’ business needs and speak directly to them.

Sales Hiring 188

Sales Hiring Metrics Revenue Sales 188

The Angel VC

NOVEMBER 23, 2016

your conversion funnel, distribution channels and sales team quotas). Sales Team Hiring Plan This tool helps you find out how many sales people you need to hire in 2017 based on your growth targets and other import inputs such as your MRR churn rate, your sales team's quota, ramp-up times, etc.

Sales Hiring 141

Sales Hiring Point of Sale SaaS Headcount 141

SaaSX

FEBRUARY 5, 2020

Here’s a super basic overview of the key P&L areas we typically use: Revenue Cost of Goods Sold (COGS) Sales & Marketing Expenses (S&M) Research & Development Expenses (R&D) General & Administrative Expenses (G&A). This INCLUDES headcount-related expenses. Not Utilizing a Proper SaaS Chart of Accounts.

Finance 118

Finance Sales Hiring Headcount Scale 118

SaaStr

JUNE 13, 2020

And they have five times the headcount and have raised $25 million. Net Negative Churn is an awesome force. Close feature gaps, improve the quality of the sales team and the marketing processes. It will hurt with funding, hiring, etc. More on that here ). Second, he was almost overwhelmed with The Competition.

Sales Hiring 293

Sales Hiring Scale Headcount SaaS 293

Intercom, Inc.

AUGUST 16, 2022

Support teams are facing a critical juncture: business costs and customer expectations continue to grow while resources like headcount and budget are decreasing. In turn, you’ll increase efficiency without increasing your headcount. Improved reputation drives sales. The devil’s in the data: Data is the fuel for efficiency.

Headcount 118

Headcount Scale Sales Hiring Customer Lifetime Value 118

ChurnZero

JANUARY 4, 2024

On the other hand, economic headwinds continue to constrain CS budgets and headcounts. Specialization, fractional hiring and more: how will customer success teams change in 2024? ” Meanwhile, Swati Garg , founder and CEO of Melo Associates , has an upbeat outlook on customer success hiring in 2024.

Customer Success 52

Customer Success Trends Sales Hiring Artificial Intelligence 52

Intercom, Inc.

DECEMBER 8, 2020

It can help you identify peak times for support requests and ticket creation which can guide your hiring and tech stack decisions to ensure you continue to meet customer demands. It can also guide your hiring process if increasing headcount is required to guarantee 24/7 coverage for customers. Customer satisfaction.

Customer Support 211

Customer Support Metrics Technical Review Scale 211

The Angel VC

MARCH 23, 2016

The original v1 model was a very simple plan for early-stage SaaS startups with a low-touch sales model. Therefore the key drivers of my imaginary startup are organic growth rate, marketing budget and customer acquisition costs, conversion rate, ARPU and churn rate. You can remove, change or add roles in column H.

SaaS Payments 217

SaaS Payments Headcount SaaS Payment Methods 217

InsightSquared

MAY 7, 2019

Sales is the Growth Engine. Sales is the engine driving SaaS company value. Top and bottom line performance are totally dependent on the sales organization and its performance. And sales expense is typically the largest expense item on a growth SaaS company’s income statement. Typical SaaS Sales Metrics.

Scale 102

Scale Sales Hiring Metrics Sales 102

Intercom, Inc.

NOVEMBER 3, 2022

You’re investing resources in hiring and training the right people, tracking different metrics at different stages, adding more and more complexity with each increase in headcount, use cases, and customers. I think that the hiring competitive landscape is extremely difficult. Natasha: The challenges are endless.

Scale 206

Scale Outsourcing Services Software Sales Hiring 206

ChurnZero

JANUARY 25, 2024

Skillset 1: Sales acumen In 2024, driving revenue is a primary responsibility of CS. This means that sales acumen is no longer just a bonus for CS professionals—it’s a new baseline for many companies. Customer success manager roles The CSM role is becoming more strategic, with increased responsibility for driving revenue.

Customer Success 52

Customer Success Sales Recruiting Sales Hiring Scale 52

Point Nine Land

NOVEMBER 11, 2022

This sentiment changed abruptly at the beginning of the year, and now the same investors who told founders to hire a large sales team way ahead of time last year are telling founders that they need at least 36 months of runway. ;-) Think what you want about this type of VC advice, but the fact is that if you need capital to grow?

Sales Hiring 59

Sales Hiring Headcount Startup Churn 59

Baremetrics

NOVEMBER 1, 2021

Initially, we’ll be bringing your Baremetrics data into your Flightpath account so you can forecast new revenue by new customers, expansion, contraction, and churn. Have you ever held off on a key hire because you weren’t sure you had the cashflow to support them? It’s an adventure that our team is extremely excited about.

Finance 96

Finance Outsourced Development Sales Hiring Forecasting 96

SaaStr

OCTOBER 20, 2020

Who should you hire, with limited budget? A VP of Sales? A truly great hire is >always< accretive. Hire anyone truly great you can find. And he was proud he’d just hired a VP of Sales at a below-market rate. You don’t want to save money on a great hire. In Just 2 Sales Cycles.

Sales Hiring 310

Sales Hiring Headcount Engineering Banking 310

OPEXEngine

NOVEMBER 23, 2020

Sales & Marketing Expenses (S&M). This INCLUDES headcount-related expenses. If you are utilizing Gusto or a similar payroll tool, your headcount expenses are likely coming into your P&L as one (or maybe two) line item(s). NOT UTILIZING A PROPER SAAS CHART OF ACCOUNTS. Cost of Goods Sold (COGS).

Finance 52

Finance Sales Hiring Headcount Scale 52

ChurnZero

NOVEMBER 29, 2022

At the time, I was a sales engineer, and my job was to close deals and move on to the next prospect. However, I found there were two flaws in our customer management process. There were also a number of customers who turned us into shelfware or essentially churned. We had presales, and we had post-sales.

Customer Success 98

Customer Success Sales Recruiting Technical Review Compensation 98

Intercom, Inc.

MAY 13, 2021

Although Linda started her career in sales, she has spent the past twelve years scaling post-sales teams and moving hyper-growth companies like Zendesk, Slack, and now Gong upmarket into the enterprise realm. Your first SaaS customer success hire. Since then, you’ve spent over 12 years in post-sales leadership.

Scale 177

Scale Customer Success Strategy Sales Hiring 177

Tom Tunguz

MAY 14, 2014

In addition to mitigating churn, CS teams increase account revenue, which in many SaaS companies, can grow to be multiples of the first year’s customer value. By dramatically increasing CLV, CS teams can actually generate as much more or more revenue than sales teams over the life of a customer.

Customer Success 100

Customer Success Startup Headcount Compensation 100

The Angel VC

DECEMBER 12, 2018

It’s an important question, as your target growth rate determines your hiring plan, budget, and fundraising strategy. What makes things tricky is, first, the uncertainty of how your CACs will develop at increasing scale and of how your churn rate will develop over time. The second issue is the timing of some of the major expenses.

Sales Recruiting 106

Sales Recruiting SaaS Payments Sales Hiring Scale 106

Intercom, Inc.

JULY 11, 2019

Here are five quick takeaways: Most sales and support teams talk about their jobs as a funnel. We said, “Oh, we could build a service component in here,” and now we have a marketing hub, a sales hub and a service hub. Everybody in marketing and sales and probably even customer service uses the concept of a funnel.

Scale 188

Scale Scaling Sales Hiring Underperforming Technical Team 188

ChurnZero

DECEMBER 28, 2021

Or for ChurnZero to redesign our Churn Monsters à la Lisa Frank? Have you ever wondered if you should be paying closer attention to your Net Revenue Retention (NRR) or Gross Revenue Retention (GRR) when analyzing churn? How much ARR or customers should a CSM manage?”. How do I structure a budget for headcount?”.

Sales Hiring 52

Sales Hiring Headcount Customer Success Outsourced Development 52

SaaStr

AUGUST 16, 2021

We put out a call on Twitter the other day for folks’ best tips on what has really lowered churn for them this year. A few of the best: “Hire more relationship managers. Pay sales reps on renewals (enough to keep them from overselling year 1). Hire 9s & 10s ONLY. Are you segmenting churn?

Churn 309

Churn Sales Hiring Headcount Technical Review 309

OpenView Labs

MARCH 10, 2019

Over this time, our headcount has grown by over 10x, and our revenue has grown by over 60x. I was originally hired as Head of Sales, but quickly transitioned to building out our customer success team in order to proactively improve retention. It’s effectively a win-win-win for our customers, our retention and our new business.

Scale 69

Scale Customer Success Scaling Sales Hiring 69

ChurnZero

NOVEMBER 16, 2018

Product and Customer Success are the new Sales and Marketing” – couldn’t agree more, the initial sale is only one milestone, it’s your product and value expansion that keeps customers renewing #PulseEurope2018. The importance of hiring for customer success #pulseeurope2018 pic.twitter.com/04SmUWwnFv. — pulseEurope2018.

Customer Success 49

Customer Success Scale Headcount Sales Hiring 49

SaaStr

OCTOBER 4, 2023

App Layoffs Were Brutal, And Hiring Is Slowly Resuming If you haven’t worked in Fortune 500 or tech companies, you’ve never seen this. The reality is there was an explosion in sales and marketing and other categories in 2021 when the goal was to grow, grow, grow. They’re a public pure-play leader in sales and marketing.

Sales Hiring 244

Sales Hiring SaaS Headcount Compensation 244

ProfitWell

DECEMBER 6, 2019

That’s what David Apple—customer success and sales guru at Notion— is asking. Along with: What’s the ROI of your customer success manager? He references Dan Steinman from Gainsight , who says, “the natural tendency for customers is towards churn.”. If we fail, our customers will churn. How many CSMs should you hire?

Scale 43

Scale CTO Hire Sales Hiring New CTO 43