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. We had split into two distinct but complementary functions.

Sales Hiring 171

Sales Hiring Sales Recruiting Underperforming Technical Team Scale 171

Intercom, Inc.

JANUARY 23, 2020

The situations that portend failure are varied and unfortunately common – no product-market fit, no cash, bad product, burnout, to name just a few of the most obvious. Poor marketing. A better strategy is to prioritize building your audience alongside developing the product. In this world, growth trumps all other priorities.

Underperforming Technical Team 183

Underperforming Technical Team Scale Payments Payment Services 183

SaaStr

DECEMBER 14, 2020

If you already have a few bigger deals under your belt, but most are smaller … a few higher-level suggestions: Hire a Very Good VP of Sales that has sold at your “high end” price point. If you can make this hire now — you will do much, much better. More here: The 48 Types of VP Sales. Get zen about longer sales cycles.

Scale 291

Scale Sales Hiring Underperforming Technical Team Point of Sale 291

SaaStr

JULY 15, 2022

Jason Lemkin: You certainly can hire a whole content team and build 10,000 pieces of content, but I will tell you what I have always seen work is one incredible piece a week. Jason Lemkin: I’ll answer it, but are you thinking more on sales or technology or broadly speaking in the question? That’s a great example.

Scale 239

Scale Outsourcing Services Sales Hiring VP of Engineering 239

OpenView Labs

MARCH 24, 2021

Without fail, every week I speak to 5–10 startup founders who are dealing with one of these two painful situations: They’re going through the process of parting ways with the wrong VP of Sales or the wrong enterprise salespeople. For either one, the bottom line is that the cost of a bad hire is significant.

Sales Hiring 56

Sales Hiring Underperforming Technical Team Company Culture Interviewing 56

SaaStr

AUGUST 20, 2020

343: Kyle Parrish is the Head of Sales @ Figma, the company that helps teams create, test and ship better designs from start to finish. In Today’s Episode We Discuss: * How Kyle made his way into the world of SaaS and sales and came to be Head of Sales at one of the fastest-growing companies in Figma. What worked?

Sales Hiring 191

Sales Hiring Sales Recruiting Scale Technical Advisors 191

Sales Enablement, SaaS and Growth

OCTOBER 29, 2018

High SaaS churn is a corollary of poor retention - but it can creep up unannounced, and rather than deal a single fatal blow, it causes death by a thousand small cuts. A high churn rate is highly undesirable as it shackles growth , is a source of friction and (rightly) raises tough questions about product/market fit.

Churn 152

Churn SaaS Payments SaaS Payments 152

User Pilot

JULY 27, 2023

Before hiring, assess your current needs and hire as your company grows. Engineering Manager: In charge of planning, designing, and overseeing projects. They also manage finances and supervise one or more engineering teams. Much of the success here depends on how competent and motivated the CTO and their team is.

Sales Hiring 91

Sales Hiring SaaS Payments Sales Recruiting CTO Hire 91

SaaStr

JULY 1, 2021

For us, it’s about fixing this problem, serving the customer well, so a very service driven mindset, which I gave a talk on a few days ago here, has been a big part of Gusto and affected our hiring from the early days. The second is pulling more around values, and how we approached team building. Get tickets here. TRANSCRIPT.

VP of Engineering 260

VP of Engineering Sales Hiring Sales Recruiting Underperforming Technical Team 260

SaaStr

JANUARY 21, 2020

Justin Welsh, former SVP of Sales at PatientPop explains how he started in SaaS in 2009 as the second sales hire at Zocdoc. Justin used Sales Culture to grow a successful PatientPop team to 140 employees and 55 million in revenue. Justin Welsh | SVP Sales @ PatientPop. Want to see more content like this?

Sales Recruiting 258

Sales Recruiting Sales Hiring Scale Sales 258

Intercom, Inc.

JULY 19, 2021

And for your support team, using the right conversational support tool and framework allows them to maximize their resources, so they can focus on solving complex queries and building long-term customer relationships. But conversational support doesn’t just benefit your support team. Teams that benefit: Sales, marketing.

Underperforming Technical Team 129

Underperforming Technical Team Scale Sales Hiring Sales Recruiting 129

Sales Hacker

MAY 15, 2019

The biggest mistake a leader can make is to hire the wrong person. The truth is, you need to know when to fire a sales rep. I learned these lessons the hard way, from painful personal experience in leading teams for multinationals. 5 Lessons on When to Fire a Sales Rep. 5 Lessons on When to Fire a Sales Rep.

Underperforming Technical Team 69

Underperforming Technical Team Sales Hiring Development Team Review Sales 69

Intercom, Inc.

OCTOBER 26, 2018

Many organizations create customer success teams but there’s no clear definition as to how these teams develop long-term value for both the customer and the business. At some companies, customer success managers create resources for thousands of self-serve customers, while at others they work with a select few.

Sales Hiring 123

Sales Hiring Customer Success Scale Underperforming Technical Team 123

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. That means your focus should be on building the right customer profile and developing precise messaging to reach them.

Sales Hiring 183

Sales Hiring Scale Sales Recruiting Technical Advisors 183

Sixteen Ventures

AUGUST 1, 2018

Churn… ya boring. I’m so over talking about churn and if you really understand what Customer Success is all about , you should be, too. Churn is so easy to get rid of… you just have to do five simple things. Once churn is a non-issue, you can focus on growth. You can’t hack churn away.

Churn 129

Churn Underperforming Technical Team Sales Hiring Customer Success 129

User Pilot

JANUARY 17, 2024

The most common challenges that hinder SaaS growth are lack of product-market fit , ineffective sales and marketing strategies , customer churn, and long product development cycles. Provide the necessary training for your sales teams. Optimizing your marketing strategy to cut costs.

Scale 90

Scale Scaling SaaS Underperforming Technical Team 90

SaaStr

NOVEMBER 29, 2019

* What were the biggest mistakes that Allie made when it comes to sales hiring? How does Allie advise other founders on scaling sales teams? How does Allie think about sales rep payback period? How can one determine the effectiveness of a sales rep when they are engaging in 9-12 month sales cycles? *

Sales Hiring 132

Sales Hiring Underperforming Technical Team Technical Advisors Scale 132

SaaStr

JANUARY 28, 2020

And so, she can, and Anthony just finished up basically going from the first sales hire at Gainsight at almost 100 million in revenue and has just retired. Maria : It’s like saying, “Hey, you want a sales rep to carry 10 times the quota they do today. You can’t, you have to invest in that sales infrastructure.”

Sales Hiring 202

Sales Hiring Scale Underperforming Technical Team Sales Recruiting 202

SaaStr

JUNE 4, 2021

Pomel focused his session on: Making your SaaS startup customer-centric: Hw event marketing has helped him integrate his engineering and sales teams. The critical role of product managers and ways to utilize them effectively. How many of you guys’ product rely on the highly functioning engineering team?

Scale 266

Scale Underperforming Technical Team Sales Hiring Engineering 266

Kellblog

JULY 8, 2020

” Mark’s been a startup CEO twice, selling two companies in strategic acquisitions, and he’s run worldwide sales and channels a few times. Mark’s a seasoned startup executive, he’s go-to-market oriented, and he has some large-company chops that he developed earlier in his career.

Sales Hiring 138

Sales Hiring Startup Software Review Enterprise 138

Sales Hacker

APRIL 21, 2020

Can you ever be sure you’re hiring the right salesperson? When I first wrote this article, we were in a very different place, with unemployment at an all-time low and sales hiring a top priority. That secret weapon is a hiring scorecard. Fortunately, my client used their hiring scorecard to sidestep a costly mis-hire.

Sales Hiring 95

Sales Hiring Interviewing Sales Recruiting Underperforming Technical Team 95

SaaStr

JULY 29, 2019

Because later you’ll see just having gotten on one more jet, made one more key hire, and then a few years down the road, you might be $1m, $2m, $5m further along in ARR. Not Paying Up for Top Hires, and #2. Under-Hiring. Yes, a true VP, or even a stretch VP, will cost a lot more than a manager or individual contributor.

Sales Hiring 193

Sales Hiring Venture Capital Scale SaaS 193

SaaStr

MARCH 12, 2019

What is sales? What is sales? Isn’t sales really around customer value creation? Sales is not about revenue generation, it’s around customer value creation. Why are we so obsessed with sales being focused on revenue? It’s all about churn and retention. Because churn is a silent killer.

Scale 211

Scale Sales Hiring Revenue VP of Engineering 211

SaaStr

JANUARY 10, 2020

.” In the context of the larger article, he’s making the case for manufacturers to adopt a SaaS playbook: become customer-centric, hire Customer Success Managers (CSMs) to engage customers more deeply, deploy technology to manage the customer relationship beyond the initial sale, etc. It’s all we know.

Sales Hiring 133

Sales Hiring Scale Underperforming Technical Team Onboarding 133

Valuize Consulting

DECEMBER 7, 2021

Stephen is a Customer Success Executive in the SaaS industry, specializing in customer renewals and relationships, with 20+ years of organizational development experience. When it comes to budget, organizations often haven’t established where the investment is coming from to fund the CS team. leverage Training & Development.

VP of Engineering 98

VP of Engineering Customer Success Sales Hiring Interviewing 98

Sales Hacker

APRIL 22, 2022

While you may feel pressure to focus your team on immediately starting to close opportunities at the start of each new quarter, you’re doomed to repeat the mistakes of your past if you don’t take some time to review. This is where a Sales QBR or ‘Quarterly Business Review’ comes into play. What is a Sales QBR? isn’t criticism.

Sales Hiring 92

Sales Hiring Sales Forecasting Underperforming Technical Team 92

Intercom, Inc.

NOVEMBER 3, 2022

Scaling a support team is challenging enough as it is. 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. For Natasha, the answer is a resounding yes.

Scale 206

Scale Outsourcing Services Software Sales Hiring 206

Neil Patel

JANUARY 11, 2021

Follow this up by building your team and finding a location if you’re opening a physical store. Finally, focus your efforts on generating more sales and growing your business, which is also what you’ll find yourself doing for most of your career. After all, your customers would prefer more of a good thing and less of a bad thing.

Underperforming Technical Team 128

Underperforming Technical Team Business Sales Hiring Scale 128

SaaStr

JULY 30, 2020

356: Pete Kazanjy is the Co-Founder @ Atrium, the startup providing proactive, always-on insights for sales operations, managers, and leaders. Alongside Atrium, Pete is also the Founder of Modern Sales Pros, a community of 15,000 focused on sales operations and sales management. Stop asking questions.

Part-Time VPE 196

Part-Time VPE Scale Sales Recruiting Sales Hiring 196

Chart Mogul

MAY 30, 2019

Ingmar, our VP of Customer Success, and our support team cracked the code on first response time and measuring NPS. We realized, however, that we needed to do a better job supporting the strategic vision of our key accounts. At what rate is the key account segment growing? We refer to these as management by objectives, or MBOs.

Underperforming Technical Team 78

Underperforming Technical Team Development Strategy Management 78

Baremetrics

AUGUST 29, 2021

An effective sales outbound strategy needs to balance two opposing elements: efficiency vs. personal touch. We recommend starting with LinkedIn’s own Sales Navigator. Let’s say your ICP is a web developer running a startup on the East Coast. This will result in poor open and response rates.

Scale 97

Scale Startup Sales Hiring Sales 97

Intercom, Inc.

DECEMBER 8, 2020

But with so much data to consider, how can you define the help desk metrics that matter for your team? This can empower teams to take strategic action to improve their overall support experience for customers. This metric represents the average amount of time it takes your customer support team to settle a case once it’s opened.

Customer Support 211

Customer Support Metrics Technical Review Scale 211

SaaStr

FEBRUARY 21, 2020

* How does David think about scaling sales teams? How does one know when is the right time to hire your first sales reps? What content and learnings should you have in place when you make the hire? What have been his lessons on optimizing payback period for sales reps? Why is 12 months so crucial?

Scale 187

Scale Sales Hiring Underperforming Technical Team Sales Recruiting 187

Sales Hacker

MAY 9, 2019

A great sales compensation plan needs to accomplish quite a lot. And of course, a strong sales comp plan needs to motivate reps to hit goals that grow the company while still maintaining a profit margin. The Process for Creating a Sales Compensation Plan. Know what to Include in a Sales Incentive Plan. Keep it Simple.

Compensation 103

Compensation Sales Hiring Development Team Review Sales Recruiting 103

Sales Hacker

NOVEMBER 18, 2020

But if sales is a dance, it’s jazz, not ballet. According to a survey by Salesforce last year , the top 20% of sales teams last year are almost 3x more likely to say they have been focusing on personalizing customer interactions. They’ll feel like you don’t really understand their issue, and you’ll lose the sale.

Sales Hiring 120

Sales Hiring Underperforming Technical Team Sales Social Media 120

Chart Mogul

SEPTEMBER 15, 2023

You can think of Horizontal SaaS as broad-based tech that is industry agnostic; a sales person at a Cybersecurity company can use HubSpot the same way a sales person at a Health Supplements company might use it. We trust leaders to make decisions on what tools they need to get the most out of their teams.

Scale 52

Scale Underperforming Technical Team Sales Hiring SaaS 52

SaaStr

JULY 29, 2022

As they scaled, they radically changed how they did sales. They moved to a more traditional SaaS inside sales model, and they started shipping out these hardware devices, and only 30% to 40% of the customers would end up paying for them. And we’re about to add basically a team collaboration tier on top of the product.

Scale 216

Scale Scaling Sales Hiring Enterprise 216