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. On the sales side, people hired way too much. More salespeople do not equal more sales. Sam just finished 18 months at Founders Fund after joining in mid-to-late 2022.

Sales Hiring 251

Sales Hiring Sales Recruiting Scale Headcount 251

SaaStr

JUNE 23, 2020

Q: What’s the number one challenge for scale-up founders? In SaaS, it is recruiting your VPs and management team : SaaS products mostly don’t sell themselves. You can hack managing and finding 1–3 reps yourself, but after that, you really need a VP of Sales. Upsell and retention is an art, science and craft.

Part-Time VPE 232

Part-Time VPE CTO Hire Fractional VPE Sales Recruiting 232

SaaStr

JUNE 24, 2022

Your best sales reps can close so much more than your average rep. Move the bottom 10% out and give the best leads to your top performer, and watch sales go up 20%. The best VPs of Sales design comp plans so the team never wants to leave. You should be striving for zero voluntary attrition on your sales team.

Sales Recruiting 209

Sales Recruiting Sales Hiring Scale Customer Success 209

SaaStr

JULY 10, 2022

A great VP of Customer Success in just a quarter or so decreases churn and increases account revenue growth. It’s hard enough just to maintain KPIs and metrics as you scale. Sales growth slowly declines as she struggles to bring in enough reps. Sales growth slowly declines as she struggles to bring in enough reps.

Sales Recruiting 185

Sales Recruiting Sales Hiring Scale Churn 185

SaaStr

AUGUST 7, 2020

A few factors that contribute to high-performing sales teams: High quota attainment. The best startups invest in their sales teams and work hard so most of the reps hit and exceed quota. It does mean a well-oiled machine that hires strong reps of all backgrounds, and gets them the help and training so they can scale up and succeed.

Sales Hiring 314

Sales Hiring Scale Sales Recruiting Compensation 314

Sales Hacker

JANUARY 20, 2022

Strong sales reps are the lifeblood of your business and how you choose to invest in them matters. For frontline sales managers, attributes like competency, quality of work, ease of execution, and length of contribution indicate reps’ overall job success, but you can’t rely on those inputs to tell you if they are personally satisfied.

Sales Recruiting 101

Sales Recruiting Scale Retention Sales 101

SaaStr

DECEMBER 10, 2020

I hear again and again from SaaS founders growing to $5m, $10m ARR or even more that they don’t need a certain VP — with the exception of a VP of Sales. Basically, in SaaS, everyone “gets” that they need a VP of Sales. in ARR, get to Initial Traction , we then realize we have to scale. With less drama.

Sales Hiring 354

Sales Hiring CTO Hire Sales Recruiting Scale 354

SaaStr

NOVEMBER 21, 2020

We’ve written a lot on SaaStr on how to increase the odds your first management team is a success. How to hire a great VP of Sales (tons on that here ). What a great VP of sales really does. How to manage customer success. About recruiting and helping you scale. When to hire her (more here ).

Sales Hiring 354

Sales Hiring Scale Sales Recruiting Engineering 354

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

SaaStr

JULY 9, 2019

Join Anish Shivdasani, CEO of Giraffe, as he provides unique African experiences learned from scaling to 1M users. Giraffe is a mobile job matching platform that helps medium skilled workers get access to opportunities and helps businesses to recruit staff faster, and easier, and more affordably than any other way. How’s it guys?

Scale 160

Scale Sales Recruiting Scaling SaaS Payments 160

SaaStr

SEPTEMBER 25, 2020

379: From how many reps to hire, to compensation models, here are the top 10 mistakes founders make when hiring their first sales teams and how to avoid them. Announcer: In today’s SaaStr Insider, SaaStr CEO and founder, Jason Lemkin, shared the top 10 mistakes founders make when hiring their first sales team.

Sales Hiring 171

Sales Hiring Sales Recruiting Scale Sales 171

Mucker Capital

APRIL 2, 2024

In this Mucker Growth session, Mike Genstil with ValueCore delves into the concept of value selling and its application in enterprise sales. As a founder, ideally you want your sellers, marketers, and product leaders aligned in transforming product features into value-based messages to accelerate sales cycles and secure corporate deals.

Sales Recruiting 52

Sales Recruiting Technical Review Enterprise Cybersecurity 52

User Pilot

JULY 27, 2023

Account Managers: They serve as the lead point of contact for all customer account management matters. Product Marketing Manager: This person is tasked with developing product marketing campaigns , crafting compelling marketing messages, and coming up with ideas to retain customers. Average salary: $46,035/yr.

Sales Hiring 98

Sales Hiring SaaS Payments Sales Recruiting CTO Hire 98

Intercom, Inc.

DECEMBER 16, 2020

Your sales team is integral to your business’s success: not only do your salespeople bring in the big deals, but they also represent your company and culture to every new and potential prospect. So why is sales team culture still an afterthought for so many organizations? People all across the company are so proud of our sales team.

Sales Hiring 143

Sales Hiring Sales Recruiting Scale Sales 143

User Pilot

MAY 20, 2024

Use predictive analytics to identify and proactively address potential churn risks. It provides a stable revenue stream essential for sustaining and scaling the business. Regularly communicate and engage with existing customers In the traditional sales-led model, the sales reps disappear as soon as they close the deal.

Retention 105

Retention Strategy Sales Recruiting Scale 105

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

ChurnZero

MARCH 11, 2020

Churn Reasons: You’re Not Digging Deep Enough. This is a guest post by Jay Nathan , Founder & Managing Partner at Customer Imperative. Disappointed, but oddly satisfied, I hung up the phone from a call with a recently-churned customer. Eventually, these issues become deal-breakers which can lead to churn.

Churn 52

Churn Scale Sales Recruiting Sales Hiring 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

Valuize Consulting

JANUARY 25, 2024

Greg, Karen and Leah generously shared their learnings, challenges and triumphs in building, scaling and maturing their Digital CS programs. Effective Cross-Functional Collaboration Your Digital CS program should be directed by Customer Success but also requires close partnership with Marketing, Product, Sales, and Revenue Operations.

Customer Success 52

Customer Success Sales Recruiting Scale Strategy 52

Totango

OCTOBER 20, 2022

In some companies, customer success managers may play an active role in the sales process, helping sales representatives elicit customer goals and persuade buyers of product benefits. At other companies, CS managers may be assigned to follow up on sales during the customer onboarding phase. Persuasion Skills.

Sales Hiring 91

Sales Hiring Customer Success Sales Recruiting Technical Review 91

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. Over the course of time, I’ve interviewed and talked to hundreds of sales candidates. Value-based recruitment.

Sales Hiring 94

Sales Hiring Sales Recruiting Company Culture Interviewing 94

OpenView Labs

AUGUST 19, 2021

Sales recruiting is broken. The sad truth is that VP of Sales are turning over within 19 months —and that timeline is shrinking. . Not only that, the market has heated way back up and the VP of Sales is one of the most sought after roles. This isn’t linear and there are many shades of grey when it comes to sales. .

Sales Hiring 82

Sales Hiring Sales Recruiting Scale Startup 82

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. Scaled customer success roles This role is starting to carve out its own space and made a huge splash in 2023.

Customer Success 52

Customer Success Sales Recruiting Sales Hiring Scale 52

SaaStr

JUNE 4, 2019

I actually worked in sales for five and a half years and that’s probably why I have tended to gravitate to B2B marketing. Worked as an AE and then a sales manager. Decided to go to business school, did that for a little bit and then came out in management consulting, a company. So, they’re a B2B piece.

Sales Recruiting 166

Sales Recruiting Scale Underperforming Technical Team Pricing 166

User Pilot

NOVEMBER 5, 2023

Overall, customer value management can make your product more competitive. Sales reps can use the knowledge to shift sales negotiations from price to value. You can do it by tracking metrics like churn rate or NPS and through qualitative surveys. How do you recruit your interviewees?

Management 105

Management Scale Customer Lifetime Value SaaS 105

Valuize Consulting

DECEMBER 7, 2021

The question now is, how big should CS organizations be, and what’s the best way to staff and scale its success? To uncover how today’s CS leaders are successfully building and scaling their CS organizations, Valuize’s Founder and CEO, Ross Fulton, spoke to TSIA’s Vice President, Customer Success Research, Stephen Fulkerson.

VP of Engineering 98

VP of Engineering Customer Success Sales Hiring Interviewing 98

Baremetrics

JUNE 30, 2021

All the data your startup needs Get deep insights into your company's MRR, churn and other vital metrics for your SaaS business. For instance, do you have a certain number of sales agents or current customers or a specific marketing activity planned? And don't forget the costs of recruiting. Want to Reduce Your Churn?

Startup 98

Startup Sales Hiring Sales Recruiting Deferred Revenue 98

SmartKarrot

JUNE 28, 2023

The key account manager is then supposed to act as the first contact point between these clients and the business, dedicate resources, and hold meetings with them. The main aim of this practice is to help grow the number of key accounts in order to attain mutually beneficial goals and maximize their value.

Sales Recruiting 10

Sales Recruiting Management Scale Underperforming Technical Team 10

The Angel VC

DECEMBER 12, 2018

While this is generally true for most companies, it’s particularly true for SaaS businesses, which invest heavily in product development, sales, and marketing upfront and get payments from customers over a delayed period of time, usually several years. The main reason is that your customer acquisition costs are highly front-loaded.

Sales Recruiting 106

Sales Recruiting SaaS Payments Sales Hiring Scale 106

Natalia Luneva

NOVEMBER 11, 2021

How he founded Sales playbook. I founded SalesPlaybook after getting frustrated by the lack or absence of sales support for startup founders. A lot of these companies have never done outbound sales and they don’t have a repeatable process in place and they haven’t really nailed down their ideal customer profile.

Sales Recruiting 52

Sales Recruiting Sales Hiring Scale Sales 52

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. What “customer success” looks like evolves as your company and customers scale upmarket.

Scale 177

Scale Customer Success Strategy Sales Hiring 177

ProfitWell

DECEMBER 13, 2019

The goal in SaaS sales is not to convince your customer to buy your product there and then—it’s to win that customer over to your product for a lifetime. We’ll tell you how to use your understanding of a prospect to turn them into a delighted customer, what metrics to lean on, and how to build the perfect SaaS sales team. Churn rate.

Scale 61

Scale Sales Recruiting SaaS Sales 61

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. When making a sales hire, Max pays attention to the way candidates approach getting the job.

Sales Hiring 183

Sales Hiring Scale Sales Recruiting Technical Advisors 183

SaaStr

JULY 12, 2022

One of the first what How to Hire a Great VP of Sales at the New York Enterprise Tech Meet-Up (thank you to John Lehr and Work-Bench for setting this up). The Number One Thing You Can Do to Accelerate Your Business Post-Initial Traction is Hiring a Great VP of Sales. I don’t know anything about sales. More power to you.

Sales Hiring 255

Sales Hiring Part-Time VPE VP of Engineering Sales Recruiting 255

SaaStr

JUNE 3, 2020

And then I spent a year at Salesforce working on Marc Benioff’s extended leadership team, and really had a chance to learn how important trust can be, and also really learn from Salesforce, from Mark, how do you really build a global SaaS leader at scale? And so we will have additional churn challenges across SaaS.

Software Review 179

Software Review Scale Technical Review SaaS 179

SaaStr

NOVEMBER 2, 2019

Billion story from its launch in 2008 to its 2018 acquisition by Recruit Holdings. Hear about the early days of Glassdoor; tactical lessons on scaling—from building a business model and recruiting an all-star management team to advice on building a compelling, innovative company culture; and learn whyGlassdoor’s $1.2

Scale 127

Scale SaaS Payments Sales Recruiting Payment Services 127

OpenView Labs

NOVEMBER 30, 2021

The ‘haves’, defined by growing quickly out of the gate and then maintaining 50% or faster revenue growth at significant scale, have seen their valuations skyrocket over the years. OpenView has been tracking growth rates by ARR scale for four years running. The game has changed when it comes to recruiting.

Payment Services 80

Payment Services Benchmarks SaaS Payments Merchant Services 80