Sales Hacker

APRIL 19, 2022

In this article, I’ll outline the principles of compensation design , how to build sales compensation plans , and include resources to set OTEs and quotas that keep your reps happy and hungry for more. Why Sales Comp Planning is Key to Rep Retention. Who should be responsible for sales compensation planning?

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Sales Hacker

MARCH 30, 2023

If you’re new to sales (or don’t have an economics degree), decoding the sales compensation plan on offer can make your head spin. There are 3 key questions you must ask your hiring manager or recruiter when offered a sales role to maximize your earnings and career potential. This is guaranteed compensation!

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OpenView Labs

MARCH 8, 2021

B2B sales involves one business selling its product to another business. Those with experience in both B2B and B2C sales know that B2B is a lot tougher—the deals are bigger, there’s often more than one decision-maker, and the competition is intense. For all those reasons, hiring and management must be on point.

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Tom Tunguz

NOVEMBER 16, 2015

As he told me a few days ago, he has observed the lack of sales management and sales execution skills as one of the most consistent deficiencies limiting the potential of early stage SaaS companies. Sales execution deficiency manifests itself at roughly the same time as product market fit.

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SaaStr

NOVEMBER 30, 2023

Go-to-Market matters because sales and marketing spend remain the biggest proportion of SaaS spend, so honing in on that spend to build an engine and drive growth is paramount. Because founder-led sales worked really well for most of the early stages, but you eventually start running out of juice around $15M ARR.

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SaaStr

JULY 25, 2020

Q: What is a typical organizational structure for a SaaS startup with sales reps? A rough structure from 1–25 sales reps: Early days: CEO acts as VP of Sales. CEO hires 2 reps, in the beginning, each barely pays for themselves, but by months 4–6 they are able to close 3x-5x their total compensation.

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Sales Hiring Scale Compensation Sales 228

Point Nine Land

OCTOBER 23, 2023

P9 Panel on Hiring Sales Leaders — Founders Summit 2023 “You are going to fire your first sales manager!” — A lesson too many founders learn the hard way. My favorite joke when I meet a brilliant founder is to ask them if they know there’s an easier path to becoming an Account Executive than founding a company.

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Totango

OCTOBER 20, 2022

Hiring team members with the right customer success manager skills is critical for the effectiveness of your CS team and strategy. Here we’ve identified the 13 most essential qualities to consider when hiring a CS manager. What Skills Are Required for a Customer Success Manager? Persuasion Skills.

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Sales Hacker

MARCH 12, 2020

Like most things in life, hiring sales talent is a matter of timing. Especially since the best candidates with strong sales skills are usually snatched up within 10 days. That’s why it’s critical to overcome indecision and move quickly when recruiting sales talent. Is it unrealistic sales quotas?

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SaaStr

SEPTEMBER 12, 2023

You Have to Train Sales Reps 3–10. You have to start formal sales training by rep #3. Hire Early. Customer success teams are critical for SaaS companies as they own the customer relationship from start to finish, managing up to 75% of revenue through renewals and upsells. And you can start very small. Or they fail.

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The Angel VC

APRIL 1, 2017

I couldn’t agree more, and I think startups should make that hire sooner rather than later. If you can hire only one or two handful of people with your seed round, hiring anybody who doesn’t either code or sell is hard to justify. Let’s say you want to hire 10 people in the next 12 months. Here’s why.

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Sales Hacker

JULY 14, 2023

Do you have any suggestions for structuring an incentive package to optimize for sales/revenue efficiency?” Kyle Norton , SVP Sales & Partnership at Owner: I don’t actually think it makes a ton of sense to build this into a comp plan. I sometimes see companies put a large % on closed won revenue and I’m not a fan. Appreciate you.

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SaaStr

OCTOBER 19, 2023

One thing I have learned, though: If the founders are the highest compensated people in the start-up, especially pre-Scale (e.g., pre $10m ARR) … IMHE, something is wrong.

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Scale Sales Hiring Compensation Marketing 245

CloseSaaS

JANUARY 18, 2022

Flashy resumes will never compensate for this one character trait that is critical for success (in sales, and beyond): endurance. Hire people with endurance. It can't be taught at an Ivy League, and it can't be developed mindlessly. It's intentional. It requires resilience.

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Tom Tunguz

NOVEMBER 24, 2018

You might have a few account executives and a sales leader in place; maybe some revenue and a handful of customers. The sales team costs real money, and the question before the company is: how do you know what quota plan to assign to the account executives? Stage 1: Management by Objectives.

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SaaStr

NOVEMBER 24, 2021

The SaaS sales model seems so well-established, as hundreds of founders build their businesses and raise funding. Mark Roberge, Founder of Stage 2 Capital and Senior Lecturer at Harvard Business School, shares insights from his years of experience into common SaaS sales missteps and how you can avoid them.

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SaaStr

FEBRUARY 8, 2022

Scaling a sales organization isn’t easy. Knowing which metrics matter and how to analyze them to increase your revenue and hit organizational sales goals is essential. . What makes a sales organization grow? What’s the best way to grow a sales organization? Are you compensating your teams to sell recurring revenue?

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Scale Sales Hiring Compensation Sales 223

SaaStr

MARCH 5, 2021

Flock Safety’s Founder and CEO, Garrett Langley, and its VP of Growth, Alex Latraverse, know a bit about sales. Enough to go from 0 to 100 sales reps in about 18 months — and they’re looking to be well beyond 100 by the end of this month. The three things that led to ramping up sales at Flock Safety were: Achieving product-market fit.

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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.

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SaaStr

APRIL 27, 2023

Organizations using Bob are able to accelerate hiring, retain the best talent, and elevate employee engagement. QuotaPath is the most adaptable compensation solution to bring Sales, RevOps, and Finance all on the same page. Companies waste up to 30% of their SaaS spend. appeared first on SaaStr.

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Tom Tunguz

MAY 31, 2017

This might seem like a very logical argument for differentiating on sales processes, but it’s a fallacy. First, it presumes that the most valuable skill set in sales is building rapport. Great salespeople understand how to manage a sales process and the five key people in a sales process. Trust is critical.

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SaaStr

APRIL 9, 2022

Hiring has never been easy in SaaS. Transparent compensation information is concern #1. Second, many of us worry about being fully transparent with compensation. It’s time to get over it. Second, many of us worry about being fully transparent with compensation. It’s always been hard. Fix this today.

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Revenue Sales Hiring Compensation Startup 253

OPEXEngine

APRIL 3, 2020

HIRING FREEZES AT THE MAJORITY OF COMPANIES. Over half of the respondents said they have a hiring freeze in place or were planning one. of companies said they no hiring freeze or any reduction in hiring planned, again, as of the end of March. SALES QUOTA AND COMP POLL. Source: OPEXEngine 2020.

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SaaStr

DECEMBER 27, 2020

If the founders are the highest compensated people in the start-up, at least pre-Scale (e.g., So once you’ve raised a bit, if you make sure at least someone else on the team makes more than the founders … that great VP you just hired for example … you’ve probably found the right compensation level for you as CEO.

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OpenView Labs

NOVEMBER 2, 2021

getting hired)—and for “taxis,” finding adequate passengers (i.e. hiring enough staff)—depended on numerous factors: how many taxicabs serviced the area, how many other people were in line, and whether the passengers were able to match up with a taxi that suited their needs. . The difficulty of catching a “taxi” (i.e.

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Tom Tunguz

MAY 2, 2013

To many entrepreneurs, hiring the first salesperson is a mystery. The great part about sales teams and sales departments is that they quantitative - sales teams thrive on numbers. At the most fundamental level, sales productivity has to exceed costs. The output of that salesperson - sales productivity.

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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.

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SaaStr

FEBRUARY 23, 2021

I want to spend a few posts and some time on sales comp plans for early-ish stage SaaS companies (up to say $20m in ARR). Because almost all the sales comp plans you are going to read about, and learn about are great — for SaaS companies that are well post-Scale. That work great for Salesforce, or Box. Just the top rep.

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Sales Hacker

DECEMBER 12, 2017

With increasing focus on grit and many claims of meritocracies in organizations across the country, why does variable pay compensation even exist? On top of that, why are sales people some of the few employees subject to variable compensation structures? What is Variable Pay Compensation Anyway?

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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.

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OpenView Labs

MARCH 27, 2020

When I first wrote this for OpenView, we were in a place where unemployment was at an all-time low and hiring was top of mind. Whether your company has paused hiring, is still hiring or will be in the future, having the right people for your business and stage will always be a priority.

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Sales Hacker

DECEMBER 19, 2022

As the president of Sales Xceleration, a firm specializing in assessing and implementing sales strategy , sales processes, and sales execution to drive growth, I’ve seen how job hopping can affect otherwise stable sales teams. Sales organizations experienced 58% higher voluntary turnover in 2021 than in 2020.

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SaaStr

DECEMBER 8, 2022

In Episode 3 of the CRO Confidential Series, Sam Blond, partner at Founders Fund, sits down with the SVP of Sales at Gong, Jameson Yung, and CEO of SaaStr, Jason Lemkin, to share their decades of knowledge for those dreamers hoping to find rapid growth and success in today’s world. . Implementing a better sales team early on.

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Mucker Capital

OCTOBER 10, 2023

Sales development is a nuanced blend of art and science, requiring a delicate balance for its effective implementation within a company. Drawing from substantial experience, Sally Duby from The Bridge Group provides valuable insights into the intricate realm of sales development. Sally's wisdom sheds light on this dilemma.

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SaaStr

MARCH 15, 2022

If the founders are the highest compensated people in an early-stage start-up, at least pre-Scale (e.g., At least the VP of Sales. The second time, I funded the prototype myself ($0 salary) and then we raised a $2.6m seed and I took a small salary (no need to be $0 anymore, but anything large would decrease the runway).

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Scale Sales Hiring Compensation Scaling 216

SaaStr

NOVEMBER 9, 2019

If I had to boil down how to filter potential sales professionals based on just 1 controlling criterion, it would be deal size. Enterprise sales: Reps often hunt many of their own deals. Long sales cycles make it hard to tell if a rep is going to do well, or is just talking a good game. Mid-market sales are … in between.

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OpenView Labs

NOVEMBER 9, 2021

Once dominated by relationships, sales today (especially SaaS sales) are equally propelled by technology. With the broad adoption of CRM, the rise of the sales tech stack, and the advent of social selling and other digital sales channels, the sales landscape has shifted dramatically. Scaling SaaS Sales.

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