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AI-Native GTM Teams Run 38% Leaner: The New Normal?

SaaStr

It’s just … so many of the AI leaders seem to be doing it with less GTM headcount. Especially the next generation of them: Perplexity has scaled to 5,000 enterprise customers with just 5 sales reps. Sales isn’t going anywhere in the Age of AI. OpenAI has a big sales team, Windsurf does, Anthropic has a great one.

Scale 185
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The 30-Day Test: How to Know if Your VP of Sales Will Succeed

SaaStr

They’ll try to keep underperforming reps around, claiming they need the headcount. Watch out for this red flag: mediocre VPs will insist they need “every warm body” and can’t afford to let anyone go. When you find the right person, you’ll know it—because they’ll start delivering results from day one.

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Where Customer Success Reports To Typically, Who Really Owns Renewals, And More from ChurnZero

SaaStr

So ChurnZero put out a great new report surveying 1,037 customer success professionals. There is almost no software and non-headcount budget for CS. 64% of CS teams spend $200,000 or less a year on non-headcount, with growth stage companies spending the least, just 0.1% More on Customer Marketing here.

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Customer Success Is A Single Digit Hire

SaaStr

We’ve talked on SaaStr about leaning in on Customer Success as much as possible. the revenue ultimately generated or supported by Customer Success) is the key to growing a SaaS business. We’ve talked about how all the Second Timers are hiring in customer success way early , ahead of sales, ahead of revenue.

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GTM in The Age of AI: The Top 10 Learnings from ICONIQ’s 2025 B2B SaaS Report

SaaStr

AI-Native Companies Allocate More Post-Sales Headcount; Traditional SaaS Companies Go Leaner The Organizational Split : Perhaps the most fascinating finding is that AI-native and traditional SaaS companies are evolving their GTM organizations in completely opposite directions.

Scale 194
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Customer Success In The Era Of Efficiency: A Deep Dive With ChurnZero, HubSpot and SaaStr

SaaStr

The landscape of customer success has been evolving rapidly. So much so that we seem to be releasing new content on customer success just about every week. Today we’re focusing on actionable insights you can use to drive down churn with customer success in today’s new era of SaaS efficiency.

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What Your First 100 Hires Will Look Like

SaaStr

Because SaaS requires so many functions beyond engineering, especially if it’s sales-driven … outbound, SDRs, inbound, field sales, marketing, customer success, support, more complex product management, etc. You’ll probably want to add field sales (for Big Deals) by $10m ARR or so, another 2-3 headcount here, minimum.