SaaStr

NOVEMBER 19, 2020

More on that here and a great video discussion below: You’ll probably be ready for your first VP of Sales by $1m in ARR. We’ve talked about this a lot on SaaStr, but hiring a true VP of Sales before you have 2 reps hitting quota (and thus a repeatable, if not yet fully repeating process) is too early. Earlier is better.

Part-Time VPE 363

Part-Time VPE Sales Hiring CTO Hire Scale 363

SaaStr

OCTOBER 27, 2022

You need engineering, product in all start-ups — but in SaaS, even in the very early days, you also need sales, client success, true support, demand gen marketing, etc. And Things I Successfully (More or Less) Offloaded By/At $1m ARR: Client/Customer Success. Routine Sales. Recruiting >=20% of Your Time.

Sales Hiring 280

Sales Hiring Sales Recruiting Scale Scaling 280

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. The best VPs of Sales design comp plans so the team never wants to leave.

Sales Recruiting 221

Sales Recruiting Sales Hiring Scale Customer Success 221

SaaStr

JULY 9, 2022

The role of a VP is to own everything required to hit the goals for a functional area – Sales, Marketing, Product, Engineering, Finance, or Customer Success. This includes: Recruiting the team. Instilling Confidence and Managing Up and Down. This can be hard. And many first-time VPs have never done this.

Sales Recruiting 267

Sales Recruiting Sales Hiring Finance Engineering 267

SaaStr

MARCH 25, 2023

So one recent survey we did really brought out a healthy debate: does your VP of Sales really need to be a product expert? Many of the comments said it was more important a VP of Sales understand process and leadership more than the product itself. They often melt. I say, you just gotta know the product. Not just with buzzwords.

Scale 235

Scale Sales Hiring Sales Recruiting Sales 235

Tom Tunguz

FEBRUARY 2, 2021

Throughout her time there, she scaled the SaaS company from $1M ARR to pre- IPO, along the way, creating the category of customer success software, and paving the way for Gainsight’s $1.1B She’s written extensively on the topic and co-authored a book The Customer Success Economy. If so, at what stage?

Scale 293

Scale Sales Recruiting Sales Hiring Customer Success 293

Totango

MARCH 15, 2022

Efforts to scale customer success team activity often fall short because of failure to avoid common mistakes. Your human resources practices, your project management procedures and your technology strategy all need to come together in order for you to scale up without overextending yourself.

Sales Recruiting 95

Sales Recruiting Customer Success Sales Hiring Scaling 95

ChurnZero

NOVEMBER 29, 2022

This is a guest article by Michael Su , senior consultant of Customer Success, The Success League. Customer Success is still a young field and a new concept for many companies. When I ventured out to build my first Customer Success department at a tech software company, my leadership team thought I was nuts.

Customer Success 98

Customer Success Sales Recruiting Technical Review Compensation 98

ChurnZero

JANUARY 25, 2024

How will customer success jobs, and the skills they require, evolve in 2024? With technology advancing and customer expectations rising, customer success has become an essential force driving business growth and customer loyalty within the SaaS industry.

Customer Success 52

Customer Success Sales Recruiting Sales Hiring Scale 52

Andreessen Horowitz

FEBRUARY 8, 2024

But building a sales compensation plan that both aligns your sales team’s compensation with your customers’ objectives and recruits top salespeople can be incredibly difficult in usage-based pricing. Determine where your sales team makes your customers more successful In usage-based pricing, value = usage.

Compensation 90

Compensation Sales Recruiting Sales Systems Review 90

SaaStr

FEBRUARY 5, 2023

SaaStr 630: Sales-led vs. Product-led? SaaStr 629: CRO Confidential: Sales Recruitment in 2023 For Candidates and Hiring Managers With Flexport’s Ben Braverman   3. SaaStr 628: Revenue Alignment: How to Pull Marketing, Sales, and Customer Success Together with Divvy CRO Sterling Snow  5.

Sales Recruiting 202

Sales Recruiting Sales Hiring Scale Venture Capital 202

SaaStr

MAY 6, 2021

You might never have considered a Chief Revenue Officer (CRO) because it’s not been a common role until very recently, and because you might not have the kind of revenue that needs its own manager. If you’re a company that has a 100% sales-driven business model, it makes sense to hire a big-deal revenue person. Is a CRO right for you?

Sales Hiring 245

Sales Hiring Sales Recruiting Interviewing Revenue 245

SaaStr

JANUARY 29, 2023

SaaStr 628: Revenue Alignment: How to Pull Marketing, Sales, and Customer Success Together with Divvy CRO Sterling Snow  2. SaaStr 629: CRO Confidential: Sales Recruitment in 2023 For Candidates and Hiring Managers With Flexport’s Ben Braverman   3. Really, Really, Low.

Sales Recruiting 195

Sales Recruiting Sales Hiring Scale AWS 195

Sales Hacker

OCTOBER 17, 2023

Chuck is the co-founder of Blueprint Expansion , a GTM roles recruiting firm that has helped over 50 VC-backed companies make amazing Sales, Marketing, & Customer Success hires. By using the power of AI to identify and engage the accounts and buying groups most likely to purchase.

Sales Hiring 103

Sales Hiring Sales Recruiting Interviewing SMB 103

SaaStr

AUGUST 23, 2022

My general learnings: By 20-30 employees, you should have 1-2 good managers in place such that at least 50% of the company can run based only on weekly staff meetings, 1-on-1s, and “grab me when you need me-s” E.g., a great first VP of Sales that can just handle sales. management team by 50 employees or so.

Part-Time VPE 198

Part-Time VPE Sales Recruiting Sales Hiring Startup 198

SaaStr

JUNE 23, 2020

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. Q: What’s the number one challenge for scale-up founders? You’ll need more than 5–6 core engineers to go big.

Part-Time VPE 237

Part-Time VPE CTO Hire Fractional VPE Sales Recruiting 237

Intercom, Inc.

MAY 13, 2021

Few people have more experience with this move than Linda Lin , Director of Customer Success at the revenue intelligence platform Gong. Moving upmarket means larger customers and higher revenue, but it’s not without its challenges. For Linda, it all comes down to your approach to customer success.

Scale 177

Scale Customer Success Strategy Sales Hiring 177

Valuize Consulting

JANUARY 25, 2024

Mastering Digital Customer Success: Insights From Valuize Spark Toronto What does your Digital CS model look like today and what was the journey like to get here? In the rapidly evolving B2B recurring revenue economy, the focus on Digital Customer Success is more pertinent than ever.

Customer Success 52

Customer Success Sales Recruiting Scale Strategy 52

SaaStr

JULY 10, 2022

A great VP of Customer Success in just a quarter or so decreases churn and increases account revenue growth. Sales growth slowly declines as she struggles to bring in enough reps. Take say 100 leads a month spread across 2 great reps, then bring in a new VP of Sales that hires 4 weak reps. This is hard.

Sales Recruiting 195

Sales Recruiting Sales Hiring Scale Churn 195

Valuize Consulting

DECEMBER 7, 2021

Level Up Your Customer Success Organization. In the subscription economy, there’s no debate about whether or not to invest in Customer Success (CS); 70% of rapidly growing businesses say that Customer Success is extremely important ( Hubspot , 2017). The fourth challenge is complexity.

VP of Engineering 98

VP of Engineering Customer Success Sales Hiring Interviewing 98

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. That they can get away without no one in the role, or a just a junior person in marketing, in product, in success, in biz dev, etc. I Need a VP of Sales.

Sales Hiring 359

Sales Hiring CTO Hire Sales Recruiting Scale 359

SaaStr

MARCH 7, 2021

I thought it would be worth drilling down deeper into each of them, and sharing the learnings and mistakes: 1/ Spending less time fixing things, more time recruiting senior folks to own them. No one spends enough time recruiting as it is, after $1m ARR or so. Yes, you can manage the sales team yourself. You can do this.

Part-Time VPE 270

Part-Time VPE Sales Recruiting Sales Hiring Scale 270

SaaStr

DECEMBER 30, 2022

If it explodes beyond your wildest dream, and you can manage to keep up and build a strong team, the answer is usually a long time. Could he or she recruit a better team? Often, just one great new VP of Marketing or Sales or Customer Success or Product will tilt the curve enough that you’d back to Better Growth.

Sales Recruiting 231

Sales Recruiting Customer Success SaaS Management 231

CustomerSuccessBox

JANUARY 10, 2022

Customer Success Manager job description: As a CSM (Customer Success Manager), your role is to maintain a good relationship and the satisfaction of your existing customers while developing the customer portfolio. Additional Resource – What is a Customer Success Manager.

Compensation 52

Compensation Customer Success Trends Management 52

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. All good stuff.

Sales Hiring 356

Sales Hiring Scale Sales Recruiting Engineering 356

SaaStr

MARCH 19, 2021

A head of sales that doesn’t recruit at least one strong rep in the first 90 days. A head of customer success that doesn’t own churn, or net revenue retention in the first 90 days. I can go on. But the top VPs of Sales know you have to get it going soon. Never will. That hits quota or better.

Sales Recruiting 327

Sales Recruiting Sales Hiring SMB Engineering 327

Tom Tunguz

AUGUST 2, 2019

If you must choose a long term headquarters for your startup, call an executive recruiter who focuses in that city. VP Engineering, VP Product, VP Sales, VP Customer Success, VP Marketing, or VP Operations. After establishing product market fit, the startups grow their management team to scale.

Sales Recruiting 215

Sales Recruiting Sales Hiring Startup Scale 215

Sales Hacker

MAY 6, 2021

What’s the difference between a VP of Sales and a Chief Revenue Officer (CRO)? The VP of Sales. Great VPs of sales have gravitas and tact, command the room and hold their end of the table regardless of who is on the other side. Singular focus on sales. As the title would hint at, the VP of Sales should focus on sales.

VP of Engineering 93

VP of Engineering Sales Hiring Sales Recruiting Sales 93

SaaStr

JANUARY 24, 2024

Mark Roberge , SaaStr fan-favorite and Co-Founder and Managing Director of Stage 2 Capital brought together some of the top CROs in SaaS during the SaaStr Annual to share some of their greatest learnings and pivotal moments leading some of the Cloud 100 SaaS companies. From a GTM execution standpoint, they weren’t focused.

Scale 235

Scale Sales Hiring Scaling Revenue 235

Sales Hacker

AUGUST 7, 2020

Fortunately, more organizers than ever before are consciously seeking out female sales experts for panels, presentations, and podcasts. At Sales Hacker, we’re serious about diversity, and for that reason, we’ve compiled a list of 530+ female sales experts to consider for your next event. Sales Development. Sales Growth.

VP of Engineering 121

VP of Engineering Sales Recruiting Sales Hiring Payment Services 121

User Pilot

NOVEMBER 5, 2023

What’s customer value management? TL;DR Customer Value Management (CVM) is a business process that focuses on analyzing customer needs , building outstanding products that satisfy them, and enabling users to realize their value. This allows them to drive account expansion and product growth.

Management 89

Management Scale Customer Lifetime Value SaaS 89

Sales Hacker

JANUARY 30, 2023

The first goal of sales at a startup isn’t to bring in revenue — it’s to get customer feedback. I’ve used our sales process to iterate our way to product market-fit and wanted to share what I’ve learned along the way. Use sales conversations as a tool to get product feedback. So how do you get there?

Sales Recruiting 88

Sales Recruiting Product Marketing Scale Sales Hiring 88

User Pilot

JULY 27, 2023

Chief Operating Officer: Responsible for overseeing day-to-day operations, providing strategic advice, and managing the company’s operations. Engineering Manager: In charge of planning, designing, and overseeing projects. They also manage finances and supervise one or more engineering teams. Average salary: $192,383/yr.

Sales Hiring 93

Sales Hiring SaaS Payments Sales Recruiting CTO Hire 93

SaaStr

FEBRUARY 1, 2021

If you don’t think you need a great VP of Sales, Product, Marketing, Customer Success, and Engineering — then all that all that means is you’ve never worked with a great one. Here again, we have the same problems as the Customer Success lead hire, but worse. And if, so, where and when?

Sales Hiring 273

Sales Hiring Part-Time VPE Scale Sales Recruiting 273

CustomerSuccessBox

MAY 9, 2022

A Customer Success dashboard keeps track of your company’s health in connection to your product and its users. Customers are the lifeblood of any company, therefore having a clear picture of its revenue activities is critical for expansion. 360 Customer Success Dashboard. Voice of Customer.

Customer Success 52

Customer Success Sales Recruiting Outsourced Development Customer Lifetime Value 52

Kellblog

JUNE 27, 2020

The company’s “implementation consultants” are overloaded, working on too many projects in parallel, and are largely focused more on “getting onto the next one” than getting customers successfully implemented. If you sell: A recruiting app, running your first recruiting campaign.

Consulting 144

Consulting Sales Recruiting Sales Hiring Startup 144

SaaStr

JUNE 14, 2020

To want a head of sales operations and a director of sales to help carry the load not later … but on Day 1. To not have to manage any customers yourself in customer success, and instead be a strategist. The Benefits of Hiring a Stretch VP of Sales (and The Risks). Do you have the budget?

Sales Hiring 227

Sales Hiring Scale Sales Recruiting SaaS 227