SaaStr

AUGUST 7, 2021

Some investors bet on the best engineering teams. So I always have to pass here, no matter how good the metrics look today. “Quarterly MRR”, 100% Gross Margins, and Other Crazy Metrics. But if your metrics make truly zero sense, to me, that’s a flag. Gaming the metrics doesn’t help here.

Sales Recruiting 336

Sales Recruiting Scale AWS Investment 336

SaaStr

JULY 10, 2022

Or drives the engineering team to ship more features per quarter. 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. And quickly.

Sales Recruiting 181

Sales Recruiting Sales Hiring Scale Churn 181

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 205

Sales Recruiting Sales Hiring Scale Customer Success 205

SaaStr

JULY 29, 2021

Someone great at something core you aren’t: Sales, Engineering, Marketing. Great at sales. Great at engineering. If you hire someone to do the first sales, you’ll never understand it yourself. When you go to hire your first sales rep, hire 2. 50% of the job for a VP is recruiting. A bit more here.

Sales Hiring 300

Sales Hiring Sales Recruiting Interviewing Engineering 300

SaaStr

JULY 11, 2023

How do you win with a high-velocity sales strategy in a fast-moving, competitive market? In a special session of Workshop Wednesday, Gorgias Founder & CEO Romain Lapeyre and Gorgias VP of Sales & Partnerships Aasif Osmany share their learnings, advice, and hacks for optimizing your sales process. Sign up for free.

Sales Hiring 157

Sales Hiring SMB Sales Recruiting Payment Methods 157

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 352

Sales Hiring Scale Sales Recruiting Engineering 352

SaaStr

NOVEMBER 12, 2022

Especially when some other crappy company just got funded last week with worse metrics. But now they are back to picking the types of risk they like to take: Lack of A+ Engineering Team Risk. In SaaS, VCs seem to split two ways on the engineering team. Or their friends got 7 term sheets with good-but-not- as -good companies.

Scale 338

Scale Sales Recruiting Artificial Intelligence Machine Learning 338

SaaStr

JULY 25, 2021

They talked about product adoption, sales alignment, freemium models and lessons they have learned throughout their successful SaaS careers. As two CEO who love the art of sales and scaling, this one really was special. Recruiting is easier, but the things that don’t change are customers don’t care.

Sales Recruiting 242

Sales Recruiting Sales Hiring Scale VP of Engineering 242

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

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.

Sales Hiring 98

Sales Hiring SaaS Payments Sales Recruiting CTO Hire 98

SaaStr

MAY 2, 2021

. “Why Zoom Founder Went Solo & How Being an Engineer Helps You be a Better CEO” A great shorter-bite with Zoom CEO Eric Yuan. #8. “The 5 Metrics You Should Track to Maximize Your Company’s Valuation with Tomasz Tunguz” A great session from the recent SaaStr Build with Tomasz. #9.

Sales Recruiting 142

Sales Recruiting Scale CTO Scaling 142

SaaStr

AUGUST 25, 2023

2 “Give the VP of Sales more time.” You can’t always expect a great VP of Sales to double sales in 30-60-90 days. But you have to see progress in one sales cycle. If, in one sales cycle, things aren’t improving on several core metrics, they never will. The best VPs of Sales hit the ground running.

Part-Time VPE 174

Part-Time VPE Scale Sales Hiring CTO Hire 174

Tom Tunguz

JUNE 11, 2020

A recruiter in the audience submitted a question often discussed in startup boardrooms. If you’re hiring a sales leader, you don’t pass up an awesome sales leader that has a killer track record of closing deals just because in their previous company they sold success software, and then with your company, they’re going to sell MarTech.

Sales Hiring 248

Sales Hiring Sales Recruiting Product Marketing Acquisition 248

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 168

Sales Hiring Sales Recruiting Scale Sales 168

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

SaaStr

NOVEMBER 25, 2019

The headline metrics: 15,000+ attendees. With power, snacks, and more, we’ll have lounges just for Founders; just for Sales + Marketing professionals; just for Builders (Dev + Product), and just for VCs to issue term sheets. Recruiting Fair. March 10-11-12 in San Jose, CA just south of San Francisco. 4,000+ CEOs.

New CTO 256

New CTO Sales Recruiting CTO Coach Scale 256

Valuize Consulting

JANUARY 25, 2024

While they touched on data strategy, tooling and metrics, all 3 experts emphasized that successful Digital Customer Success programs demand a holistic approach, embracing cross-functional collaboration and strategic adaptation. These roles should be complemented by professionals skilled in data engineering and systems infrastructure.

Customer Success 52

Customer Success Sales Recruiting Scale Strategy 52

Intercom, Inc.

SEPTEMBER 10, 2020

As an engineer by training, in pressure situations he tends to “lean to the quant.” It’s an approach that’s served him well along the road to building the HubSpot sales team, where he was CRO for nine years. That experience led to his bestselling book, The Sales Acceleration Formula. Mark Roberge knows which he prefers.

Scale 226

Scale Scaling Sales Recruiting Sales Hiring 226

Andreessen Horowitz

OCTOBER 16, 2023

One of the toughest challenges for founders — and especially technical founders who are used to focusing so much on product features over sales — is striking “product-market fit”. So in that shift from product-market fit to product-market-SALES fit, how much should you optimize your go-to-market for product… and even the other way around?

Product Marketing 81

Product Marketing Scale Sales Hiring Sales Recruiting 81

SaaStr

APRIL 17, 2019

Steve has previously said, “Sales and marketing must be one team.” Where does Steve find common points of tension between sales and marketing? I mean, my career started as a software engineer, and out of frustration, I went into sales. The role of marketing is to help sales sell, and it’s not about creating a logo.

DevOps as a Service 100

DevOps as a Service Sales Recruiting Scale Sales Hiring 100

Andreessen Horowitz

DECEMBER 5, 2023

So, myself and my co founder, we were kind of software developers, like kind of engineers by background. But one of the things that we did was just try to really deeply understand the people that we were talking to, initially, instead of doing contracts and sales and accounts management and things like that.

Sales Hiring 86

Sales Hiring Sales Recruiting Banking Outsourced Development 86

User Pilot

AUGUST 21, 2023

Despite not being classed as a C-level position, product managers are often leading multidisciplinary initiatives that start with your developers and end with the sales team so confident leadership is a must. How would you manage a team that works across time zones and remotely? Leadership. What is product vision?

Interviewing 97

Interviewing Underperforming Technical Team Management Sales Hiring 97

Intercom, Inc.

JULY 28, 2022

And for Intercom’s VP of Sales EMEA, Sanj Bhayro , scaling is just what you need to invest in to ensure growth becomes as constant and linear as it can be. Sanj has plenty of experience scaling sales teams at growing businesses, and that’s precisely why, as of November of last year, he‘s overseeing EMEA sales at Intercom.

Scale 210

Scale Scaling Sales Hiring Sales Recruiting 210

Valuize Consulting

DECEMBER 7, 2021

Is it going to come from the Sales and Marketing budget, or General Administrative budget? Where does Sales, Support, Training & Education play and what does the handoff look like? Your charters must dictate how you hire as the skill sets you recruit need to align with, and complement, your charters.

VP of Engineering 98

VP of Engineering Customer Success Sales Hiring Interviewing 98

OpenView Labs

APRIL 13, 2021

Anne’s journey began with a love of technology and problem solving, which led to an internship with IBM in Manhattan working with a systems engineer. Pretty much everyone I’ve ever talked to has war stories about how they bring disparate teams together to ensure effective synergies and align metrics.

Sales Recruiting 60

Sales Recruiting Management Engineering Leadership 60

Tom Tunguz

SEPTEMBER 11, 2013

As they grow, startups often create ad hoc managers I call team leads. Team leads manage 3 to 5 people. They work alongside their team, whether engineering, sales or marketing and contribute actively to achieving the goals of that team team. He’s a different kind of manager, a team builder.

Sales Recruiting 100

Sales Recruiting Startup Sales Hiring Scale 100

Neil Patel

JANUARY 6, 2023

At the same time, the number of houses up for sale is at historic lows. Using SEO for real estate is when you optimize your website so search engines will increase web traffic and improve the visibility of your real estate listings. All that results in more sales and a growing income. What does that mean for you?

Technical Review 84

Technical Review Social Media Sales Recruiting Engineering 84

Sales Hacker

SEPTEMBER 23, 2019

This week on the Sales Hacker podcast, we talk to Kevin Egan, VP of North American Sales at Slack. Kevin’s sales career has taken him from Oracle, to Dropbox, to Salesforce, and now, to Slack. How experience as a sales engineer can play into your role as a sales leader. Subscribe to the Sales Hacker Podcast.

VP of Engineering 52

VP of Engineering Sales Recruiting Sales Hiring Scale 52

SaaStr

DECEMBER 3, 2020

403: Sam Taylor is the VP of Sales and Success @ Loom, the startup that helps you get your message across by making it easy to record instantly shareable videos. As for Sam, prior to Loom, Sam spent over 4 years at Salesforce following their acquisition of Quip, a startup Salesforce acquired for $750M where Sam was also the 1st sales leader.

Scale 171

Scale Sales Hiring Sales Recruiting Sales 171

SaaStr

MAY 8, 2020

Prior to Work-Bench, Jessica was a Learning and Development Manager at Cisco Systems, where she worked with the Engineering organization on Agile transformation, innovation and culture. Where does Jessica find managers and founders do pipe reviews wrong? How should sales teams and CS respond to requests for discounts?

Sales Recruiting 175

Sales Recruiting Technical Review Sales Hiring Outsourced Development 175

Sales Hacker

SEPTEMBER 9, 2019

This week on the Sales Hacker podcast, we speak with Ryan Lallier , Director of Inside Sales at InsightSquared. Ryan has a diverse background in Sales, with positions ranging from individual contributor to head of sales roles at companies like Dataminr, Gartner, and YayPay. Ryan’s Sales Career Journey.

Sales Recruiting 55

Sales Recruiting Scale Sales Hiring Banking 55

SaaStr

APRIL 23, 2019

And can you talk a little bit about touching on the hiring point, because you did say that you focused a lot on talent, and recruiting. And we had a lot of experience with payments, and engineering, but with U.S. It was basically engineering and design. Our head of sales, he was probably 10th, or 11th, or something like that.

Sales Hiring 151

Sales Hiring Sales Recruiting Scale Payment Methods 151

SaaStr

NOVEMBER 28, 2019

And so again we would just have added to more kind of friction in the sales cycle and there was a whole video long sales cycle. And then I think the other one was a bit harder because we made a transition from perpetual to subscription, which kind of screws up all your metrics. We opened a small sales office in Wework.

Sales Hiring 177

Sales Hiring Scale Sales Recruiting Government 177

User Pilot

SEPTEMBER 29, 2023

You need a range of disciplines working together in a cross-functional team to make sure various product development processes go to plan, including product managers , developers, marketers , sales, designers , senior leaders , and more. Senior management. Next up, you need to validate the idea before you start writing code.

Development 105

Development Software Review Sales Recruiting Technical Review 105

Sales Hacker

MARCH 17, 2021

Strict sales volume does go a long way in achieving long-term revenue growth, but processes and cross-department alignment are what allow sales volumes to scale in the first place. Companies that make it through the first stage of revenue growth have begun to establish bits and pieces of the revenue engine. The problem?

Scale 93

Scale Revenue Startup Sales Recruiting 93

SmartKarrot

OCTOBER 3, 2022

Recruit, hire, mentor and coach Customer Success team members. Interact with other areas of their business to ensure customer success, such as Product and Engineering. Assist with client marketing correspondence (newsletters, campaigns, sales print materials, welcome packets, surveys, etc.).

Sales Recruiting 19

Sales Recruiting Customer Success Sales Hiring Outsourced Development 19

Unbounce

OCTOBER 18, 2021

When done right, marketing can be about more than return on investment or brand metrics. Sounds like a big opportunity for talent-starved companies to recruit, right? For example, female software engineers have increased by only 2% in the last * 21 years *. Currently, only about 25% of tech jobs are held by women worldwide.

Artificial Intelligence 136

Artificial Intelligence Marketing Scale Sales Recruiting 136