INDUSTRY INSIGHTS YOUR PEERS ARE READING
If you have a SaaS startup with a higher-touch sales model where revenue growth is largely driven by sales headcount, the plan needs to be modified accordingly. MORE
The chart above shows the headcount growth of the median publicly traded SaaS company from year four through year ten of the company’s life. The multiplicative effect of headcount growth and improving productivity fuels the growth of the business. SaaS companies are marvelous businesses. They are more predictable than most other kinds of companies and in addition they demonstrate leverage from technology. MORE
While it’s true you may need to incrementally add capacity for this new channel, the impact we’ve seen on our conversion rates has more than paid for the additional headcount. The promise of live chat for sales teams is being able to connect faster with high-quality leads. MORE
But it’d be far more effective to share how Snapt uses Custom Bots to qualify and book meetings at scale, without additional headcount. In sales, the ability to connect with leads in real time can’t be understated. MORE
How to Scale without Scaling Headcount. To ensure you success function scales without scaling your headcount, make sure everyone in the company is bought into the success mindset. Top 15 Takeaways from Pulse Europe 2018. MORE
Imagine you work at a startup that is growing headcount 125% year over year. Startups are business machines engineered to grow quickly. The forces of hypergrowth exert enormous strain on every aspect of the company. Internal break all the time as the company moults into a new skin. This is one of the most important things to keep in mind when hiring. MORE
When you reduce the headcount to get the contract, you have to cut corners, force people to do the job of two, scrimp on culture, never find time to train, become a mediocre agency. MORE
In 2014, Mixpanel’s Series B pitch deck spelled out the company’s expansion plans over the next two years: 3x sales headcount and rapidly race towards distribution. Double headcount every 6-9 months. MORE
Financial Plan This template helps you create a full financial plan that includes everything from revenue modeling to costs projections and headcount planning. (As you can see, I really like placeit.net :) ) In case you haven't started to think about your plan for 2017 yet, now's the time. MORE
” In our case, a resounding “yes” required seeing a positive impact on customer expansion and one big enough to justify the fully-loaded cost for the additional headcount. MORE
Leveraging automation is not only interesting, but important - after all, if a SaaS company’s headcount growth exceeds revenue growth, it impacts its ability to invest in product, and if that happens, things can start to go awry. MORE
The number of employees when things get particularly troublesome are three, 10, 30, 100, 300 and 1,000 - before company headcount hits these milestones you’ll need to rethink how you operate. I’ve been working within the software as a service (SaaS) industry for more than five years now. MORE
When is the right time to increase sales headcount for a SaaS startup? It is one of the most strategic decisions for early-stage business to make given the amount of effort and expense involved in building, managing and scaling a sales team. While there is no single absolute sign, neither qualitative nor quantitative, these are some of the signals I have found indicate it might be a good time to scale sales. First, the pipeline to quota ratio exceeds 6X. MORE
Above, I’ve charted the headcount growth rate for 10 of the fastest growing software companies in recent history. I’ve normalized the years for when all the businesses were roughly at the same headcount - fewer than 50 people. What does the “average” hyper growth software company look like in terms of headcount growth? How quickly do the fastest growing software companies build their teams? The answer is incredibly quickly. MORE
In the last three years, it has grown from 60 to 225 in headcount, 10x in revenue and now serves 4 different verticals. Tune in for an extra bonus episode of the podcast, hosting SaaStock LatAm speaker André Baldini, CEO of Superlógica who tell us how the company grew revenue 10x. MORE
Like a large tanker at cruising speed that cannot quickly take a turn, a startup with a fast-growing headcount and a high burn rate loses some of its ability to quickly react to new information, new insights, or changes in the market. A couple of years ago I wrote a post titled “How fast is fast enough?”. The subtext of the question was “How fast do you have to grow if your ambition is to get to $100M in ARR and build a very large company”. MORE
At this scale, the economics of sales training are plain to see: less headcount required to attain the same bookings run rate. Sales leaders consistently underinvest in sales team training and development. As SaaS startups scale, sales execution becomes the most tangible metric of a business’ success, and the one by which the business’ health is benchmarked. Not to mention how the head of sales is evaluated. When is the right time to invest in sales training? MORE
As you can see in the spreadsheet and in the chart, based on these assumptions your total sales headcount increases from 2 to 9 in year 2 and from 9 to 30 in year 3. PS: As you can see in the chart below, there's a 1:1 correlation (approximately) between ARR and sales headcount. MORE
Even without a clear understanding of her funnel, she can probably estimate the impact of a change in headcount accurately. Have you noticed the disconnect between how executives talk about Sales Development and how they treat Sales Development leaders? MORE
Customer success teams must justify the investment of building a CS team, often at the expense of headcount in another team. Constrained by headcount budgets and burn requirements, startup leadership teams often must choose between hiring an additional sales person or investing in a customer success person, for example. MORE
Besides working through your budget, marketing programs, headcount, and whatever else you need to have in place when the new year rolls around, I’d suggest you add another item: Review your value proposition and messages. I'll start by apologizing. MORE
When I started, Pipedrive had a big growth plan as far as headcount, but they were a little bit looser on processes and cadences. MORE
Nick Petri assesses how to find the right ratio of headcount between product management, UX and development. Special thanks to Miriam Richter, Adelina Irimia and Adina Mic for helping compile this guide. MORE
Accurate forecasting also helps you anticipate any changes in headcount or budget so your organization can adequately prepare. Things used to be a lot simpler. Marketing was responsible for building interest and generating leads and then sales would pick up the baton and close revenue. MORE
Of course, headcount is always a sensitive topic, so start small to show your executives what is possible. If executed right, the headcount is truly an investment. In this article, you’ll learn how to structure your sales development (SDR) team for maximum efficiency and scalability. Sales leaders, read on! The only easy day was yesterday.”. Navy SEALs. This is one of the most famous principles of the U.S. Navy SEALs. MORE
To account for that, you can insert potential and actual dollar values in place of the headcount: Customer Renewal Rate = Actual Renewal Value ÷ Potential Renewal Value X 100. Renewal is about a consistent revenue basis. The rate at which your customers extend their relationship with you determines how fast and how far your enterprise can grow. As such, being able to accurately calculate your renewal rate gives you insight into your customer success team’s performance. MORE
In-product guides and email cadences are low cost ways of steering users towards activation without engineering work or new customer success headcount. SaaS is now ubiquitous. Salesforce, which turned 20 in March, surpassed $13 billion in annual revenue this year. MORE
The continued support of their investors has underscored the market potential and has led the crew to expand their partner ecosystem and double their headcount across engineering, sales, and marketing. Hello, my pals. MORE
We had one of our portfolio companies with 60% of their headcount reporting up through CS, and that’s how they focused and was the culture of the business. Did you know: For every 1% increase in revenue retention, a SaaS company’s valuation increases by 12% after five years? MORE
Cut sales and marketing headcount and scale back spending on customer acquisition programs. If you manage a software-as-a-service (SaaS) company, at some point you'll be forced to make a tough decision about your customer acquisition process: Feed it or starve it? MORE
Decreased revenue per rep, High turnover as you scale headcount. “It’s We made our machine more efficient even as we scaled, grew headcount, and skyrocketed our revenue. The post 5 Ways to Keep Your Sales Machine Efficient While Scaling Headcount appeared first on Sales Hacker. MORE
If you have a SaaS startup with a higher-touch sales model where revenue growth is largely driven by sales headcount, the plan needs to be modified accordingly. [Update 03/23/16: I've created an improved version of the template - check it out! ] A few people who read my recent post about financial planning asked if I could provide an example for a good financial plan, so I'd like to post one here. MORE
Over this time, our headcount has grown by over 10x, and our revenue has grown by over 60x. Successful customers are happy customers. Happy customers stick around and recommend your company to their friends. MORE
Traditional Sales Organizations – Growth of headcount in sales was structured around revenue per individual contributor (IC). In this blueprint, we provide insights on how to structure your sales organization. MORE
As headcount surges, what specific fields mean, why they are useful, and when the business requires that information can be lost in the shuffle. Boston’s Trident Booksellers and Cafe thrums on a Saturday morning. MORE
Despite the exponential growth they’ve gone through, Stripe have been refreshingly conservative about how quickly they grown the company from a headcount perspective. We are a very engineering-centric company, so 50% of headcount is always going to be on engineering. MORE
And in a fast-growing startup which doubles headcount every year and where each individual employee can have a much bigger impact than in a large enterprise, it's even more important that everyone is on the same page. MORE
It can be challenging when there are salary and headcount constraints, but you need to prove that CS is a driver for corporate growth. This week , we hosted a RYG Leadership Hour in Atlanta. MORE
At the highest level, SaaS companies look at sales expense, headcount, sales productivity and SaaS metrics like: The cost of new customer acquisition (CAC). Sales is the Growth Engine. Sales is the engine driving SaaS company value. MORE
In-product guides and email cadences are low cost ways of steering users towards activation without engineering work or new customer success headcount. SaaS is now ubiquitous. Salesforce, which turned 20 in March, surpassed $13 billion in annual revenue this year. MORE
If you have open headcount for Q1 be interviewing in Q4. Behind headcount equals behind plan. It’s two weeks until December. MORE
This section covers employee satisfaction, headcount, and recruiting metrics. Over the last decade or so, I’ve compiled a metrics sheet to summarise a SaaS business. While no living document like this is ever perfect, this is currently the best board-level summary of the overall health of a business I have found. I’m sharing it so that others may benefit and improve it. If you have suggestions, please email me. Redpoint SaaS Metrics Template. MORE
Or extra headcount? As a sales manager, your success is determined by the success of your reps. But, unfortunately, a lot of reps out there are barely hitting quota. In fact, the majority of today’s sales teams consist of average performers. MORE
Like a large tanker at cruising speed that cannot quickly take a turn, a startup with a fast-growing headcount and a high burn rate loses some of its ability to quickly react to new information, new insights, or changes in the market. MORE
Headcount Related Topics 
Sales Hacker
JULY 24, 2018
Decreased revenue per rep, High turnover as you scale headcount. “It’s We made our machine more efficient even as we scaled, grew headcount, and skyrocketed our revenue. The post 5 Ways to Keep Your Sales Machine Efficient While Scaling Headcount appeared first on Sales Hacker.
Tom Tunguz
NOVEMBER 28, 2017
Above, I’ve charted the headcount growth rate for 10 of the fastest growing software companies in recent history. I’ve normalized the years for when all the businesses were roughly at the same headcount - fewer than 50 people. What does the “average” hyper growth software company look like in terms of headcount growth? How quickly do the fastest growing software companies build their teams? The answer is incredibly quickly.
SaaStock
MARCH 27, 2019
In the last three years, it has grown from 60 to 225 in headcount, 10x in revenue and now serves 4 different verticals. Tune in for an extra bonus episode of the podcast, hosting SaaStock LatAm speaker André Baldini, CEO of Superlógica who tell us how the company grew revenue 10x.
Tom Tunguz
JUNE 18, 2019
This section covers employee satisfaction, headcount, and recruiting metrics. Over the last decade or so, I’ve compiled a metrics sheet to summarise a SaaS business. While no living document like this is ever perfect, this is currently the best board-level summary of the overall health of a business I have found. I’m sharing it so that others may benefit and improve it. If you have suggestions, please email me. Redpoint SaaS Metrics Template.
InsightSquared
MAY 7, 2019
At the highest level, SaaS companies look at sales expense, headcount, sales productivity and SaaS metrics like: The cost of new customer acquisition (CAC). Sales is the Growth Engine. Sales is the engine driving SaaS company value.
InsightSquared
NOVEMBER 19, 2018
If you have open headcount for Q1 be interviewing in Q4. Behind headcount equals behind plan. It’s two weeks until December.
The Angel VC
MARCH 23, 2016
If you have a SaaS startup with a higher-touch sales model where revenue growth is largely driven by sales headcount, the plan needs to be modified accordingly.
|
Sales Enablement, SaaS and Growth
JULY 24, 2018
The number of employees when things get particularly troublesome are three, 10, 30, 100, 300 and 1,000 - before company headcount hits these milestones you’ll need to rethink how you operate. I’ve been working within the software as a service (SaaS) industry for more than five years now.
Tom Tunguz
FEBRUARY 4, 2015
The chart above shows the headcount growth of the median publicly traded SaaS company from year four through year ten of the company’s life. The multiplicative effect of headcount growth and improving productivity fuels the growth of the business. SaaS companies are marvelous businesses. They are more predictable than most other kinds of companies and in addition they demonstrate leverage from technology.
The Angel VC
JUNE 25, 2015
As you can see in the spreadsheet and in the chart, based on these assumptions your total sales headcount increases from 2 to 9 in year 2 and from 9 to 30 in year 3. PS: As you can see in the chart below, there's a 1:1 correlation (approximately) between ARR and sales headcount.
InsightSquared
FEBRUARY 22, 2018
As headcount surges, what specific fields mean, why they are useful, and when the business requires that information can be lost in the shuffle. Boston’s Trident Booksellers and Cafe thrums on a Saturday morning.
The Angel VC
NOVEMBER 23, 2016
Financial Plan This template helps you create a full financial plan that includes everything from revenue modeling to costs projections and headcount planning. (As you can see, I really like placeit.net :) ) In case you haven't started to think about your plan for 2017 yet, now's the time.
ChurnZero
NOVEMBER 16, 2018
How to Scale without Scaling Headcount. To ensure you success function scales without scaling your headcount, make sure everyone in the company is bought into the success mindset. Top 15 Takeaways from Pulse Europe 2018.
|
Practical Advice on SaaS marketing
DECEMBER 3, 2013
Besides working through your budget, marketing programs, headcount, and whatever else you need to have in place when the new year rolls around, I’d suggest you add another item: Review your value proposition and messages. I'll start by apologizing.
Sales Enablement, SaaS and Growth
JUNE 26, 2018
Leveraging automation is not only interesting, but important - after all, if a SaaS company’s headcount growth exceeds revenue growth, it impacts its ability to invest in product, and if that happens, things can start to go awry.
The Angel VC
DECEMBER 14, 2013
And in a fast-growing startup which doubles headcount every year and where each individual employee can have a much bigger impact than in a large enterprise, it's even more important that everyone is on the same page.
Tom Tunguz
MAY 14, 2014
Customer success teams must justify the investment of building a CS team, often at the expense of headcount in another team. Constrained by headcount budgets and burn requirements, startup leadership teams often must choose between hiring an additional sales person or investing in a customer success person, for example.
Sales Hacker
FEBRUARY 13, 2018
Of course, headcount is always a sensitive topic, so start small to show your executives what is possible. If executed right, the headcount is truly an investment. In this article, you’ll learn how to structure your sales development (SDR) team for maximum efficiency and scalability. Sales leaders, read on! The only easy day was yesterday.”. Navy SEALs. This is one of the most famous principles of the U.S. Navy SEALs.
Totango
APRIL 23, 2019
To account for that, you can insert potential and actual dollar values in place of the headcount: Customer Renewal Rate = Actual Renewal Value ÷ Potential Renewal Value X 100. Renewal is about a consistent revenue basis. The rate at which your customers extend their relationship with you determines how fast and how far your enterprise can grow. As such, being able to accurately calculate your renewal rate gives you insight into your customer success team’s performance.
ProfitWell
MARCH 27, 2019
The continued support of their investors has underscored the market potential and has led the crew to expand their partner ecosystem and double their headcount across engineering, sales, and marketing. Hello, my pals.
Inside Intercom
APRIL 4, 2019
Despite the exponential growth they’ve gone through, Stripe have been refreshingly conservative about how quickly they grown the company from a headcount perspective. We are a very engineering-centric company, so 50% of headcount is always going to be on engineering.
OpenView Labs
MARCH 10, 2019
Over this time, our headcount has grown by over 10x, and our revenue has grown by over 60x. Successful customers are happy customers. Happy customers stick around and recommend your company to their friends.
Tom Tunguz
AUGUST 18, 2018
Imagine you work at a startup that is growing headcount 125% year over year. Startups are business machines engineered to grow quickly. The forces of hypergrowth exert enormous strain on every aspect of the company. Internal break all the time as the company moults into a new skin. This is one of the most important things to keep in mind when hiring.
Sales Hacker
MAY 17, 2019
Even without a clear understanding of her funnel, she can probably estimate the impact of a change in headcount accurately. Have you noticed the disconnect between how executives talk about Sales Development and how they treat Sales Development leaders?
OpenView Labs
MAY 20, 2019
In-product guides and email cadences are low cost ways of steering users towards activation without engineering work or new customer success headcount. SaaS is now ubiquitous. Salesforce, which turned 20 in March, surpassed $13 billion in annual revenue this year.
Sales Hacker
MAY 7, 2018
Or extra headcount? As a sales manager, your success is determined by the success of your reps. But, unfortunately, a lot of reps out there are barely hitting quota. In fact, the majority of today’s sales teams consist of average performers.
The Angel VC
DECEMBER 12, 2018
Like a large tanker at cruising speed that cannot quickly take a turn, a startup with a fast-growing headcount and a high burn rate loses some of its ability to quickly react to new information, new insights, or changes in the market. A couple of years ago I wrote a post titled “How fast is fast enough?”. The subtext of the question was “How fast do you have to grow if your ambition is to get to $100M in ARR and build a very large company”.
Inside Intercom
DECEMBER 21, 2018
But it’d be far more effective to share how Snapt uses Custom Bots to qualify and book meetings at scale, without additional headcount. In sales, the ability to connect with leads in real time can’t be understated.
OpenView Labs
JUNE 10, 2019
Nick Petri assesses how to find the right ratio of headcount between product management, UX and development. Special thanks to Miriam Richter, Adelina Irimia and Adina Mic for helping compile this guide.
Point Nine Land
DECEMBER 12, 2018
Like a large tanker at cruising speed that cannot quickly take a turn, a startup with a fast-growing headcount and a high burn rate loses some of its ability to quickly react to new information, new insights, or changes in the market.
Tom Tunguz
JUNE 6, 2016
When is the right time to increase sales headcount for a SaaS startup? It is one of the most strategic decisions for early-stage business to make given the amount of effort and expense involved in building, managing and scaling a sales team. While there is no single absolute sign, neither qualitative nor quantitative, these are some of the signals I have found indicate it might be a good time to scale sales. First, the pipeline to quota ratio exceeds 6X.
ChurnZero
APRIL 5, 2019
It can be challenging when there are salary and headcount constraints, but you need to prove that CS is a driver for corporate growth. This week , we hosted a RYG Leadership Hour in Atlanta.
Inside Intercom
MARCH 12, 2019
” In our case, a resounding “yes” required seeing a positive impact on customer expansion and one big enough to justify the fully-loaded cost for the additional headcount.
Practical Advice on SaaS marketing
OCTOBER 9, 2012
Cut sales and marketing headcount and scale back spending on customer acquisition programs. If you manage a software-as-a-service (SaaS) company, at some point you'll be forced to make a tough decision about your customer acquisition process: Feed it or starve it?
OpenView Labs
MAY 20, 2019
In-product guides and email cadences are low cost ways of steering users towards activation without engineering work or new customer success headcount. SaaS is now ubiquitous. Salesforce, which turned 20 in March, surpassed $13 billion in annual revenue this year.
The Angel VC
MARCH 22, 2012
If you have a SaaS startup with a higher-touch sales model where revenue growth is largely driven by sales headcount, the plan needs to be modified accordingly. [Update 03/23/16: I've created an improved version of the template - check it out! ] A few people who read my recent post about financial planning asked if I could provide an example for a good financial plan, so I'd like to post one here.
Inside Intercom
JUNE 4, 2018
While it’s true you may need to incrementally add capacity for this new channel, the impact we’ve seen on our conversion rates has more than paid for the additional headcount. The promise of live chat for sales teams is being able to connect faster with high-quality leads.
Tom Tunguz
DECEMBER 11, 2016
At this scale, the economics of sales training are plain to see: less headcount required to attain the same bookings run rate. Sales leaders consistently underinvest in sales team training and development. As SaaS startups scale, sales execution becomes the most tangible metric of a business’ success, and the one by which the business’ health is benchmarked. Not to mention how the head of sales is evaluated. When is the right time to invest in sales training?
Inside Intercom
APRIL 25, 2019
When I started, Pipedrive had a big growth plan as far as headcount, but they were a little bit looser on processes and cadences.
ChurnZero
MARCH 22, 2019
We had one of our portfolio companies with 60% of their headcount reporting up through CS, and that’s how they focused and was the culture of the business. Did you know: For every 1% increase in revenue retention, a SaaS company’s valuation increases by 12% after five years?
Close.io
JUNE 24, 2019
Accurate forecasting also helps you anticipate any changes in headcount or budget so your organization can adequately prepare. Things used to be a lot simpler. Marketing was responsible for building interest and generating leads and then sales would pick up the baton and close revenue.
Sales Hacker
JANUARY 29, 2018
Traditional Sales Organizations – Growth of headcount in sales was structured around revenue per individual contributor (IC). In this blueprint, we provide insights on how to structure your sales organization.
The Marketing & Growth Hacking Publication
APRIL 8, 2019
When you reduce the headcount to get the contract, you have to cut corners, force people to do the job of two, scrimp on culture, never find time to train, become a mediocre agency.
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