SaaStr

JANUARY 30, 2023

Without headcount planning for the support team, the company’s response time and customer satisfaction scores dipped. Forecasting can help define revenue numbers, the support you need to provide, headcounts, and opportunities to tap into new businesses. Lessons in leadership Grow your organization thoughtfully.

Sales Hiring 230

Sales Hiring Payment Services SaaS Payments Scale 230

ChurnZero

JANUARY 8, 2024

At most SaaS companies, the line item for customer success budgets is dedicated to headcount. This is why on our annual survey of customer success leaders , we ask about “non-headcount budgets.” This non-headcount approach is a technique for understanding how SaaS companies are investing in the needs of their customer success teams.

Customer Success 52

Customer Success Headcount Benchmarks Leadership 52

ChurnZero

MAY 17, 2022

WASHINGTON , May 17, 2022 — ChurnZero , a leading Customer Success platform, has earned multiple accolades from business and SaaS industry groups for its product innovation and industry leadership. The company plans on doubling its headcount in 2022. ChurnZero has quickly become one of Washington, D.C.’s

Marketplace as a Service 98

Marketplace as a Service Technical Review Headcount Software Review 98

Intercom, Inc.

JUNE 1, 2021

Download your copy of the thought leadership paper now. Over the past year, many support teams have struggled with budget cuts, reduced headcount, and less bandwidth – while the volume and complexity of customer queries has only risen. So how can you manage a larger volume of queries without needing to add headcount?

Underperforming Technical Team 232

Underperforming Technical Team Technical Review Scale Headcount 232

Intercom, Inc.

APRIL 20, 2021

“These are the kinds of things that help our support org to function more smoothly and impactfully so we can support our customers at scale, without needing to increase budget or headcount”. Starting to build out a support operations function doesn’t necessarily mean adding headcount straight away. Baby steps, for sure.”.

Scale 156

Scale Customer Support Scaling Headcount 156

ChurnZero

NOVEMBER 18, 2022

According to our 2022 Customer Success Leadership Study, CS teams are already underfunded and under-resourced. This is something that I’m doing with fractional headcount allocation. The pilot programs aren’t meant to be these big bells and whistles, not even after you launch an official full-time headcount on something.

Customer Success 98

Customer Success Sales Hiring Headcount Scale 98

Sales Hacker

DECEMBER 9, 2022

Approaches vary from top-down (leadership pushes goals all the way to sellers) and bottom-up (sellers and managers determine realistic goals and commitments and roll them up). Sales leadership needs to understand capacity at the aggregate level to better assess revenue projections and headcount decisions.

Scale 97

Scale Headcount Sales Forecasting 97

OPEXEngine

DECEMBER 13, 2022

Most SaaS executives can relate to a friendly debate they’ve had at a board or leadership team meeting about what percentage of revenue should come from “upsells” to existing customers or what is “healthy churn.” Companies with an equivalent commercial operation- sales headcount, marketing spend, and customer acquisition cost (CAC).

Benchmarks 52

Benchmarks Scale Headcount Software Review 52

Intercom, Inc.

JULY 28, 2022

Sanj started working at Salesforce back in 2005, when the company had around 1,000 employees and a few hundred million in revenue, and he was a part of its growth for 14 years, holding several leadership positions in multiple markets in EMEA. They promote a flat culture or a flat leadership and organizational design.

Scale 210

Scale Scaling Sales Hiring Sales Recruiting 210

OPEXEngine

OCTOBER 4, 2022

During times of uncertainty, executive leadership teams make more conservative financial decisions in order to prepare for and/or prevent any major difficulties for the companies that they lead. Do you need to make tough decisions about team headcount? But it’s the closest thing to an operating plan for the current leadership vision.

Engineering 52

Engineering Sales Hiring Technical Review Headcount 52

ChurnZero

NOVEMBER 29, 2022

When I ventured out to build my first Customer Success department at a tech software company, my leadership team thought I was nuts. Selling leadership on the concept of Customer Success. Like many early-stage Customer Success teams, I was working with limited resources and did not have any headcount to hire new talent.

Customer Success 98

Customer Success Sales Recruiting Technical Review Compensation 98

Sales Hacker

JULY 31, 2023

Then, select the following filters to see any accounts in your Book of Business / Account list that received funding in the past year: The “Senior Leadership Changes” filter Big changes in senior leadership can indicate a company is taking a new direction and embarking on new initiatives — including reviewing their tech stack!

Scale 52

Scale Sales Hiring Sales Headcount 52

SaaStr

JANUARY 2, 2021

Your sales headcount. If 20% of your revenue is Smaller customers, 50% Medium, and 30% Large (a not uncommon scenario), align your energy and efforts proportionately. Align your marketing budgets. Your product / dev budgets. Don’t chase “whales” and big deals IF that’s not your core. It’s just going to distract everyone now.

Sales Hiring 291

Sales Hiring Headcount Pricing Market Segmentation 291

Intercom, Inc.

OCTOBER 26, 2021

Whether you’re bringing on your tenth or hundredth salesperson, you need to discuss the “must-haves” with your leadership team. Step 1: Create a scalable hiring profile that reflects your company’s values. Start with your non-negotiables. Your non-negotiables are your core values and ways of working.

Scale 160

Scale Sales Hiring Sales Recruiting Sales 160

ChurnZero

MAY 17, 2022

WASHINGTON , May 17, 2022 — ChurnZero , a leading Customer Success platform, has earned multiple accolades from business and SaaS industry groups for its product innovation and industry leadership. The company plans on doubling its headcount in 2022. ChurnZero has quickly become one of Washington, D.C.’s

Marketplace as a Service 52

Marketplace as a Service Technical Review Headcount Software Review 52

BetterCloud

JUNE 22, 2023

For example, during the roaring 2021/2022 IT investment boom, IT has more latitude to invest without the strong involvement of finance leadership. Especially financial leadership. To help you make a winning business case to finance executive leadership, we created a comprehensive playbook on how to build a business case.

Business 52

Business Operational efficiency. Finance Technical Review 52

SaaStr

JANUARY 21, 2022

Build the baseline by checking leadership assumptions. But as you expand and start productizing everything in your journey, it’s easy to get under the assumption that more headcount equals better performance. Enter your email below for the latest SaaStr updates.

Scale 209

Scale SMB Enterprise Scaling 209

Sales Hacker

MARCH 1, 2024

This might look like: Community events Campaigns and activations Newsletters Podcasts Thought leadership and other blog content Establish your brand as a valuable, trusted resource that aligns with your product, and encourages your community to follow along by subscribing directly to your content channels.

VP of Engineering 71

VP of Engineering Scale SaaS AI Search 71

ChurnZero

JANUARY 25, 2024

We don’t see that changing in 2024, even as headcount starts to normalize. Customer operations roles According to the 2023 Customer Success Leadership Study, 61% of CS teams now have a dedicated CS operations role. How are customer success leadership roles and skillsets evolving in 2024?

Customer Success 52

Customer Success Sales Recruiting Sales Hiring Scale 52

Kellblog

NOVEMBER 2, 2021

Nathan Latka is remarkably effective at getting spokespeople to spill revenue information) and I’d make a separate sheet that uses headcount from LinkedIn as a proxy for ARR, using the method in this great post by SaaStr’s Jason Lemkin. Startup markets are not won by the timid.

Benchmarks 121

Benchmarks Scale Headcount Startup 121

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.

Customer Success 100

Customer Success Startup Headcount Compensation 100

Andreessen Horowitz

FEBRUARY 13, 2024

Here, we’re sharing an actionable guide for biotech leadership teams as they start the process of building or renovating their own data room. VDRs don’t just support external financing campaigns, but can also serve as valuable tools for pharma-facing business development deals in growing biotech companies.

Development Team Review 118

Development Team Review Technical Review Finance Systems Review 118

Totango

JUNE 28, 2022

With this SuccessBLOC, you are able to easily identify customers who may be at risk due to issues like low product adoption, poor financial standing or leadership changes. Be Proactive About Customer Health . Customer health is a critical component of your overall customer success program – especially during periods of market uncertainty.

Scale 73

Scale Headcount Systems Review Communication 73

SaaStr

MARCH 7, 2023

Many of them said headcount management and spend were common levers they pulled, given the immediate and significant impact they have on spend. What are companies doing today to scale efficiently? 80% of companies are slowing hiring.

Outsourcing Services 161

Outsourcing Services Scaling Venture Capital Forecasting 161

CustomerSuccessBox

DECEMBER 3, 2021

You may find yourself protecting your headcount, rooting for investments you want in tech, and giving suggestions for new product features. Customer Success Manager headcount and performance. Also, the CFO might be worried about the ‘increase in headcount’ investment. Having that conversation can be expected to be a tough one.

Customer Success 52

Customer Success Data Technical Review Headcount 52

ChurnZero

JANUARY 4, 2024

On the other hand, economic headwinds continue to constrain CS budgets and headcounts. “2024 will continue to see the chief customer officer move into the leadership phase,” predicts ChurnZero CEO and co-founder You Mon Tsang. Browse these insightful guides on customer success leadership, strategy and best practices.

Customer Success 52

Customer Success Trends Sales Hiring Artificial Intelligence 52

SaaStr

AUGUST 13, 2021

You need a baked financial model, that includes sales and marketing costs, scaling over time, headcount, and comparison to comps, and when you’ll need the next round(s). This is more important in SaaS than consumer internet, by that I mean, it’s more important you have the details right-ish here. Both bottoms up and tops down.

Scale 278

Scale Sales Hiring Venture Capital Headcount 278

Chart Mogul

MAY 7, 2020

If your new hire represents added headcount to your sales team, you may need to reconfigure your sales territories or lead assignment protocols. In this case, a mentor from marketing, leadership, or product may be more appropriate. Adding their name to your CRM or marketing automation program’s round-robin lead assignment mechanism.

Sales Hiring 121

Sales Hiring Underperforming Technical Team Marketplace as a Service Headcount 121

Kellblog

NOVEMBER 2, 2023

A mindless policy that basically says the C-suite can’t be bothered with headcount resource allocation and will effectively leave it to chance. No backfill policy. And create perverse incentives to not terminate weak employees in the process. Little or no travel budget.

VP of Engineering 107

VP of Engineering Travel Underperforming Technical Team Headcount 107

SaaStr

OCTOBER 17, 2023

Headcount maybe goes from 2 or 4 to 10. The First Triple The first triple is one of John’s favorite stages of growth — going from $2M to $6M. Chances are: You’ve hired your first Head of Sales, and you’re probably about to see a lot of growth on the sales side.

Scale 161

Scale Sales Hiring Customer Success Scaling 161

Valuize Consulting

MAY 4, 2022

While the benefits of a Scale strategy may be immediately clear to your CS organization, it’s another matter entirely to convey the importance and urgency of this strategy to Senior Leadership and obtain their enthusiastic support. Identify Your North Star Metric. Evaluate Your Current Coverage Model. Complete A CSM Attribution Analysis.

Scale 52

Scale Customer Success Scaling Strategy 52

OpenView Labs

JULY 1, 2020

Do we have the right leadership? Related: Leadership Advice in Times of Crisis—from Highspot’s Oliver Sharp and Robert Wahbe. During Phase II, IT leaders will face the dual dilemma of sustaining maximum levels of staff productivity and maintaining the quality of their teams’ work products.

Underperforming Technical Team 86

Underperforming Technical Team Headcount Compensation Leadership 86

SaaStr

OCTOBER 11, 2023

For about four quarters, monday kept headcount flat and went from negative to epic cash flow. Their investors told them they needed a sales team, but they were patient. Hiring one was definitely a game-changer. monday finished Q2 with a 63% year-over-year increase! Are Sales Teams Too Lean?

Scale 161

Scale Sales Hiring Scaling Banking 161

Intercom, Inc.

MAY 13, 2021

Since then, you’ve spent over 12 years in post-sales leadership. Also, skill-wise, I think one thing you really learn when you are in a sales leadership position in pre-sales is driving urgency. I’ve carried that into my post-sales leadership, where it’s always top of mind for me. Moving upmarket.

Scale 177

Scale Customer Success Strategy Sales Hiring 177

CustomerSuccessBox

DECEMBER 14, 2021

Viewing CS as a cost center and cutting costs by cutting headcount will definitely backfire. A responsible leadership should acknowledge the ability of CS to drive revenue and business value. This is undoubtedly the best approach to drive retention.

Customer Success 52

Customer Success Customer Lifetime Value Headcount Retention 52

BetterCloud

OCTOBER 14, 2020

Tell me a little bit about yourself, your leadership journey, and how you got into your current role. In terms of leadership, I’ve learned a lot from all the bad managers I’ve ever had. That includes things like headcount, improving our tools, and rethinking how we handle unique situations.

Systems Review 98

Systems Review Headcount Leadership Travel 98

Sales Enablement, SaaS and Growth

MARCH 23, 2020

Customer > Team > Individual During my time at HubSpot, the leadership team shared this mental model to help with decision-making. The Horizons Framework is an effective way to categorise projects, which in turn helps with assigning budget, headcount and timelines. Source: McKinsey 17. This is always wrong.

Underperforming Technical Team 213

Underperforming Technical Team Scale Sales Hiring Marketplace as a Service 213