SaaStr

JUNE 7, 2021

I was a software developer, a product person. That’s what really matters, so iterative decisions every day about what product to make, when to cave into a customer, when not to, who to hire. ” I have apples for sale. You have to have enough to hire people to dedicate on it. That’s the real story there.

Sales Hiring 333

Sales Hiring Underperforming Technical Team SaaS Headcount 333

Intercom, Inc.

NOVEMBER 14, 2018

There are many parts to a high-performing sales organization – the right people, processes and strategy, to start. That’s not to say there’s no art to practicing sales. Much of what defines our most outstanding sales reps is their ability to deeply understand our prospects’ and customers’ business needs and speak directly to them.

Sales Hiring 188

Sales Hiring Metrics Revenue Sales 188

Sales Hacker

NOVEMBER 27, 2019

Sales leaders have a bad habit of dumping people into a new job without properly preparing them to succeed. When I landed my first “big girl job” 20 years ago as an Inside Sales Manager , I was underqualified, overambitious, and soon underwater. What’s So Important About Sales Onboarding? So tune in….

Sales Hiring 74

Sales Hiring Onboarding Sales Recruiting Outsourcing Services 74

The Angel VC

MARCH 23, 2016

The original v1 model was a very simple plan for early-stage SaaS startups with a low-touch sales model. 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. You can remove, change or add roles in column H.

SaaS Payments 217

SaaS Payments Headcount SaaS Payment Methods 217

SaaSX

FEBRUARY 5, 2020

Here’s a super basic overview of the key P&L areas we typically use: Revenue Cost of Goods Sold (COGS) Sales & Marketing Expenses (S&M) Research & Development Expenses (R&D) General & Administrative Expenses (G&A). This INCLUDES headcount-related expenses. Setting Your Budget Equal to Your Sales Plan.

Finance 118

Finance Sales Hiring Headcount Scale 118

ChurnZero

JANUARY 25, 2024

Skillset 1: Sales acumen In 2024, driving revenue is a primary responsibility of CS. This means that sales acumen is no longer just a bonus for CS professionals—it’s a new baseline for many companies. Customer success manager roles The CSM role is becoming more strategic, with increased responsibility for driving revenue.

Customer Success 52

Customer Success Sales Recruiting Sales Hiring Scale 52

Sales Hacker

MAY 26, 2021

There are many moving parts in a successful sales organization. If you know that you love strategizing to increase sales but don’t want to be an account executive, sales operations may be the right place for you. What is Sales Operations? Why do we need Sales Operations? Average sales cycle duration.

Scale 60

Scale Sales Hiring Sales Outsourced Development 60

ChurnZero

NOVEMBER 29, 2022

At the time, I was a sales engineer, and my job was to close deals and move on to the next prospect. However, I found there were two flaws in our customer management process. First, it felt like I was abandoning my customers and punting them over to our professional services team once they signed a contract.

Customer Success 98

Customer Success Sales Recruiting Technical Review Compensation 98

Sales Hacker

SEPTEMBER 2, 2023

Pipeline analytics: Offers sales managers a view of their teams’ pipelines that goes beyond what’s available in their native SFA applications. Here’s what we use: CRM (SFDC), Sales Acceleration (SalesLoft), Forecasting (SalesLoft), Conversation Intelligence (Gong), Data (custom in-house), Automation (Momentum).

AI 82

AI Revenue Scale ChatGPT 82

Intercom, Inc.

MAY 13, 2021

Although Linda started her career in sales, she has spent the past twelve years scaling post-sales teams and moving hyper-growth companies like Zendesk, Slack, and now Gong upmarket into the enterprise realm. Your first SaaS customer success hire. Since then, you’ve spent over 12 years in post-sales leadership.

Scale 177

Scale Customer Success Strategy Sales Hiring 177

OPEXEngine

NOVEMBER 23, 2020

Sales & Marketing Expenses (S&M). Research & Development Expenses (R&D). This INCLUDES headcount-related expenses. If you are utilizing Gusto or a similar payroll tool, your headcount expenses are likely coming into your P&L as one (or maybe two) line item(s). Cost of Goods Sold (COGS).

Finance 52

Finance Sales Hiring Headcount Scale 52

ChurnZero

DECEMBER 28, 2021

But occasionally, your busy days get interrupted by an email from a customer who wants to cancel their contract. Talk with any Customer Success leader or hiring manager today, and they’ll tell you that the demand for experienced Customer Success professionals is off the charts. How much ARR or customers should a CSM manage?”.

Sales Hiring 52

Sales Hiring Headcount Customer Success Outsourced Development 52

SaaStr

DECEMBER 16, 2022

Sam Blond, Partner at Founders Fund, joined Matt Plank, VP of Sales at Rippling, to unlock the secrets to exponential revenue growth. Instead, they focused on how it’s the one that takes away busy work beyond payroll by helping with new hires’ IT requirements, saving founders significant time. Scaling your go-to-market efforts.

Outsourcing Services 215

Outsourcing Services Scale Sales Hiring Outsourced Development 215

SmartKarrot

AUGUST 25, 2022

Provide coaching and training to empower the continued career development of your team. Partner with Sales, Account Management, and AI Services to ensure clients are set up for success in the short and long term. Managing the full 360 delivery of contracts and ongoing client support and development.

Customer Success 19

Customer Success Sales Hiring Outsourced Development Headcount 19

Intercom, Inc.

APRIL 4, 2019

The fastest growing software companies in recent years all have something in common – they started with little to no sales team. But even for companies with this early viral growth, there comes a point in time when this organic growth needs to be supplemented with formal sales. Yes, Slack started off with no sales team.

Scale 162

Scale Sales Hiring Underperforming Technical Team Payment Services 162

Intercom, Inc.

JUNE 3, 2021

In terms of research and development or generally the product and engineering functions, the people who produce your software, this really is a question of investability. To start at the zoomed-out level, the different levers that you can have, any business can have, start with, of course, hiring more people and building more teams.

Strategy 228

Strategy Software Review Development Team Review Sales Recruiting 228

SaaStr

FEBRUARY 28, 2020

As for Karl, prior to founding the company he spent 6 years at Google in some fascinating roles including Head of Patents, Head of Business Development in China and running Google’s energy investments. How does one know when we need to hire generalists vs specialists? How does Karl structure the hiring process today? What works?

Sales Hiring 217

Sales Hiring Scale CTO Hire CTO Coach 217

SaaStr

MARCH 17, 2020

How to create boundaries and norms with the sales team, how to find customer advocates, how to build and scale your program, as well as the difference between incentivized vs. reward program. Customer reference program went from something that was nice to have and important to absolutely critical to our new business sales cycle.

Scale 143

Scale Payment Services Sales Hiring Payment Methods 143

SaaStr

JUNE 16, 2020

Leveraging survey data from 66+ enterprise SaaS companies, Matt Garratt, Managing Partner of Salesforce Ventures shares the landscape of how businesses are shifting their sales & GTM strategies to react to today’s uncertain times. Adnan Chaudhry | SVP of Sales @ Salesforce.

Sales Hiring 160

Sales Hiring Scale SaaS Payments Payment Services 160

SaaSOptics

MAY 2, 2022

The two most common go-to-market strategies are sales-led growth (SLG) and, more recently, product-led growth (PLG). . In a sales-led model, sales processes and teams are the primary drivers of revenue growth. All of this was made possible by deploying both product- and sales-led growth tactics (AKA a “hybrid model”).

Scale 97

Scale Sales Hiring Underperforming Technical Team Sales 97

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. First, discover the profile of a successful account executive at the company.

Scale 100

Scale Sales Hiring Scaling Startup 100

Kellblog

JUNE 4, 2023

In that (quite popular) post, I shared Mark’s top ten list of mistakes that enterprise software startups make in sales and go-to-market. Compound this general lack of attention with reductions in headcount and tough economic times, and partners can devolve from an afterthought to a never-thought.

Sales Recruiting 108

Sales Recruiting Compensation SaaS Sales Hiring 108

ChurnZero

JUNE 3, 2022

For starters, the CS role has earned its rightful spot as one of a startup’s first ten hires. There are more CS job postings than there are qualified candidates to fill them (see point above)—a hiring trend predating the great resignation, which has only intensified demand. And all signs point to continued growth.

Customer Success 52

Customer Success Sales Hiring B2B Technical Review 52

ChurnZero

JUNE 3, 2022

For starters, the CS role has earned its rightful spot as one of a startup’s first ten hires. There are more CS job postings than there are qualified candidates to fill them (see point above)—a hiring trend predating the great resignation, which has only intensified demand. And all signs point to continued growth.

Customer Success 52

Customer Success Sales Hiring B2B Technical Review 52

Intercom, Inc.

FEBRUARY 1, 2018

I recently hosted Rachel on our podcast to learn why Slack needed to invest in growth marketing, what her team prioritized first, how they’ve partnered with Slack’s rapidly scaling sales team, and more. I stumbled upon Eric Ries and Steve Blank, the concept of customer development – it was a revelation. We got sales leads.

Growth Marketing 174

Growth Marketing Scale Marketing Outsourcing Services 174

Chart Mogul

DECEMBER 22, 2021

Google Play — added a new one-click import functionality (vs previous integration that required development work). Linked subscriptions — introduced linked subscriptions i.e. changes to a single customer’s subscriptions in quick succession are classified as expansion or contraction activity, instead of a churn and reactivation.

Software Review 52

Software Review Systems Review Payment Features PayPal 52

Point Nine Land

APRIL 21, 2021

There are many posts out there explaining how startup co-founders should “land the first sales, then hire the first 2 sales and when to hire a VP sales”. But, in my experience, there’s very little written about what is the equivalent for Product Management. Please report back on those, I also want to learn!

Sales Hiring 52

Sales Hiring Startup Scale Software Review 52

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. The key decision-maker is part of the sales process. You can clearly see what the return will be from every dollar, euro or pound invested.

SaaS Payments 131

SaaS Payments Sales Hiring Payment Services Business 131