SaaStr

NOVEMBER 27, 2021

Is your CS team growing as fast as your sales team? If this is your first SaaS company, you may not have ever hired or built a Customer Success team. This one isn’t nearly as risky as a VP of Sales , or a VP of Marketing hire. You’ll make a good hire. So hire your first as soon as you can. >>

Sales Hiring 246

Sales Hiring Customer Success Scale Customer Lifetime Value 246

SaaStr

MARCH 20, 2024

They discuss Sam’s learnings at Founders Fund, what the 2024 playbook looks like, hiring and motivating sales teams, and a handful of audience questions. On the sales side, people hired way too much. More salespeople do not equal more sales. If that’s true, then you should absolutely hire more salespeople.

Sales Hiring 264

Sales Hiring Sales Recruiting Scale Headcount 264

SaaStr

JUNE 16, 2023

Dear SaaStr: How Many Sales Reps Do I Need? You can back into how many sales reps you’ll need in SaaS. Second, calculate a reasonable attainable quota for your closers, your Account Executives. And they will take at least some time to scale. Assume 1 sales manager for each 8 sales professionals.

Scale 260

Scale Sales Hiring Sales Headcount 260

SaaStr

OCTOBER 11, 2023

Eran Zimman, monday.com’s co-founder and co-CEO, shares his secrets to scaling and growth in an unpredictable market. Serve customers a CRM or project management first, and as they scale and use it more, they’re exposed to more features. They kept doing it after the economy changed, and they also scaled it. It’s cheap.

Scale 161

Scale Sales Hiring Scaling Banking 161

Sales Hacker

MAY 15, 2023

It’s hard to know when you’re ready to hire a sales team — and the consequences can make or break your startup. And that may include owning and executing the sales process , from initial outreach and lead generation to closing deals — not hiring a sales team right away.

Sales Hiring 86

Sales Hiring Scale Outsourcing Services Payment Services 86

SaaStr

MAY 12, 2021

And you have to hire ahead (of course). Second, calculate a reasonable attainable quota for your closers, your Account Executives. And they will take at least a tiny amount to scale. I know your first 3 reps are scaled and are crushing it, all hitting 100%. Assume 1 sales manager for each 8 sales professionals.

Scale 297

Scale Sales Hiring Headcount Sales 297

SaaStr

NOVEMBER 27, 2021

Is your CS team growing as fast as your sales team? If this is your first SaaS company, you may not have ever hired or built a Customer Success team. This one isn’t nearly as risky as a VP of Sales , or a VP of Marketing hire. You’ll make a good hire. So hire your first as soon as you can. >>

Sales Hiring 209

Sales Hiring Customer Success Scale Customer Lifetime Value 209

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

SaaStr

JANUARY 30, 2023

They focused on building a payment platform that empowers international talent and independent contractors to get paid on time in a compliant way while also ensuring that companies can hire international talent and make payments efficiently. Identifying a direction is just the starting point.

Sales Hiring 240

Sales Hiring Payment Services SaaS Payments Scale 240

SaaStr

JUNE 27, 2022

Dear SaaStr: How Many Sales Reps Do I Need? You can back into how many sales reps you’ll need in SaaS. Second, calculate a reasonable attainable quota for your closers, your Account Executives. And they will take at least some time to scale. Assume 1 sales manager for each 8 sales professionals.

Scale 223

Scale Sales Hiring Sales Headcount 223

SaaStr

JANUARY 21, 2022

You might feel confused about where to begin, how to scale up, which mistakes you should avoid, and things you should consider before expanding. Now, let’s look at ten learnings that Dorian gathered while scaling Grammarly from a Consumer to an Enterprise brand with B2B offerings. Enter your email below for the latest SaaStr updates.

Scale 219

Scale SMB Enterprise Sales Hiring 219

Sales Hacker

NOVEMBER 17, 2023

Three overarching learnings from incredible sales leaders who have lived through the ups and downs of growing sales teams at some of the fastest growing SaaS companies is exactly what we’ll dive into today – so you can get the learnings and insight without being in the driver’s seat. This week’s newsletter is sponsored by Flex.

Sales Hiring 105

Sales Hiring Scale Headcount Sales 105

SaaStr

JUNE 22, 2021

The other day I saw a VP of Sales flame out and resign with no notice from a SaaS company doing $10m ARR growing quickly. There were a lot of flags in this hire, but I remember one vividly. The VPM giving their all to create leads, opportunities, and more. What 3 factors/skills must every VP of sales possess?

Sales Recruiting 297

Sales Recruiting Scale Sales Hiring Revenue 297

Intercom, Inc.

OCTOBER 26, 2021

Getting the team right is one of the hardest parts of scaling sales. But no sales team can afford to grow without intention. While building a sales team, we’ve focused a lot on our sales culture. Here’s how we went about growing a sales team that is both world class and culture-additive.

Scale 160

Scale Sales Hiring Sales Recruiting Sales 160

SaaStr

JANUARY 12, 2024

We just wrote up how some of the biggest changes of SaaS are now coming, specifically in Customer Success and Sales. ” Prediction #3: CSM Hiring Doesn’t Bounce All The Way Back Things are bouncing back, in 2024, not all the way back, so efficiency still matters. They paused hiring for a year (rather than cut) and got profitable.

Sales Hiring 255

Sales Hiring Customer Success Scale AI 255

SaaStr

JULY 25, 2021

And they will take at least a tiny amount to scale. Your VPs and Directors of Sales and sales ops leaders and sales engineers are cost centers here. Assume 1 sales manager for each 8 sales professionals, and 1 head of sales development for each 10 SDRs. 2 Managers. = Fourth, add “load”.

Scale 285

Scale Sales Hiring Sales Headcount 285

SaaStr

SEPTEMBER 13, 2023

Same Sales Commissions for Upsells as Net New Deals Always interesting to see what folks do here. #8. Adding Back Sales Capacity Now. I.e., Hiring More Reps. Salesforce also just announced its accelerating hiring again. Keeping headcount flat got everyone to be more efficient.

Sales Hiring 247

Sales Hiring Scale Headcount Engineering 247

SaaStr

MARCH 5, 2021

Flock Safety’s Founder and CEO, Garrett Langley, and its VP of Growth, Alex Latraverse, know a bit about sales. Enough to go from 0 to 100 sales reps in about 18 months — and they’re looking to be well beyond 100 by the end of this month. Here are some things to remember when you think about scaling your next big SaaS company.

Sales Recruiting 177

Sales Recruiting Sales Hiring Scale Sales 177

SaaStr

MARCH 8, 2023

When the company started 20 years ago, it didn’t hire salespeople. So what should earlier-stage companies do: immediately build out a big sales team or focus on product-led growth? It wasn’t until 12 years in that they hired their first commission rep. Now they have sales reps, but still consider themselves PLG.

Sales Hiring 231

Sales Hiring Enterprise Headcount Scale 231

SaaStr

NOVEMBER 15, 2020

But to Go Big, almost everyone in SaaS at least eventually adds a sales team. But to scale it quickly added a very effective sales team : Yes, Atlassian for a long time had almost no “direct” sales team, well after the IPO. With, and through, a sales team. You don’t need 100% sales-driven revenue to Go Big.

Scale 334

Scale Sales Hiring Sales Headcount 334

SaaStr

JANUARY 4, 2023

A nice sweet spot for a mix of inside and outside sales. #3. High NRR leads to revenue growing faster than your new customer count. #7. A reminder scaling SaaS takes real capital. #9. Slowing headcount growth — like lots of others. And that’s up from 118% at IPO. #2. And a few other interesting learnings: #6.

Scale 288

Scale Headcount Sales Hiring SMB 288

SaaStr

OCTOBER 18, 2019

I still see most startups way behind on their 2020 planning, and most importantly, hiring, at this point in the year. With precise headcount and budget needs. Second, you have to try to hire as many of the sales reps you’ll need for the end of Q1 … by mid-Q4. Even in the best of cases, it takes 60 days to scale a rep.

Sales Hiring 186

Sales Hiring Scale Headcount Revenue 186

Sales Hacker

SEPTEMBER 30, 2020

Companies were growing their sales organizations and bringing in more revenue. The biggest obstacle to hiring was that there simply weren’t too many great candidates on the job market. Companies everywhere have frozen their hiring and laid off workers — with sales reps often among the first to go.

Sales Hiring 94

Sales Hiring Scale Sales Recruiting Sales 94

Intercom, Inc.

APRIL 20, 2021

Here are three ways to know if it’s time to invest in customer support operations (if you’re looking to scale, it probably is), and a few simple things your organization can do to get started. Every percentage point increase in ROAR means that we don’t need to hire an additional head. You’re not scaling as quickly as you’d like.

Scale 156

Scale Customer Support Scaling Headcount 156

SaaStr

MAY 24, 2023

Monday has held the line on hiring and costs, but kept up strong growth — the combination of which “flipped the switch” into a radically more efficient model. At least in the short term, it is turning most of us can do more with about the same headcount in SaaS. #4. Headcount Growing, But Slowly.

Headcount 296

Headcount Sales Hiring Scale Cloud 296

SaaStr

MAY 31, 2023

But it’s the $1M+ ones that are fueling the big numbers at this scale. Everyone is basically doing more with not much more headcount (see next point). #4. Growing Headcount, But Much More Slowly That Revenue. Headcount is up 29% year-over-year, but revenue is up 50%. Billion in ARR. They are growing 80%. #3.

Headcount 214

Headcount Scale Sales Hiring AWS 214

Sales Hacker

JULY 24, 2018

As sales leaders, most of us assume that many aspects of our sales machine will become inefficient during hypergrowth. As we think of ways to improve sales performance, a number of growth pains may come in the way: High acquisition costs. Decreased revenue per rep, High turnover as you scale headcount.

Scale 55

Scale Headcount Sales Hiring Scaling 55

SaaStr

OCTOBER 6, 2019

Even if leads are still a bit lumpy, outbound is still stretching itself … you at least learn how to close by this point. And often, if you are capital efficient, your marketing cost will be close to $0 at this point (you are barely spending anything to acquire most customers), and your sales costs are pretty predictable.

Sales Hiring 242

Sales Hiring Scale Sales Venture Capital 242

Intercom, Inc.

OCTOBER 24, 2018

How do you scale a support organization without breaking the budget or killing the quality of the customer experience? It’s an age old question for anyone leading a customer support organization, the sort of challenge that requires continuous innovation as a company and its customer base expands. Automation.

Scale 178

Scale Customer Support Scaling Strategy 178

OpenView Labs

FEBRUARY 10, 2020

From its bootstrapped founding in 2002 all the way to a $5 billion valuation in 2016, Atlassian famously had no sales people. ‘No No sales’ became nearly as synonymous with Atlassian as ‘no software’ was with Salesforce. Atlassian now has a sales team. Public PLG Businesses Are Doubling Down on Sales.

Sales Hiring 57

Sales Hiring Scale Headcount Sales 57

Intercom, Inc.

JULY 11, 2019

If you’re a leader, he says, don’t try to scale your job. Since 2010, he’s helped the company grow to more than 40,000 customers and helped scale the support team to more than 500 employees to assist those users. Here are five quick takeaways: Most sales and support teams talk about their jobs as a funnel. Short on time?

Scale 188

Scale Scaling Sales Hiring Underperforming Technical Team 188

Sales Hacker

APRIL 5, 2021

In 2020 I was building my sales team at Livestorm , and at the time we were going through a big hiring boom. For the first time in my life, I was in charge of vetting and hiring new team members at scale. This was a big challenge for me because I am very passionate about hiring without bias.

Sales Hiring 92

Sales Hiring Sales Recruiting Company Culture Interviewing 92

OpenView Labs

OCTOBER 2, 2019

This time every year, sales and sales operations teams work with their business partners in finance, marketing and other functions to set their annual sales plan for the coming year. One way to approach this complexity is to separate out the three key components of sales planning. Headcount Planning.

Headcount 41

Headcount Sales Hiring Scale Sales 41

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 173

Scale Sales Hiring Sales Recruiting Sales 173

Chart Mogul

OCTOBER 20, 2023

The founders of Dealroom and Databox , Yoram Wijngaarde and Peter Caputa (former VP sales, HubSpot), get together with Sara Archer from ChartMogul to discuss what lesson they have learned on the journey from $1M to $10M. At least you don’t have a scale disadvantage. Peter shares his experience with managing headcount.

Scale 52

Scale Scaling Headcount SaaS 52

SaaStr

NOVEMBER 1, 2022

We remain optimistic about the prospects of cross-border SaaS. Companies in our region are good at achieving PMF and scaling to $1 million-$5 million ARR efficiently. They are hiring leaders, building teams, and attracting advisors in the US while devouring the SV SaaS playbook. Org Building Ideas for Cross-Border Companies.

Scale 222

Scale Sales Hiring Cybersecurity Underperforming Technical Team 222

Intercom, Inc.

MARCH 12, 2019

A little over a year ago, I got the opportunity to start a new team within our sales organization – a team of Relationship Managers dedicated to growing our current customers at scale. The opportunity emerged out of a shift in how we practice sales. Starting a new sales team is not unlike doing improv.

Sales Hiring 171

Sales Hiring Sales Recruiting Underperforming Technical Team Scale 171