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Salesforce: Actually We’re Going to Hire 2,000 Sales Execs Now To … Sell AI

SaaStr

Salesforce, Nov 2024: We're hiring 1,000 new sales execs to sell AI! Well that must have gone well as Salesforce is now hiring 2,000 (!) in sales to sell AI. Per The Information , Benioff has also instructed his sales team to go all-in and put AI and Agentforce into every deal possible. Not really.

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The VP of AI Trap: Why Hiring One Exec Won’t Transform Your Company. In Fact, It May Make It Worse.

SaaStr

” I saw a term sheet the other day where a leading VC firm reserved $1m of the round … for hiring a “VP of AI” Leadership teams scrambling to post job descriptions for “Head of Artificial Intelligence.” Would you hire a “VP of Internet” in 2010? Think about it.

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A Founder’s Guide to Building and Scaling Marketing Channels: Lessons from Datadog’s CMO and First Marketing Hire

SaaStr

Alex Rosenblatt was the first marketing hire and Chief Marketing Officer at Datadog, all the way through IPO and beyond. The 10th marketing hire is the most critical inflection point for team scaling – This is where informal processes break down and requires a complete rethinking of how the team operates. The problem?

Scale 233
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Hiring Risks vs. Hiring Flags

SaaStr

During the Boom Times of late ’20-early ’22, we all often confused Taking Risks in hiring … with Just Plain Ignoring Flags. The best VPs of Sales I’ve hired were Directors of Sales before. That’s far better in my experience than hiring a random top tier university grad. Watch them fly.

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The 2026 Sales Team: 50% Humans, 50% AIs. All 1 Team.

SaaStr

So what does that mean for inside sales? A 50/50 Sales Team. At least for SMB and more routine mid-market sales. By 2026, these same AI systems will have evolved to manage entire sections of the sales process autonomously. An A+ AI will soon join every sales call, for real. You’ll Need to Manage Both.

Scale 237
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Why AI Has Taken Longer to Come to Sales Than Coding with Artisan’s CEO

SaaStr

Insights from Jasper Carmichael-Jack, CEO of Artisan at 2025 SaaStr AI Summit About Artisan: AI-powered sales platform building the end-to-end solution —from marketing personalization to AE automation across the entire revenue cycle. Sales is messier. CRM data accuracy sits at 47% across most sales orgs.

Scale 210
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How Windsurf / Codeium Built a Billion-Dollar AI Company and a Winning Sales Machine

SaaStr

5 Key Learnings from Scaling from 3 to 75 Go-To-Market Team Members in Less Than 12 Months The latest SaaStr CRO Confidential is out and Sam Blond did a great deep dive with Graham Mareno, VP of Worldwide Sales at Codeium. Create Compelling Economic Incentives For sales talent, compensation is critical.