SaaStr

OCTOBER 3, 2023

Interviewing? One bit of advice: Please, please, actually research the company you are interviewing at. The other day I did a similar final, fourth round interview for a VPM. I ended the interview (politely) after 10 minutes and told him to watch the video. Looking for your next role? Been through a lay off? For real.

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Interviewing Sales Hiring Sales Recruiting Consulting 236

SaaStr

FEBRUARY 19, 2024

and Lenny asked us to join his podcast to talk about building a sales team — from the perspective of a product-first founder or exec. It was a pretty strong conversation and we took a lot of our learnings over the years and focused on how to learn to do sales right if you come from a product-first background: It’s good.

Sales Hiring 256

Sales Hiring Scale Sales Headcount 256

Sales Hacker

OCTOBER 17, 2023

This week we have a special 2 guest episode, with the best hiring guru’s in the game, Chuck Brotman & David Teichner. Chuck is the co-founder of Blueprint Expansion , a GTM roles recruiting firm that has helped over 50 VC-backed companies make amazing Sales, Marketing, & Customer Success hires.

Sales Hiring 104

Sales Hiring Sales Recruiting Interviewing SMB 104

SaaStr

OCTOBER 7, 2020

As you scale up in SaaS, one thing I can almost guarantee is that you are going to hire some VPs who were either fired or quit their last role. So you’ll end up hiring VPs who went through a significant transition at their last gig, sometimes an involuntary one. They are good managers, and they know there is no upside here.

Sales Hiring 336

Sales Hiring Scale Interviewing Startup 336

SaaStr

SEPTEMBER 24, 2020

That when you make a mis-hire, you'll always look back and say you should have made a change 3-4 month earlier? When to hire them. How to interview them and qualify them. Some classics here: How My VP, Sales Doubled Our Sales in 90 Days. If Your VP Sales Isn’t Going to Work Out — You’ll Know in 30 Days.

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Sales Hiring Part-Time VPE Scale Underperforming Technical Team 223

SaaStr

JANUARY 5, 2024

In the latest episode of CRO Confidential, host Sam Blond, partner at Founders Fund and former CRO at Brex, sits down with Ashley Kelly, VP of Global Sales Development at Rippling. For context – Ashley had previously helped Sam scale Brex’s outbound sales from $2M to over $300M in ARR as Senior Director of SDR.

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Sales Hiring Sales Recruiting Scale Outbound Sales Team 259

SaaStr

JANUARY 26, 2021

There’s nothing wrong with hiring folks from the competition. Only hire them if you still would if they worked somewhere else. The time will come when you are first tempted to hire someone from your competitor. Hiring from your Competitor. Interview them, learn from them … but generally, stop there.

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Sales Hiring Interviewing Engineering SaaS 221

SaaStr

FEBRUARY 2, 2023

Product marketing can be difficult, and managing product launches and rollouts can be complex. Your sales rise to a very high level You may realize that your sales are reaching high levels, but at the same time, you may encounter a situation where there needs to be more structure or control in your sales process.

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Sales Hiring Product Marketing Scale Marketing 217

SaaStr

JANUARY 9, 2024

Perhaps the biggest change though is how many folks want to manage a team, versus do the work themselves. The 1000+ unicorns of Covid fueled this, with ample capital to hire, hire and hire. The other day I interviewed yet another other great AE who had recently become a Director of Sales. Constantly.

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Sales Hiring Interviewing Startup Customer Success 255

SaaStr

NOVEMBER 9, 2023

Dear SaaStr: What are some of the “ultimate sins” in marketing and sales and success in SaaS in the early stages? My list of some bad ones: Sales: Hiring any reps you wouldn’t buy from. Later, once you have a strong VP of Sales, it’s fine though. Your sales reps need to eat. Hiring just 1 rep.

Sales Hiring 244

Sales Hiring Scale Startup Marketing 244

SaaStr

MAY 24, 2024

Lemkin expresses concern about the changing work ethic and loyalty of sales and marketing professionals, observing a trend of multiple job-holding and lack of commitment. Lemkin acknowledges the challenge of meeting people’s high expectations and the existential nature of finding solutions to these hiring and motivation issues.

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Sales Hiring Outsourcing Services Technical Review Scale 195

Totango

OCTOBER 20, 2022

Hiring team members with the right customer success manager skills is critical for the effectiveness of your CS team and strategy. Here we’ve identified the 13 most essential qualities to consider when hiring a CS manager. What Is a Customer Success Manager (CSM)? What Makes a Good Customer Success Manager?

Sales Hiring 91

Sales Hiring Customer Success Sales Recruiting Technical Review 91

OpenView Labs

MARCH 8, 2021

B2B sales involves one business selling its product to another business. Those with experience in both B2B and B2C sales know that B2B is a lot tougher—the deals are bigger, there’s often more than one decision-maker, and the competition is intense. For all those reasons, hiring and management must be on point.

Sales Hiring 80

Sales Hiring Scale Sales Recruiting B2B 80

Sales Hacker

FEBRUARY 10, 2021

Whether you need to hire dozens of sales reps in the next few months or you’re a scrappy startup and need your first three sales hires, building a business will nearly always involve hiring for sales. Avoid bringing in an objective third-party interviewer. List out questions for each competency.

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Sales Hiring Sales Recruiting Interviewing Sales Enablement 139

User Pilot

AUGUST 21, 2023

In this ultimate list of product manager interview questions, we have tried to simplify the process of hiring great product managers. Product management encompasses the entire SaaS lifecycle from ideation to launch and everything that follows. What to look for in product managers? Communication skills.

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Interviewing Underperforming Technical Team Management Sales Hiring 98

Sales Hacker

JANUARY 22, 2020

If you think sales is a simple job, I have a few hundred professional connections who would like a word with you. There’s a range of key skills that separate the best from the rest, and success belongs to companies who can identify and hire reps who have those precious skills. By mastering your sales interview questions.

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Sales Hiring Interviewing Underperforming Technical Team Sales Recruiting 76

Sales Hacker

JUNE 10, 2021

It’s that sales representatives are one of the toughest positions to hire for. The demand for sales reps is one of the highest of any job. Sales courses are largely absent from college curricula. Most sales managers will tell you that they’re looking above all for the right attitude. Leadership.

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Sales Hiring Sales Recruiting Sales Interviewing 104

SaaStr

AUGUST 29, 2023

So there’s a situation I see happening with many (not most, but many) SaaS companies as they build out the first management team: They hire a VP of Sales that doesn’t think much of the VP of Marketing. Does this always fail, when sales and marketing don’t really talk, and aren’t a team?

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Sales Hiring Marketing Sales Interviewing 220

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. From paid ads to account executive productivity, inform any decision you can with data.

Sales Hiring 240

Sales Hiring Payment Services SaaS Payments Scale 240

Sales Hacker

FEBRUARY 20, 2023

Almost every week, Iceberg RevOps’ founder Taft Love gets messages from executives and CEOs at growth-stage companies asking for help with their first revenue operations hire. These leaders are looking for the right person to own the implementation and management of their company’s go-to-market tech stack. Teams need to scale, fast.

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Sales Hiring Underperforming Technical Team Scale Consulting 70

CustomerSuccessBox

APRIL 27, 2022

For that to happen, you must hire the best Customer Success Manager (CSM). Regardless of which you’d still want to consider a candidate with no prior experience in customer success and to hire them, you’d need to consider a few factors. Let’s figure out the best practices to hire a CSM! Plan their responsibility!

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Sales Hiring Customer Success Management Interviewing 52

Sales Hacker

NOVEMBER 3, 2023

Hiring was a common thread in conversations at both community dinners we hosted this week – one in San Francisco and the other in Austin (included a picture further along – great time as always!). It’s a strange hiring market out there especially at early-stage companies. Almost every company seems to be hiring.

Interviewing 87

Interviewing Sales Hiring Sales Recruiting Underperforming Technical Team 87

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. First impressions still count.

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Sales Hiring Sales Recruiting Company Culture Interviewing 92

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.

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Sales Hiring Sales Recruiting Scale Headcount 264

OpenView Labs

JANUARY 31, 2022

You are looking for tips on how to hire top talent, so now what? . Just a few bullet points with a basic overview of what the hire is responsible for can come easily. This is especially effective with hiring top talent for executive and leadership hires. . Make a clear plan for your interview process .

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Sales Hiring Interviewing Sales Recruiting SMB 60

OpenView Labs

OCTOBER 29, 2021

The second is product management, which is what brings the founder’s vision to life. Without the product management, you won’t be able to actualize that vision, because there’s no one to handle research, logistics, and all the other elements that go into successfully building and marketing a product. Who should you hire?

Sales Hiring 60

Sales Hiring Sales Recruiting Development Team Review Management 60

Tom Tunguz

AUGUST 30, 2017

Time to hire the first head of each department. Sales, marketing, customer success, engineering, product management. But rarely do they understand every one well enough to hire the right department chief. Great managers manage themselves out of a job. This is a common strategy for sales.

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Sales Hiring Scale Interviewing Engineering 160

Baremetrics

NOVEMBER 25, 2021

Your marketing and sales budgets, and the personnel assigned to those teams, will also rise. A hiring plan is the basis for growing your team and organizing your future payroll expenses. A hiring plan allocates expected future expenses based on your revenue forecasts. What is a hiring plan? Interview stakeholders 2.

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Sales Hiring Sales Recruiting Finance Forecasting 97

OPEXEngine

APRIL 12, 2022

The other day a founder asked me about interviewing because a candidate had described me as “a great interviewer,” and she wanted to know why. I find interviewing and recruiting difficult, have made plenty of mistakes over the years, and the consequences of those mistakes are invariably painful. And for that matter, so did I.).

Sales Recruiting 40

Sales Recruiting Sales Hiring Interviewing Finance 40

SaaStr

SEPTEMBER 13, 2020

And what I wish I’d done better as a SaaS CEO: Force yourself to interview 30 candidates for each VP position. You’ll have to, to get through 30 interviews. Second, you’ll force yourself to spend more time tracking and managing candidates. Hire external recruiters — and be very good to them. But plan on 30.

Sales Recruiting 363

Sales Recruiting Sales Hiring Interviewing Scale 363

SaaStr

NOVEMBER 25, 2023

Jameson Yung, SVP of Sales at Gong, and Sam Blond, Partner at Founders Fund and previous CRO at Brex, share five tactical ways to get back to growing and hitting revenue targets. Set and reinforce them early — as early as interviews. Create/ track a leaderboard so i f someone is below average in sales, it’s objective.

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Sales Hiring Underperforming Technical Team Revenue Sales 207

OpenView Labs

AUGUST 19, 2021

Sales recruiting is broken. The sad truth is that VP of Sales are turning over within 19 months —and that timeline is shrinking. . Not only that, the market has heated way back up and the VP of Sales is one of the most sought after roles. What is the hardest executive hire you’ve made? Therein lies the dilemma.

Sales Hiring 82

Sales Hiring Sales Recruiting Scale Startup 82

Tom Tunguz

NOVEMBER 16, 2015

As he told me a few days ago, he has observed the lack of sales management and sales execution skills as one of the most consistent deficiencies limiting the potential of early stage SaaS companies. Sales execution deficiency manifests itself at roughly the same time as product market fit.

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Sales Hiring Sales Recruiting Startup Compensation 183

Kellblog

FEBRUARY 16, 2022

The other day a founder asked me about interviewing because a candidate had described me as “a great interviewer,” and she wanted to know why. I find interviewing and recruiting difficult, have made plenty of mistakes over the years, and the consequences of those mistakes are invariably painful.

Sales Recruiting 109

Sales Recruiting Interviewing Sales Hiring Finance 109

SaaStr

DECEMBER 16, 2020

We’ve talked a lot on SaaStr about how to make that critical hire: the VP Sales. But when you make a mis-hire, it’s about the worst mis-hire you can make. You’ll end up with a crummy sales team under a mis-hire. We’ve posted a script to use when interviewing a VP Sales.

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Sales Recruiting Sales Hiring Sales Engineering 313

CustomerSuccessBox

AUGUST 9, 2021

Finding the right Customer Success Manager is extremely important for every SaaS company today. The customer success manager is much more than the traditional account manager. 6 Attributes to Look for When Hiring New Customer Success Manager. Bonus tip: The guide to customer success manager.

Sales Hiring 59

Sales Hiring Customer Success Management Interviewing 59

Sales Hacker

JUNE 7, 2022

Jump on LinkedIn or any social channel and you will no doubt see the following when it comes to hiring: It’s tough to source and engage the ‘right’ candidates in this talent market. It’s more competitive and expensive to hire great talent and keep them around. Grown their sales teams by 80% – 400%. Get the team involved.

Sales Hiring 73

Sales Hiring Revenue Marketing Interviewing 73