SaaStr

AUGUST 26, 2020

Founder-led sales generally stops scaling around $1m-$2m ARR. A sign to hire a real sales leader. Over the years at SaaStr we’ve talked a lot about hiring a great VP of Sales, when it works, when it does, and how it moves the needle. To stick with founder-led sales longer than most folks do, i.e. past $1.5m-$2m ARR or so.

Sales Hiring 278

Sales Hiring Sales Recruiting Scale Sales 278

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. The three things that led to ramping up sales at Flock Safety were: Achieving product-market fit.

Sales Recruiting 170

Sales Recruiting Sales Hiring Scale Sales 170

SaaStr

OCTOBER 30, 2021

I asked Aasif Osmany to share his learnings as a top-performing SMB VP of Sales, below. I sent cold emails and LinkedIn messages and ended up with nine interviews. From those nine interviews, I received four offers. Going into the interviews, I knew what I wanted out of a job– that part was simple.

Scale 254

Scale Sales Hiring Sales SMB 254

Point Nine Land

OCTOBER 23, 2023

P9 Panel on Hiring Sales Leaders — Founders Summit 2023 “You are going to fire your first sales manager!” — A lesson too many founders learn the hard way. The Founder isn’t willing to be the first salesperson Many of the best founders we work with don’t have a sales background and are either product or engineering focused.

Sales Hiring 125

Sales Hiring Scale Technical Advisors Technical Cofounder 125

SaaStr

JANUARY 30, 2023

Deel overcame these challenges by taking care of these four things: Finding a product focus When Deel got accepted by Y Combinator in 2019, everyone loved the idea but hated the product. Deel scaled the sales team from two to 250 account executives, but issues with productivity and enablement of the account executives cropped up.

Sales Hiring 219

Sales Hiring Payment Services SaaS Payments Scale 219

SaaStr

MARCH 28, 2021

But here’s my list of things I don’t think you should do, almost always, in SaaS/B2B: Committing for less than 24 months to get to product-market fit. You’ll run out of money, time, commitment and more, if all the founders don’t commit to 24 months to get to product-market fit. Don’t Forget the 20 Interview Rule.

Sales Hiring 280

Sales Hiring Interviewing B2B Product Marketing 280

Chart Mogul

MAY 18, 2021

Here’s the episode: Related posts: How do you know when you’ve reached Product-Market Fit? How to Run Sales in the Era of Product-Led Growth. But now evaluating and adopting new technology is less intimidating to industries that have traditionally – for one reason or another – not been cloud first.

Product Marketing 59

Product Marketing Marketing Interviewing Cloud 59

SaaStr

AUGUST 17, 2022

Founder of Marketo, Phil Hernandez, and Marketo’s former EVP of Sales, Bill Binch, have had decades of experience tackling precisely these issues. Centering your work on customer experience helps train the whole organization in the process and hones your product-market fit. Optimizing to get your buyer to the demo.

Sales Hiring 187

Sales Hiring Sales SaaS B2C 187

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

Tom Tunguz

OCTOBER 7, 2015

While the ultimate use of the data might differ, the actual investigations and interviews are remarkably alike. During a typical diligence process, we will interview customers and might ask them questions like these: How did you hear about the product? What process did you use to pick this product over the competition?

Product Marketing 128

Product Marketing Development Team Review Software Review Startup 128

SaaStr

DECEMBER 14, 2023

With the marketing team, there are a lot of the classic functions — brand marketing, product marketing, and partner marketing. It was interesting because they got to interview a bunch of customers and sales executives. So using AI to create all of those derivations of it was a great use for it.

Cloud 229

Cloud Scale AWS AI 229

OpenView Labs

AUGUST 3, 2020

Editor’s note: This article is part four of a four-part series that covers the most crucial product marketing activities for an early-stage startup. As a new sales team starts going through training, we often hear them ask, “Where are our leads?!” And all heads typically turn toward a marketing leader or marketing team.

Product Marketing 71

Product Marketing Startup Scale Marketing 71

SaaStr

MAY 6, 2021

A CRO owns and directs the strategy over a company’s revenue cycle, but there’s not a set standard for operational or management decisions: in addition to sales and sales development, they might be responsible for customer success, lead generation and pipelines, and even marketing and brand development. Is a CRO right for you?

Sales Hiring 228

Sales Hiring Sales Recruiting Interviewing Revenue 228

ProfitWell

MAY 21, 2019

Ari Wells is the VP of Product Marketing at cloud service mogul Akamai. He joined us on stage at Recur 2018 to talk about how their team takes a product from concept to launch. You hear about product market fit a lot these days, and with good reason. What is Product Market Fit?

Product Marketing 70

Product Marketing Marketing Development Team Review Technical Review 70

SaaStr

JANUARY 24, 2024

Sales reps were hosting 4-6 calls daily but most of these calls were early demos or top-of-funnel discovery calls Sales was closing really small deals on one end while talking to really large companies with hundreds of thousands of people on the other. Define your ICP as early as you can and segment your sales team accordingly.

Scale 217

Scale Sales Hiring Scaling Revenue 217

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 they don’t, they never will , and they’ll never learn the product.

Sales Hiring 245

Sales Hiring Sales Recruiting Scale Headcount 245

SaaStr

SEPTEMBER 11, 2020

The engagement may last a few months and involve extensive interviews and online research (yes, lots of Googling!) . Let’s face it, if a sales rep is going after an account and does not know the true competitive situation, then a deal could easily be lost. . But there are some obvious drawbacks.

AI 263

AI Consulting Interviewing Innovation 263

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.

Sales Hiring 184

Sales Hiring Sales Recruiting Startup Compensation 184

OpenView Labs

DECEMBER 10, 2019

Editor’s Note: This article is Part Two of a four-part series that covers the most crucial product marketing activities for an early-stage startup. Our product is ready! This post is part of a series that covers the core Product Marketing work needed in the four critical phases of an early-stage startup.

Acquisition 53

Acquisition Product Marketing Scale Marketing 53

User Pilot

MAY 30, 2023

Every successful product marketer has at some point wondered how to create a persona. Good user personas are critical to any successful product marketing campaign. User interviews Website analytics Product analytics , and more. For example, someone purchasing a lead management product may be in sales.

Social Media 98

Social Media Interviewing Underperforming Technical Team Product Marketing 98

Andreessen Horowitz

APRIL 23, 2024

They also talked about the difficulties — and potential advantages — of selling into small businesses, taking alternative approaches to interviewing candidates, and the importance of keeping culture a vital part of a company as it scales. For example, we have a product interview where we ask them a hypothetical question.

Payments 105

Payments Forecasting Payment Services Payment Solutions 105

User Pilot

APRIL 25, 2024

Effective market research combines both qualitative methods, which explore consumer motivations, and quantitative methods, which provide measurable statistics, to create comprehensive insights that guide business strategy and decision-making. A key aspect of market research is analyzing customer attitudes and usage. Interviews.

Market Research 52

Market Research Outsourcing Services Marketing Outsourced Development 52

Intercom, Inc.

SEPTEMBER 10, 2020

It’s an approach that’s served him well along the road to building the HubSpot sales team, where he was CRO for nine years. That experience led to his bestselling book, The Sales Acceleration Formula. The framework consists of three elements: product-market fit, go-to-market fit, and growth and moat.

Scale 226

Scale Scaling Sales Recruiting Sales Hiring 226

SaaStr

OCTOBER 8, 2019

Typically founders are the first sales people. After all it’s likely they know the product the best, and they can use customer feedback to measure market fit. However, at some point a founder needs to hire a sales team. Want to see more content like this? Join us at SaaStr Annual 2020. Olof Mathe | CEO @ Mixmax.

Sales Hiring 126

Sales Hiring Scale Sales Interviewing 126

Sales Hacker

MAY 20, 2020

To be successful, organizations have to have good product-market fit , customer trust, and a fantastic customer experience throughout the entire customer lifecycle. As such, much of sales and marketing’s focus is external to attract customers, and rightly so. Improved communication between sales, marketing, and product.

Sales Enablement 121

Sales Enablement Underperforming Technical Team Sales Communication 121

Sales Hacker

MAY 6, 2021

From B2C consumer-focused tech to the next B2B enterprise cloud giants, B2B, and B2C technology companies are springing up left and right and sprinting toward multi-billion dollar valuations (whether on the private or public markets) faster than ever. What’s the difference between a VP of Sales and a Chief Revenue Officer (CRO)?

VP of Engineering 93

VP of Engineering Sales Hiring Sales Recruiting Sales 93

SaaStr

SEPTEMBER 26, 2019

Building a sales team that can go from $0-$50M (Video + Transcript). Gaetan Gachet | SVP of Sales @Algolia. It’s an honor to be here with this mythical creature, this sales leader that goes from zero to 50 million in the same job. He has a whole French sales team and office that only speaks English in Paris.

Scale 136

Scale Sales Hiring Sales Recruiting Technical Advisors 136

OpenView Labs

OCTOBER 29, 2019

Editor’s Note: This article is Part One of a four-part series that covers the most crucial product marketing activities. . I recently presented at Venture Lane , a curated startup hub for early-stage startups, to share more about Product Marketing and how it relates to an early-stage startup. Scaling Sales.

Product Marketing 40

Product Marketing Development Marketing Scale 40

User Pilot

FEBRUARY 13, 2024

We’ve collected some of the best product management webinars for 2024, so you don’t miss out. TL;DR A product webinar is a virtual seminar showcasing and discussing a product's features and benefits as a marketing and sales tool. What is a product webinar? Book the demo today! Book the demo today!

Sales Hiring 105

Sales Hiring Generative AI AI Leadership 105

Sales Hacker

JUNE 7, 2021

Sales customer insights. Let’s drill down into the market and customer insights that can really add value for salespeople, under the following sections: Qualifying characteristics: Things to look for in an organization that make it a good target. But what are these insights that will transform the conversations salespeople have?

Sales Recruiting 107

Sales Recruiting Payment Services Payment Methods Sales 107

SaaStr

NOVEMBER 16, 2020

What does it take to scale a sales team successfully? How can one determine a closer in the interview process? Should one hire sales reps 2×2? How does Andy think about hiring sales reps from adjacent companies and industries? How does Andy think about minimizing and optimising sales ramp times?

Sales Hiring 190

Sales Hiring Scale Leadership Sales Enablement 190

User Pilot

SEPTEMBER 29, 2023

While product development describes the process of creating the product itself (i.e. designing screens, writing code, running tests), product management is a broader concept that encompasses strategy , vision, and product-market fit. The final step is to launch your product.

Development 103

Development Software Review Sales Recruiting Technical Review 103

Tom Tunguz

JANUARY 16, 2018

Skimming means charging the first to buy a product more than the later buyers. Maximization is charging the most you can extract in each sale. Cost-based pricing is common in commodity markets. It provides many different ways for the sales team to negotiate on price and captures the most value. Philosophy.

Pricing 240

Pricing Market Research Interviewing Product Marketing 240

Sales Hacker

NOVEMBER 16, 2020

The data source and analysis may vary, but the goal is always the same — to win more deals and increase revenue by improving overall rep execution, your sales process , or by fixing gaps in enablement and product. Sales surveys run in-house. I recommend: Outsourced buyer interviews with a clustered model. A Broad Scope.

Outsourcing Services 99

Outsourcing Services Data Interviewing Technical Review 99

User Pilot

AUGUST 29, 2023

While the product manager’s role may differ from one organization to the next, they will still work with dedicated product owners, engineering and design teams, data analysts, and product marketing managers.

Management 103

Management Interviewing Marketplace as a Service Product Marketing 103

Tom Tunguz

AUGUST 30, 2017

You suspect you have initial product market fit. Sales, marketing, customer success, engineering, product management. This is a common strategy for sales. The founders confirm product market fit with the first 10-20 sales and then hire an expert to scale the team and polish the process.

Sales Hiring 172

Sales Hiring Scale Interviewing Engineering 172

SaaStr

FEBRUARY 8, 2019

Bridget Gleason is VP of Sales @ Logz.io, the startup that uses predictive analytics and machine learning to provide monitoring, troubleshooting and security. Before Logz, Bridget was VP of Corporate Sales @ Sumo Logic where she drove ARR up by a record 237%. How does one structure commissions for the sales team with that in mind?

Sales Hiring 114

Sales Hiring Scale Sales SMB 114