SaaStr

FEBRUARY 26, 2024

Well, as frustrating as it can be when a new VP, a new Director, a new IC doesn’t work out … it was your fault not doing enough diligence: Did you really do reference checks? Since even the best candidates can never truly know enough about any role in just a few weeks of interviewing — that has to be on you.

Sales Hiring 257

Sales Hiring Social Media Interviewing Education 257

Tom Tunguz

APRIL 3, 2013

Reference checks are part and parcel of the VC diligence process and most hiring processes. They are also one of the two most important analyses in hiring, next to the interview. Types of References. I find it’s valuable to speak to references who have worked with the candidate in different roles. Top 25%, 10%, 5%, 1%?

Sales Hiring 100

Sales Hiring Technical Review Interviewing Engineering 100

OpenView Labs

JULY 20, 2020

Interviewing is hard , and interviewing candidates for sales roles can be doubly so. Why is effective interviewing so important? Better interviewing = better sales teams. The following details some of my learnings around sales hiring and interviewing, as well as some tactical advice for candidates seeking sales roles.

Interviewing 73

Interviewing Sales Hiring Sales Recruiting Underperforming Technical Team 73

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. Check references.

Sales Recruiting 40

Sales Recruiting Sales Hiring Interviewing Finance 40

OpenView Labs

JANUARY 31, 2022

We also suggest offering bonuses to current employees who refer talent that gets hired. Make a clear plan for your interview process . A strong interview process plan goes deeper than simply who candidates will interview with. . Each round or step of the process and interviewers in each. Community Slack channels.

Sales Hiring 60

Sales Hiring Interviewing Sales Recruiting SMB 60

SaaStr

MAY 6, 2021

Kathy used her interview with the founders to see how they responded to different points of view and find out what their “why” was. She used her interviews with investors to find out how they really felt about the product and their why. People’s past accomplishments and references tell you more than their interview.

Sales Hiring 241

Sales Hiring Sales Recruiting Interviewing Revenue 241

Sales Hacker

FEBRUARY 20, 2020

Just as sales is its own animal in the professional ecosystem, the sales interview is its own unique beast. Your skills will be fire-tested and aggressively interrogated , and the mock demo portion makes it more like an audition than an interview. Start Acing Your Interview Before You Even Start. But this is a sales interview.

Sales Recruiting 76

Sales Recruiting Interviewing Sales Hiring Sales 76

SaaStr

JULY 18, 2022

And have them interview your top candidates. You gotta do reference checks. They won’t succeed, if for no other reason than you won’t backfill them the right way. If you’re not sure how to hire for a role, get an advisor that does. But they don’t all have to be perfect. But an ex-boss or two should say they are great.

Sales Hiring 244

Sales Hiring Strategy Interviewing Startup 244

OpenView Labs

JANUARY 8, 2021

Great interview questions tell you who a person is, what motivates them, how they think and solve problems, and what they’d be like as a teammate. To help us all conduct better interviews, we asked some of the smartest leaders in SaaS to share their favorite questions. takes the cake as the worst question ever.

Interviewing 75

Interviewing Underperforming Technical Team SaaS Scale 75

Sales Hacker

APRIL 21, 2020

You’ll be able to download the interview scorecard template that I use with my clients. Part two of this scorecard series will help you create a sales interview scorecard to land that sales role you’ve been dreaming about. Who is involved in the interview process, onboarding process, and ongoing support and training process?

Sales Hiring 93

Sales Hiring Interviewing Sales Recruiting Underperforming Technical Team 93

SaaStr

JANUARY 5, 2024

For Sam, an SDR has always been the most challenging hire within the sales organization because they are often fresh out of college or moving from a different career path, and they don’t have historical performance and back-channel references to lean on — yet you rely on them for net new business.

Sales Hiring 253

Sales Hiring Sales Recruiting Scale Outbound Sales Team 253

SaaStr

NOVEMBER 9, 2023

But if they say in an interview they “don’t really care about money” … well … they aren’t sales people. Also true in sales) Hiring anyone in customer success that can’t give you 2-3 happy customers as references. And, most importantly, infinitely stronger brands. Hiring any reps who “don’t care about money”.

Sales Hiring 238

Sales Hiring Scale Startup Marketing 238

Chart Mogul

JULY 1, 2020

Customer interviews are a powerful tool that can help you better position your B2B product to attract and retain more customers. Believe it or not, it’s not rocket science: they perform customer interviews. Types of customer interviews. Depending on what you want to achieve, customer interviews can be divided into two groups: 1.

Interviewing 76

Interviewing B2B Marketing Underperforming Technical Team 76

SaaStr

JULY 7, 2023

You can interview. So in Tougher Times for Many, let me boil this down to one key suggestion. I know great jobs are harder to find. But … here it is: Don’t Actually Take That SaaS Job Unless You Truly Know the Product First. You can talk comp. You can even get an offer letter.

Marketing 232

Marketing Sales Interviewing Enterprise 232

SaaStr

DECEMBER 1, 2023

We’re still learning what world we’re in — some people interview over Zoom, some are focused on how to build teams in the current age, and many are dealing with a weird overhang from the SaaS explosion of 2021, quiet quitting, layoffs, and team turnover. Almost no one does real reference checks anymore. There’s no way.

Sales Hiring 148

Sales Hiring Sales Recruiting Sales Interviewing 148

Chart Mogul

JULY 1, 2020

Customer interviews are a powerful tool that can help you better position your B2B product to attract and retain more customers. Believe it or not, it’s not rocket science: they perform customer interviews. Types of customer interviews. Depending on what you want to achieve, customer interviews can be divided into two groups: 1.

Interviewing 52

Interviewing B2B Marketing Underperforming Technical Team 52

SaaStr

FEBRUARY 2, 2024

A few examples from recruiting and interviewing lately that Jason warns fellow founders against: #1 Beware of the Managers vs the Do-ers. By this we mean, that Jason interviewed sales and events candidates recently and started to notice a pattern in the candidates he was speaking with. .

Sales Recruiting 288

Sales Recruiting Trends Sales Hiring Software Review 288

SaaStr

JANUARY 18, 2023

Instead, conduct thorough reference checks and recruit more qualified candidates to interview. During the interview process, make an effort to clearly understand the candidate’s qualifications and fit for the role. Having a co-founder to share the workload with can make it more manageable.

Scale 216

Scale Underperforming Technical Team Scaling Interviewing 216

Andreessen Horowitz

FEBRUARY 12, 2024

Getting executives out of the 1:1 interview process and into a whiteboard session can help you assess their core competencies and how they’ll work with your team. We’re not necessarily interviewing them for a specific role in the portfolio. That’s not really what you’re interviewing for or unpacking.

Sales Recruiting 88

Sales Recruiting Technical Advisors Sales Hiring Underperforming Technical Team 88

GetUplift

JANUARY 16, 2019

I’m not gonna pumpkin-spice coat it: interviewing customers is hard. Prompting vulnerable sharing from complete strangers is not something most people consider fun… Which is why I’ve heard just about every excuse for not interviewing customers: I don’t have any customers. Customer interviews don’t give quantitative data.

Interviewing 66

Interviewing Underperforming Technical Team Technical Review Systems Review 66

Intercom, Inc.

JULY 13, 2021

That’s why we’re upfront with candidates about what we look for in designers before they interview with us. Design candidates can better prepare for their interviews. This made designers concerned that they couldn’t advance because they didn’t have the opportunity to interview. We all achieve better business outcomes faster.

Interviewing 271

Interviewing Leadership Engineering Communication 271

User Pilot

MAY 1, 2024

TL;DR User needs analysis refers to using various techniques to understand users’ aspirations, goals, and pain points. You can perform a needs analysis using various methods, such as user feedback surveys, focus groups, and interviews. Usability testing can also come in handy. Also, you can use them for market research and validation.

SaaS 72

SaaS Interviewing Development User Experience 72

Tom Tunguz

JUNE 6, 2018

First, you already have a strong reference on their behalf, so there’s less screening required. When interviewing for new executive to lead an internal team, interview for the network by asking and digging into the question: “Who are your first 5 hires?” The relationships she has cultivated over her tenure.

Scale 218

Scale Interviewing Finance Leadership 218

User Pilot

MARCH 25, 2024

User sentiment, also known as customer sentiment, refers to how users feel about a product, service, brand, or even an industry. What is customer sentiment analysis and how does it work Customer sentiment analysis refers to the process of examination of a user’s thoughts and feelings about their interactions with your brand.

Social Media 89

Social Media Software Review Technical Review Machine Learning 89

User Pilot

MAY 1, 2024

Digital product experience (DPX) refers to all the touchpoints and interactions a customer has with a digital product across its lifecycle. Here are a few options to consider: User interviews : Conduct one-on-one or group interviews to ask questions and gain deep insights into user needs.

Customer Lifetime Value 82

Customer Lifetime Value User Experience Retention Scale 82

Sales Hacker

OCTOBER 31, 2023

She enjoys advising SaaS companies as they build out and optimize their marketing and overall GTM strategies.

Scale 95

Scale Marketing Interviewing AI 95

Baremetrics

AUGUST 29, 2021

Step 2: Interview a sample of current ICP users. Step 2: Interview a sample of current ICP users When it comes to getting honest feedback, nothing beats a phone call. Use the insights you gained through segmentation to select about 20–30 customers to interview. Step 1: Identify ICPs within your current user base.

Outsourcing Services 124

Outsourcing Services Startup Interviewing Outsourced Development 124

Sales Hacker

MARCH 28, 2023

It’s a good idea to create a card that your team can refer to when building lists or talking to prospects. There are two ways to do this: customer interviews and demographics. During the interview, try to uncover the customer’s emotional response to your product and company.

Outsourced Development 107

Outsourced Development Interviewing Technical Review Software Review 107

Andreessen Horowitz

MARCH 22, 2024

A good way to learn more about your customer personas and segments is through interviews, surveys, and sales team data. Interviews. If you have a small number of customers, interviewing them can give you a better signal into who’s interested in buying your product and what products they might be interested in in the future.

Generative AI 125

Generative AI AI B2B Pricing 125

Valuize Consulting

AUGUST 6, 2021

A few of my friends worked at a tech startup (Sailthru) and referred me for a role. The post Scaling Impactful Customer Success Strategy And Operations: An Interview With Emily Ryan appeared first on Valuize. In reality, it was a Customer Success Management role, but at the time Customer Success was still being established.

Scale 52

Scale Customer Success Interviewing Scaling 52

Kellblog

SEPTEMBER 5, 2021

A few days ago, Steve Pockross released a new episode of his Yes, And Marketing podcast on which he interviews a series of “eclectic and enlivening” marketers where “your weird shower thoughts and disparate liberal arts references take a road trip.” And this one’s a barn burner.

Marketing 90

Marketing Interviewing Startup Mobile 90

OpenView Labs

MAY 21, 2020

So without further ado: Our remote interview process. Surely moving from onsite interviews to remote interviews can’t be as simple as sending a Zoom link? Don’t spread interview sessions over multiple days—just block the whole time and let the candidates immerse themselves. References are more important than ever.

Onboarding 92

Onboarding Interviewing Communication Investment 92

SaaStr

JANUARY 21, 2021

We’ve talked about the 48 Different Types of VP Sales , What a VP Sales Really Does , and a Script to Use When Interviewing a VP Sales. I first “met” him on the phone, when he was heading corporate sales at LinkedIn, and he was a reference for a hire I wanted to make.

Sales Hiring 165

Sales Hiring Sales Recruiting Point of Sale Sales 165

Kellblog

OCTOBER 28, 2023

Did they trick you into thinking the interview was over and slide in one more “what do you really think” question? The best media trainers are often independents, typically retired journalists who teach you the tricks used on the other side of the interview table. 3] Who hurt you? You work with the media.

Communication 96

Communication Interviewing Startup Banking 96

Mucker Capital

APRIL 2, 2024

A customer feedback loop refers to the tools and processes to collect and analyze vital customer data, as well as then incorporating that data into your business. Surveys, Interviews, and Focus Groups Gathering direct input from customers through structured questioning or group discussions. As your Customer Feedback Loop Develops.

Engineering 52

Engineering Systems Review Scale Interviewing 52

User Pilot

JANUARY 10, 2024

User research methods for SaaS: Usability testing User testing User interviews Focus groups Session replays First click testing User feedback surveys Card sorting A/B testing Product analytics Heatmaps Userpilot can help you conduct user experience (UX) research and easily interpret the data. Choose the appropriate research method.

User Experience 94

User Experience Interviewing SaaS Underperforming Technical Team 94

User Pilot

NOVEMBER 30, 2023

You can collect feedback from your customer base via in-app surveys, feedback widgets, interviews, and by monitoring social media mentions and reviews. Interview existing customers Another good way to identify emerging market gaps is by interviewing your customers. Spotting market gaps: interview invite.

Underperforming Technical Team 90

Underperforming Technical Team Marketing Market Research Outsourced Development 90