SaaStr

FEBRUARY 11, 2021

In SaaS, #1 most common misfire, with a bullet, is the VP/head of sales. It goes something like “You’ve Got to Get Past the Carcass of Your First VP of Sales” or “It’s The Second VP of Sales When You Really Start Selling” or variants thereof. Because in SaaS start-ups, it seems like the majority of first VP Sales fail.

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Sales Hiring Scale Sales Recruiting Sales 363

SaaStr

MARCH 3, 2023

At SaaStr APAC 2023, Scott Pugh, VP of Sales at Figma, shared how to scale these two sales teams while building culture. Pugh’s strategy is simple, albeit not always easy: Recruitment — how to hire the best talent to scale your sales organization. Let’s look at five tips to consider for successful recruiting.

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Scale Sales Recruiting Sales Hiring Scaling 222

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 247

SaaStr

MAY 24, 2022

Many mediocre hires were made to fill slots, reference checks not made, etc. What we used to do, from ‘05-‘19: Do 30 interviews per position, ideally. Then when everything super boomed in 2H’20 and ‘21 it went kind of like this: Do 3-4 solid interview for a position, not 30. So did startups. jasonlk) May 23, 2022.

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Sales Hiring Sales Recruiting Interviewing Startup 256

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.

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Sales Recruiting Interviewing Sales Hiring Finance 109

SaaStr

MARCH 22, 2022

This requires effort from your entire organization, and Handshake VP, Employer Partnerships Jessica Peluso outlines some changes that you can make to your brand, and your application, interview, and offer process that will help find the talent you are trying to attract and hire. Below is the transcript of Jessica’s session.

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Sales Hiring Sales Recruiting Scale Sales 221

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?

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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.

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SaaStr

JANUARY 31, 2022

Having learned from thousands of customers and prospects, Sarah Lash, Envoy’s head of enterprise sales, will talk about what it takes to guide and scale enterprise sales programs during an uncertain future. In my first six months at Envoy , I grew the sales team from six to 17. Combine Strategies To Drive Sales.

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Sales Recruiting Sales Hiring Scale Enterprise 226

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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SaaStr

MARCH 24, 2020

Nothing matters but recruiting and using your personal network. Sam Blond, CSO at Brex explains why recruiting, networking and employee happiness is the key to this playbook on recruiting your sales team. Sam Blond | Chief Sales Officer @ Brex. I’m doing The Playbook To Recruiting Your Sales Team.

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Sales Recruiting Sales Hiring Scale Underperforming Technical Team 129

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. Use work test samples.

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Sales Recruiting Sales Hiring Interviewing Finance 40

Sales Hacker

MAY 18, 2021

On today’s episode of Sales Hacker podcast, we have Mike Levy of TitahHouse, a transparent and effective platform, loaded with in-depth career and job intelligence, exclusively designed to connect tech-focused sales professionals with their next great position. Subscribe to the Sales Hacker Podcast. Special Announcement.

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Andreessen Horowitz

FEBRUARY 12, 2024

A MOC document can help you prioritize what jobs you need an executive to do so you can hire against those needs. 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. This transcript has been lightly edited for clarity.

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Sales Recruiting Technical Advisors Sales Hiring Underperforming Technical Team 79

SaaStr

OCTOBER 25, 2023

For part one of this Ask Me Anything session, Jason covers everything you need to know about hiring your first VP of Sales, what he really thinks about AI, what the future of lead generation in 2024 looks like, and much more. In this interview, David Sacks talks about how 70-80% of investor time is spent looking at AI.

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Scale Sales Hiring AI Sales Recruiting 241

Tom Tunguz

JULY 25, 2020

In interviewing great CMOs , the product marketing leader is the first marketer most startups should recruit, and often the first key mishire. Product marketing is the vital work of developing a customer lifecycle journey, pricing, sales support materials, analyst relations, and press. This makes sense.

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Sales Recruiting Product Marketing Scale Sales Hiring 205

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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SaaStr

MAY 29, 2022

So we’ve talked so much over the years on SaaStr on how to hire a great VP of Sales, the difference they’ll make, and how the level-up comes quickly. And VPs of Sales do, too. Don’t hire a VP of Sales that isn’t truly comfortable selling to your buyer persona, especially in B2D and fintech.

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Sales Hiring Sales Recruiting Startup Sales 254

Sales Hacker

JUNE 10, 2021

There’s one thing recruiters are unanimous about. 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. Our recruitment team at EASI has gotten really good at this. Sales courses are largely absent from college curricula.

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Sales Hiring Sales Recruiting Sales Interviewing 105

SaaStr

JUNE 21, 2023

They hired their first VP of Sales with a wonderful pedigree and experience at some of the hottest startups. because they needed to rebuild the sales team. They rebuilt the sales team and closed some big deals. The lesson — Don’t hire someone just because they have a great pedigree. A good recruiter is worth it.

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Sales Recruiting Sales Hiring Underperforming Technical Team Pricing 246

SaaStr

SEPTEMBER 17, 2020

Director+ of Sales at Slack / Zoom / DropBox / Pick Your Brand Name SaaS Company. Because it’s not ARR growth or even an IPO alone that determines if a VP of Sales him or herself is great. And there were probably 100+ RVPs of Sales at that point. Because often, the managers were given a team, or a lot of it.

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SaaStr

JANUARY 21, 2021

We’ve talked a lot about hiring a VP, Sales. 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. In those cases, no “big mistake” hire was made. But still, some hires didn’t work out.

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Sales Hiring Sales Recruiting Point of Sale Sales 163

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 254

Sales Hacker

APRIL 30, 2020

What’s your approach when hiring sales reps? Companies often hire sales reps who have knowledge of, or even a passion for, the brand’s product or industry — which is great because it gives you a team of “walking brochures” who can spout off all the benefits of your product. The best training for new sales hires.

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Sales Hiring Sales Recruiting Sales Underperforming Technical Team 93

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.

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Sales Recruiting Sales Hiring Scale Sales 172

Sales Hacker

FEBRUARY 20, 2020

Success in sales requires the right skills and a competitive, driven, and personable nature. However, scoring a great sales role takes more than just being confident in your own skills and nature. You have to convince a management team of those things as well. Start Acing Your Interview Before You Even Start.

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Sales Recruiting Interviewing Sales Hiring Sales 76

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. According to Insightsquared, recruiting should take up to 20% of time for a C-level executive.

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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. The distraction of building a real sales team isn’t worth it yet.

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Sales Hiring Sales Recruiting Scale Sales 286

Sales Hacker

JANUARY 6, 2020

The number one thing I grade candidates on is how well did they run their sales process on me? If you’re a job candidate in sales, you should be managing your job application process just like you’d run your sales process with a potential customer. Again, I’m running this like a sales process.

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SaaStr

FEBRUARY 2, 2024

The backup of 2020 was great, 2021 comes in and somehow we have 600 unicorns and everyone can burn 500 million a year or have huge sales teams. But the meta point is this, if you’re recruiting in 2024, beware of the “Lost Generation” candidate and persona you may come across. “Don’t hire the broken.

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SaaStr

MARCH 3, 2020

Brendon introduces his playbook to hiring the first VP of Sales from his experiences as VP of Sales at LinkedIn, EchoSign, Talkdesk and more. Learn the dos and don’ts to make the correct hire the first time and not rush into hiring the wrong VP of Sales, which can cost the company months or even years.

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Sales Hiring Sales Recruiting CTO Hire Scale 154

Totango

DECEMBER 13, 2022

As corporate expectations grow and hiring remains challenging for CS, automating the customer journey on a digital platform can do much of the heavy lifting for understaffed teams. . Keep the work at hand as a focus and trust that the vibe of your team will be clear during the interview process. Let’s get aligned. What do we want?

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Sales Hiring Sales Recruiting Scale Customer Success 92

FastSpring

SEPTEMBER 3, 2020

In this post, we’re featuring our Recruiting Manager, Elizabeth Faddis! Priority projects are focused on enhancing the company’s recruiting strategy, processes, and programs to deliver on current and future talent needs. You recently started your Recruiting Manager role at FastSpring, how are you liking it so far?

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Sales Recruiting Sales Hiring Management Technical Review 99

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.

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Sales Hiring Scale Sales Recruiting B2B 80

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 77

SaaStr

JANUARY 21, 2020

Justin Welsh, former SVP of Sales at PatientPop explains how he started in SaaS in 2009 as the second sales hire at Zocdoc. Justin used Sales Culture to grow a successful PatientPop team to 140 employees and 55 million in revenue. Justin Welsh | SVP Sales @ PatientPop. Want to see more content like this?

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Sales Recruiting Sales Hiring Scale Sales 258

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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