SaaStr

NOVEMBER 2, 2023

So we’ve spent a ton of time over the years on SaaS talking about hiring a great VP of Sales. Not only because it really matters, but because hiring the wrong VP of Sales can set you back a year — or longer. So many VPs of Sales disagree with me here — at least at first when I make the point. Sales is hard.

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Sales Hiring Sales Recruiting Sales Interviewing 217

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.

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Sales Hiring Scale Sales Headcount 236

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 230

SaaStr

APRIL 21, 2022

Yes, sometimes it’s OK to hire a VP of Sales that everyone loves. At least 9 times out of 10, if everyone on the team loves a VP of Sales, it’s the wrong hire. And this especially matters because I often see CEOs picking between 2 final VP of Sales candidates. Even if they were, how many hired a VP of Sales at your ACV before?

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Sales Hiring Scale Sales Interviewing 311

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. A designated partner means lower rejection rates at the very first interview.

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Scale Sales Recruiting Sales Hiring Scaling 211

SaaStr

DECEMBER 1, 2023

Hiring a VP of Sales isn’t new, but the conversations have evolved as the world has. Jason has written about the cheat codes for hiring VPs of Sales since 2012 and realized it was worth a deeper dive. Jason has written about the cheat codes for hiring VPs of Sales since 2012 and realized it was worth a deeper dive.

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Sales Hiring Sales Recruiting Sales Interviewing 145

SaaStr

FEBRUARY 5, 2021

Q: What are some advice for people who want to create a SaaS startup? Do at least 20 potential customer interviews. A bit more here: Planning to Do a SaaS Startup? Don’t Forget the 20 Interview Rule. You might end up having to do sales yourself. The post Are You Ready To Do a SaaS StartUp?

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Startup SaaS Interviewing Market Segmentation 254

SaaStr

MAY 27, 2024

There is more capital available to startups than ever before. The influx of capital has made it easier for startups to raise money, but it has also led to higher valuations and more competition. His best deals by cash are: Sales Loft : $2.5 He also learned that some founders just can’t lose, like Kyle from Sales Loft.

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CTO Hire Development Team Review Software Review Technical Review 176

SaaStr

JANUARY 6, 2021

Finding the perfect VP of Sales position can be daunting, especially in the middle of a global pandemic. Candidates need to find opportunities that not only fit their sales experience and stretch goals, but also companies that are coming out of the pandemic with momentum. Who is looking to hire a VP of Sales in January / Q1?

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Sales Hiring Scale Payment Solutions Payments 313

SaaStr

JULY 7, 2023

But the sale is much more complicated, and different, and to a very, very different buyer. You can interview. Too many sales and marketing and CS execs just think they will pick it up once they start. A sales rep, a marketer, that doesn’t truly get the product today? The problem? It was only about 30% true.

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Marketing Sales Interviewing Enterprise 219

Tom Tunguz

FEBRUARY 3, 2020

Market challenger sales are very different. In fact, this is where the name challenger sale originates. Sales cycles lengthen, demand more work, and consumer more time. When you interview salespeople for your startup, do you consider their experience at a market leader or market challenger?

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Sales Hiring Scale Startup Interviewing 222

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

OCTOBER 6, 2023

If you’re a seed-stage startup, Michael shares the best ways for you to present your company to startup investors. Stand Out by Being Concise and Easy to Understand Michael has done over 2000 YC interviews, and the one thing founders don’t understand is that if investors don’t know what your company does, they can’t fund you. “The

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Payment Methods Startup Payment Solutions Sales Hiring 212

SaaStr

JANUARY 9, 2024

The other day I interviewed yet another other great AE who had recently become a Director of Sales. You know you’ll have to sell yourself at this startup? It’s time to get back to basics: A new VP of Sales has to carry a bag at first — and close customers themselves at first. Ask in the interviews. Super high.

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Sales Hiring Interviewing Startup Customer Success 232

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. In the early days, it was about setting expectations that startups are hard and you must work hard to succeed. Revenue matters, too.

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Sales Hiring Underperforming Technical Team Revenue Sales 190

Sales Hacker

APRIL 21, 2020

When I first wrote this article, we were in a very different place, with unemployment at an all-time low and sales hiring a top priority. You’ll be able to download the interview scorecard template that I use with my clients. Can you ever be sure you’re hiring the right salesperson? Man oh man, how the world has changed so quickly!

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Sales Hiring Interviewing Sales Recruiting Underperforming Technical Team 95

SaaStr

JANUARY 24, 2023

The best VPs of Sales I’ve hired were Directors of Sales before. And whatever you see as a flag during the interview process, is almost always 10x bigger once they join full-time. No research before interview. “Informational interviews” may make sense at big tech companies. But at startups?

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Sales Hiring Sales Recruiting Interviewing Startup 253

Tom Tunguz

FEBRUARY 16, 2020

One of the most consistent errors made in sales projections and planning is mismatching the ramp time to the sales cycle. If my startup has a 9 months sales cycle and the VP of Sales projects a six month ramp time, my startup is committing this error. What does this mean? There are downstream effects too.

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Scale Forecasting Sales Interviewing 255

Tom Tunguz

NOVEMBER 24, 2018

Your startup is just getting off the ground. You might have a few account executives and a sales leader in place; maybe some revenue and a handful of customers. The sales team costs real money, and the question before the company is: how do you know what quota plan to assign to the account executives? Stage 2: Logo Based Quota.

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Compensation Sales Recruiting Sales Hiring Scale 148

SaaStr

JUNE 27, 2022

Up today: Harry Stebbings interviews Shippo Co-Founder and CEO Laura Behrens Wu. It helps connect store and sales channels, create discounted shipping labels, track shipments, and simplify returns. Free and discounted shipping is not only a must-have, but it’s also a valuable sales expansion tool.

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Sales Hiring Startup Scale Content Marketing 187

Tom Tunguz

NOVEMBER 16, 2015

Mark Roberge, the Chief Revenue Officer at Hubspot, has spent 20 years in startups. 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. The first step is hiring a sales leader.

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Sales Hiring Sales Recruiting Startup Compensation 183

Chart Mogul

SEPTEMBER 19, 2019

But sales is the one thing founders cannot oversee — without it your startup will die. Startup founders are stretched thinly like silly putty. But the one thing you must think about is sales. Without sales, your startup dies. Yet, sales is all too often a dirty word. Your first sales playbook.

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Sales Hiring Scale Sales Recruiting Startup 93

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. Image from First Round’s State of Startups Report. Therein lies the dilemma.

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Sales Hiring Sales Recruiting Scale Startup 82

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. This is so different than the days of 2021 when a $200M ARR company might’ve had 2,000 or more employees, and maybe a startup doing just $50M had 700 employees. ” #3.

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Sales Recruiting Trends Sales Hiring Software Review 274

SaaStr

OCTOBER 30, 2021

I asked Aasif Osmany to share his learnings as a top-performing SMB VP of Sales, below. Four years ago, after launching and failing my first startup I realized I had a lot to learn. I sent cold emails and LinkedIn messages and ended up with nine interviews. From those nine interviews, I received four offers.

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Scale Sales Hiring Sales SMB 251

Sales Hacker

NOVEMBER 9, 2020

Having the right technology in place is often the difference between success and failure, and this is even more true for startups and SMB, where you have a small team and limited resources. In fact, over two-thirds of their total users are startups. This isn’t the only effect WFH has had on the sales tech market, though.

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Technical Review Scale Trends Startup 118

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. At Point Nine, we aspire to continuously share what we learn with our community and the extended startup ecosystem. Sales is hard, especially in the early stages of a startup.

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Sales Hiring Scale Technical Advisors Technical Cofounder 125

Mucker Capital

OCTOBER 10, 2023

Sales development is a nuanced blend of art and science, requiring a delicate balance for its effective implementation within a company. Drawing from substantial experience, Sally Duby from The Bridge Group provides valuable insights into the intricate realm of sales development.

Scale 52

Scale Sales Hiring Outsourced Development Development 52

SaaStr

MAY 24, 2022

So did startups. VCs funded startups in a day, with limited diligence, sometimes at 100x revenue for the hottest of deals. And startups … well, they moved pretty darn quickly too. What we used to do, from ‘05-‘19: Do 30 interviews per position, ideally. — Jason BeKind Lemkin #???????????? jasonlk) May 23, 2022.

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Sales Hiring Sales Recruiting Interviewing Startup 244

SaaStr

NOVEMBER 28, 2020

The basic idea was to help folks who haven’t hired a VP or Director of Marketing hire the right one for a pre-Scale sales-driven SaaS company. Or sometimes an SAL commit (Sales Accepted Lead). I want to bring this up again because I interview so many VP/head/director of marketing candidates. Or SQL commit.

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Sales Hiring Scale Sales Marketing 294

Baremetrics

AUGUST 29, 2021

In the early stages of founding a startup, finding clients can be a bit of a shot in the dark. So how do you find the perfect sales target? 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.

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Outsourcing Services Startup Interviewing Outsourced Development 124

SaaStr

DECEMBER 14, 2023

Alison brings the perspective of all sides of a startup, from investing to SaaS to Cloud. Pursuing Two Different Segments: The Tale of Startups vs. Enterprise From a marketing perspective, the GTM marketing position and product market messaging differ between Google Workspace and Google Cloud.

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Cloud Scale AWS AI 225

SaaStr

JANUARY 30, 2023

To solve this, Deel interviewed 200 founders seeking answers to the question, “If you’re open to hiring internationally and remotely, what are your biggest challenges, and what kind of product can we build to solve them? As a startup, it’s hard to know if the timing is right and what to expect. Listen to your team.

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Sales Hiring Payment Services SaaS Payments Scale 218

Tom Tunguz

DECEMBER 1, 2019

PR readies articles and interviews. Sales and support prepare their pitches. Second, the market perceived the startup as fast moving and innovative. I imagine this is how every founder fats on the eve of demo day. Launch day requires collaboration across teams. Marketing must prepare the story and materials. Legal must sign off.

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Startup Interviewing Innovation Engineering 167

Intercom, Inc.

OCTOBER 15, 2020

In this episode, Bob and I chat about his new book Demand-Side Sales 101: Stop Selling and Help Your Customers Make Progress. What is it about sales that makes academia hesitant to teach it? Bob wondered where all the sales professors were and discovered that perhaps as a profession it required more art than science.

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Sales Hiring Sales VP of Engineering Underperforming Technical Team 265

Teamgate

JANUARY 14, 2019

My journey started working with well-known brands such as VISA and TomTom, and since 2014 I started gradually moving to the world of startups and scaleups. Moreover, big brands have a fantastic infrastructure in place and you are working in-sync with other teams (marketing, production, sales), meaning that your campaigns are always amplified.

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Interviewing Startup Technical Review Technical Advisors 81

SaaStr

JULY 18, 2022

And have them interview your top candidates. Avoid folks that have never worked at a startup not that much bigger than yours. No chance they know how to do a startup. Don’t hire any sales reps you wouldn’t personally buy your own product from. At least, not until you have a true VP of Sales to train them.

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Sales Hiring Strategy Interviewing Startup 228