SaaStr

AUGUST 7, 2021

I thought it might be helpful to assemble a checklist of 22 reasons I almost immediately pass on investing in start-ups that are still interesting. Exit Strategy Slide. An Exit Strategy Slide almost by definition tells me you aren’t. You’re in sales. Recruit the VPs? Others bet on traction.

Sales Recruiting 334

Sales Recruiting Scale AWS Investment 334

Sales Hacker

JANUARY 20, 2022

Strong sales reps are the lifeblood of your business and how you choose to invest in them matters. For frontline sales managers, attributes like competency, quality of work, ease of execution, and length of contribution indicate reps’ overall job success, but you can’t rely on those inputs to tell you if they are personally satisfied.

Sales Recruiting 100

Sales Recruiting Scale Retention Sales 100

SaaStr

JULY 25, 2021

They talked about product adoption, sales alignment, freemium models and lessons they have learned throughout their successful SaaS careers. As two CEO who love the art of sales and scaling, this one really was special. And now it’s all about like, can you really scale and execute? Dev Ittycheria : Thank you.

Sales Recruiting 242

Sales Recruiting Sales Hiring Scale VP of Engineering 242

SaaStr

NOVEMBER 19, 2020

Enough to invest, but not enough to go crazy with. More on that here and a great video discussion below: You’ll probably be ready for your first VP of Sales by $1m in ARR. But you’ll need a manager to scale beyond 2. But it’ll be harder on you, and you’ll scale more slowly than you could.

Part-Time VPE 363

Part-Time VPE Sales Hiring CTO Hire Scale 363

Intercom, Inc.

MAY 13, 2021

Although Linda started her career in sales, she has spent the past twelve years scaling post-sales teams and moving hyper-growth companies like Zendesk, Slack, and now Gong upmarket into the enterprise realm. What “customer success” looks like evolves as your company and customers scale upmarket.

Scale 177

Scale Customer Success Strategy Sales Hiring 177

Buffer Resources

SEPTEMBER 11, 2023

I’ve never created LinkedIn content with the “goal” of lead generation or immediate-term sales. Another cool example I really like is Tito Bohrt — he stands out with the pseudo, “ Sales Mad Scientist ” — which demonstrates confidence and a unique identity online.

Sales Recruiting 134

Sales Recruiting Sales Hiring Scale Social Media 134

SaaStr

JANUARY 27, 2021

I probably will pass on investing in you if I don’t know you want money. We recently did a New New in Venture event and I asked the question of many top VCs including David Sacks, Keith Rabois, Aileen Lee and more. “Give the VP of Sales More Time” This is always terrible advice. In one sales cycle, or less.

Part-Time VPE 290

Part-Time VPE Sales Hiring Scale Sales Recruiting 290

SaaStr

AUGUST 25, 2023

On top of that, founders are full of excuses preventing them from scaling. 2 “Give the VP of Sales more time.” You can’t always expect a great VP of Sales to double sales in 30-60-90 days. But you have to see progress in one sales cycle. The best VPs of Sales hit the ground running. It never works, folks!

Part-Time VPE 175

Part-Time VPE Scale Sales Hiring CTO Hire 175

Intercom, Inc.

MARCH 12, 2019

A little over a year ago, I got the opportunity to start a new team within our sales organization – a team of Relationship Managers dedicated to growing our current customers at scale. The opportunity emerged out of a shift in how we practice sales. Starting a new sales team is not unlike doing improv.

Sales Hiring 171

Sales Hiring Sales Recruiting Underperforming Technical Team Scale 171

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

Valuize Consulting

JANUARY 25, 2024

Greg, Karen and Leah generously shared their learnings, challenges and triumphs in building, scaling and maturing their Digital CS programs. Effective Cross-Functional Collaboration Your Digital CS program should be directed by Customer Success but also requires close partnership with Marketing, Product, Sales, and Revenue Operations.

Customer Success 52

Customer Success Sales Recruiting Scale Strategy 52

OpenView Labs

DECEMBER 8, 2020

According to First Round’s 2019 State of Startups report , sales leadership is the most difficult hire to make. And with sales being a top priority for founders…. …along with it getting harder to recruit top-quality talent… Image: State of Startups. That’s the opposite of scaling efficiently.

Sales Hiring 81

Sales Hiring Sales Recruiting Scale Sales 81

InsightSquared

MARCH 6, 2018

Sales operations has been around for quite some time, but lately the function has been gaining momentum. Instead of behind-the-scenes sales support, sales ops now acts as a strategic partner for sales VPs and leadership. Start building out your sales operations department by hiring someone to own your CRM.

Sales Recruiting 119

Sales Recruiting Scale Sales Hiring Sales 119

User Pilot

JULY 27, 2023

Chief Technical Officer : Responsible for outlining the company’s technological vision, implementing technology strategies, and ensuring that the technological resources are aligned with the company’s business needs. Engineering Manager: In charge of planning, designing, and overseeing projects. Average salary: $196,172/yr.

Sales Hiring 98

Sales Hiring SaaS Payments Sales Recruiting CTO Hire 98

FastSpring

AUGUST 23, 2019

With the right planning and strategy in place, investing in an affiliate program is a great way to scale a software company and drive more online sales. In our latest webinar, FastSpring Affiliate Marketing Manager Mark Jacobs, guided attendees through the exciting world of affiliate marketing.

Sales Recruiting 67

Sales Recruiting Scale Software Sales 67

Sales Hacker

NOVEMBER 4, 2020

I was the new Vice President of International Sales & Managing Director for a work management software company called Wrike. Starting Your International Sales Team. The key to starting an international sales team is having the right people in your landing team. A mercenary is driven by the sale.

Sales Hiring 101

Sales Hiring Scale Sales Recruiting Sales 101

User Pilot

APRIL 19, 2024

TL;DR Market research is vital for making informed business decisions, enabling companies to understand the market, target audience, and competitors, reducing risks, and optimizing marketing communications and product strategies. Accumulating demographic information forms the basis for executing effective market segmentation strategies.

Market Research 52

Market Research Sales Recruiting Marketing Underperforming Technical Team 52

User Pilot

NOVEMBER 23, 2023

Many companies lack differentiation strategies and drive product development by copying competitors. As companies scale, they often cannot satisfy customer needs equally well. To be actionable, a product strategy should focus on specific user behaviors that create customer value. Or bridge it when it appears?

Scale 105

Scale Underperforming Technical Team Sales Recruiting Software Review 105

OpenView Labs

FEBRUARY 3, 2022

The market need for SaaS products has exploded and investment in SaaS companies has accelerated, requiring more talent to grow and scale. And the primary burden of your product and GTM execution can fall on an effective technical leader and proven sales executive. Accelerate hiring of internal recruiters.

Sales Hiring 82

Sales Hiring Sales Recruiting Scale Startup 82

Natalia Luneva

NOVEMBER 24, 2021

On this episode of the podcast, I interview Arthur Nobel and we discuss scaling SaaS companies. Arthur is a Principal at Knight Capital – an investment firm that specialises in B2B software businesses. What we discovered is companies sometimes struggle with scaling so we dived into the reasons for that.

Scale 52

Scale Scaling Sales Recruiting SaaS 52

Valuize Consulting

DECEMBER 7, 2021

In the subscription economy, there’s no debate about whether or not to invest in Customer Success (CS); 70% of rapidly growing businesses say that Customer Success is extremely important ( Hubspot , 2017). The question now is, how big should CS organizations be, and what’s the best way to staff and scale its success?

VP of Engineering 98

VP of Engineering Customer Success Sales Hiring Interviewing 98

Neil Patel

OCTOBER 25, 2020

If you are looking to scale up your marketing, you will need talented people that can take charge of and execute your strategy. Flexibility – It may be the case that you need to expand into a different marketing channel or adapt your strategy based on a changing environment. Scaling a business isn’t easy.

Sales Hiring 145

Sales Hiring Outsourcing Services Underperforming Technical Team Sales Recruiting 145

Buffer Resources

SEPTEMBER 11, 2023

I’ve never created LinkedIn content with the “goal” of lead generation or immediate-term sales. Another cool example I really like is Tito Bohrt — he stands out with the pseudo, “ Sales Mad Scientist ” — which demonstrates confidence and a unique identity online.

Sales Recruiting 52

Sales Recruiting Sales Hiring Scale Social Media 52

Sales Hacker

SEPTEMBER 30, 2020

Companies were growing their sales organizations and bringing in more revenue. Companies everywhere have frozen their hiring and laid off workers — with sales reps often among the first to go. I’ll be honest: as the leader of a sales-focused recruiting company, this has been tough for me and my team.

Sales Hiring 96

Sales Hiring Scale Sales Recruiting Sales 96

SaaStr

APRIL 23, 2019

And can you talk a little bit about touching on the hiring point, because you did say that you focused a lot on talent, and recruiting. And coming from Brazil without a big network in Silicon Valley, un-launched, without a website, it was actually really hard to recruit the first ten people. I’m going to go, and scale it up.”

Sales Hiring 151

Sales Hiring Sales Recruiting Scale Payment Methods 151

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. We’re experimenting with it, but we haven’t made a massive investment.

Payments 101

Payments Forecasting Payment Services Payment Solutions 101

SaaStr

DECEMBER 3, 2020

403: Sam Taylor is the VP of Sales and Success @ Loom, the startup that helps you get your message across by making it easy to record instantly shareable videos. As for Sam, prior to Loom, Sam spent over 4 years at Salesforce following their acquisition of Quip, a startup Salesforce acquired for $750M where Sam was also the 1st sales leader.

Scale 169

Scale Sales Hiring Sales Recruiting Sales 169

Sales Enablement, SaaS and Growth

OCTOBER 16, 2017

The sales enablement industry has taken tremendous strides in recent years, but by most measures, it's still a relatively immature function. To fill this "best practices void" and play my part in elevating the role of sales enablement I often take ideas from other fields and apply them to my work at HubSpot.

Sales Enablement 100

Sales Enablement Sales Recruiting Scale Sales 100

Andreessen Horowitz

OCTOBER 16, 2023

One of the toughest challenges for founders — and especially technical founders who are used to focusing so much on product features over sales — is striking “product-market fit”. So in that shift from product-market fit to product-market-SALES fit, how much should you optimize your go-to-market for product… and even the other way around?

Product Marketing 75

Product Marketing Scale Sales Hiring Sales Recruiting 75

ChurnZero

JULY 9, 2020

Sure, you won customers over to get the initial purchase, but what about your post-sale courting? Even if you don’t have a dedicated Customer Marketing role yet, there are activities and strategies your Customer Success and Marketing teams can work together to employ. Recruiting – Awards validate your hiring stature among new recruits.

Retention 64

Retention Strategy Scale Sales Recruiting 64

The Angel VC

DECEMBER 12, 2018

It’s an important question, as your target growth rate determines your hiring plan, budget, and fundraising strategy. What makes things tricky is, first, the uncertainty of how your CACs will develop at increasing scale and of how your churn rate will develop over time. The second issue is the timing of some of the major expenses.

Sales Recruiting 106

Sales Recruiting SaaS Payments Sales Hiring Scale 106

Sales Hacker

MARCH 17, 2021

While every entrepreneur dreams of scaling their startup into a multi-million dollar company, many do not understand all that goes into that dream. Strict sales volume does go a long way in achieving long-term revenue growth, but processes and cross-department alignment are what allow sales volumes to scale in the first place.

Scale 95

Scale Revenue Startup Sales Recruiting 95

OpenView Labs

OCTOBER 26, 2021

Does your product-led growth strategy deliver on its promise to customers and prospects? . The exciting thing about prototypes is that large-scale experiments can be built through open-source projects , which companies like Netflix and Linkedin will do as a strategic way of recruiting top talent. . Milestone: Selecting a price.

Sales Hiring 82

Sales Hiring Scale Sales Recruiting Marketing 82

SaaStr

SEPTEMBER 27, 2019

As for Ryan, prior to G2 he was Senior Director of Global Marketing at Hubspot where among many other achievements, he scaled HubSpot’s marketing-generated sales revenue by 330% year-over-year. We would generate 10x what we invested into that based on those people. Which is a super useful tactic. It works really well.

Sales Hiring 129

Sales Hiring Sales Recruiting Scale Software Review 129

Sales Hacker

DECEMBER 2, 2019

This week on the Sales Hacker podcast, we speak with Mary Rogul , a VP Sales Consultant, who’s currently an Enterprise Sales Advisor at Crayon. Fresh out of college, Mary started out in accounting, but it didn’t take long before she began a 20-year sales career that led her through Monster.com, HubSpot, and several others.

Scale 52

Scale Sales Recruiting Sales Hiring Sales 52

Tom Tunguz

MAY 18, 2015

Both companies eventually offered talent acquisition, performance management, and learning tools for human resources teams. Taleo initially focused on recruiting tools and SuccessFactors on performance management. As the chart above shows, both companies scaled revenue rapidly, reaching $100M in revenue 7 years after founding.

Sales Recruiting 100

Sales Recruiting Scale Software Acquisition 100

SaaStr

JULY 12, 2022

One of the first what How to Hire a Great VP of Sales at the New York Enterprise Tech Meet-Up (thank you to John Lehr and Work-Bench for setting this up). The Number One Thing You Can Do to Accelerate Your Business Post-Initial Traction is Hiring a Great VP of Sales. Now, I just invest in SasS companies. SaaStr is Turning 10!

Sales Hiring 251

Sales Hiring Part-Time VPE VP of Engineering Sales Recruiting 251