SaaStr

APRIL 26, 2022

It’s the never-ending stereotype –– marketing and sales are eternal “frenemies.” However, this push-and-pull doesn’t have to be part of your organization as long as you hire and empower the right leadership. Tip Three: Better Recruiting. Your market model will guide your leadership model. Think long-game.

Leadership 194

Leadership Sales Hiring Sales Recruiting Scale 194

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.

Sales Hiring 255

Sales Hiring Sales Recruiting Scale Outbound Sales Team 255

SaaStr

OCTOBER 28, 2022

Conversations about the state of the SaaS market in 2022 are everywhere, and it can seem overwhelming for entrepreneurs and business leaders to make sense of everything. Leadership must communicate this objective to the entire company and ensure everyone works toward improving efficiency instead of simply bringing in more dollars.

Sales Recruiting 211

Sales Recruiting Sales Hiring Leadership Interviewing 211

Sales Hacker

NOVEMBER 17, 2022

If you’re looking to move up the ladder into a sales leadership role, your resume is key to getting your foot in the door. In this article, I’ll share my 3 ground rules of resume-writing, cover the parts of a leadership-level resume, and share a sample resume that will help you take your career to the next level. Volunteering.

Leadership 76

Leadership Sales Recruiting Sales Hiring Sales 76

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 marketing side, people got ‘lazy’ under the guise of, “Let’s increase our paid online ad spend and turn that dial up and spend more.”

Sales Hiring 261

Sales Hiring Sales Recruiting Scale Headcount 261

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. A good executive recruiter is like a real estate agent or matchmaker. A good recruiter is worth it.

Sales Recruiting 254

Sales Recruiting Sales Hiring Underperforming Technical Team Pricing 254

SaaStr

MARCH 25, 2023

So one recent survey we did really brought out a healthy debate: does your VP of Sales really need to be a product expert? Many of the comments said it was more important a VP of Sales understand process and leadership more than the product itself. They often melt. I say, you just gotta know the product. At least a little bit.

Scale 234

Scale Sales Hiring Sales Recruiting Sales 234

SaaStr

MARCH 14, 2022

We’ve talked a ton about How to Hire a Great VP of Sales on SaaStr, but I wanted to highlight a few VP of Sales “personas” that I rarely, if ever, see work out. Because again and again, many of your will hire this VP of Sales. Here are the types of VP of Sales that just never work out. Sales is hard.

Sales Recruiting 255

Sales Recruiting Sales Hiring Technical Review Scale 255

SaaStr

AUGUST 30, 2022

Great product, driven team, good early product-market fit, great vision. But after that, it starts to break down when you have to recruit a true management team, and in many cases, additional capital. They’ll know … Who can best recruit a management team? Check, check, check and check. My learning?

Sales Recruiting 238

Sales Recruiting Technical Cofounder Scale Investment 238

OpenView Labs

DECEMBER 16, 2019

So if scaling your sales organization is a priority in 2020, here are the things you need to be aware of to make sure you do so successfully. Marketing and candidate experience will be table stakes. Hiring sales leaders will get harder. So giving them a reason to choose you will be essential next year.

Sales Recruiting 53

Sales Recruiting Sales Hiring Scale Trends 53

Tom Tunguz

NOVEMBER 22, 2015

On December 2, SaaS Office Hours at Redpoint will welcome Maia Josebachvilli , VP of Strategy and People at Greenhouse, a fast growing recruiting software company. Maia is especially well known for her thought leadership in developing best in class recruiting metrics. She was also selected for Inc’s 30 under 30.

Sales Recruiting 100

Sales Recruiting Metrics SaaS Sales Funnel 100

SaaStr

SEPTEMBER 27, 2023

From $1m in ARR, and Then Forever After: Recruiting Great VPs. You need to learn to become great at recruiting. Why is my sales team less efficient at $20m ARR than at $2m in ARR? Why does my marketing team need 15 people? This challenge never ends. It never ends. And tenacious at it. And to always be doing it.

Sales Recruiting 259

Sales Recruiting Sales Hiring Startup Scale 259

SaaStr

AUGUST 8, 2023

The team is typically highly cross-functional, working together with sales, product, engineering, and marketing, and the goal is to help the other teams make better decisions through data and financial modeling. This role can be recruited through headhunters or your network. Every Wednesday at 10 a.m. Sign up for free HERE !

Scale 179

Scale Finance Outsourcing Services Sales Recruiting 179

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. It’s part of the job now.

Sales Recruiting 290

Sales Recruiting Trends Sales Hiring Software Review 290

SaaStr

JANUARY 8, 2022

Scaling your sales team can be one of the hardest things to do in SaaS. What’s the best way to help your sales team navigate today’s changing markets and changing priorities? And what’s the right time to fill crucial sales leadership roles? 1 Buyers Expect Personalization in Outbound Sales.

Scale 242

Scale Sales Recruiting Sales Hiring Scaling 242

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. I was a local sales manager or regional manager.

Sales Recruiting 262

Sales Recruiting Sales Hiring Scale Sales 262

SaaStr

NOVEMBER 22, 2021

I've never seen a great VP of Sales hide from a miss. We’ve talked a lot on SaaStr over the years about how to hire a great VP of Sales — and how to course-correct if you’ve made a miss hire. Every great VP of Sales has 1 or 2 folks that wants to follow them from their last role. Nothing gets better in 1 sales cycle.

Sales Recruiting 249

Sales Recruiting Sales Hiring Sales Marketing 249

SaaStr

AUGUST 15, 2021

Are you both willing to go 18–24 months before initial product market fit? But one of you has to lead on Customers/Sales/Marketing and the other likely on Product/Engineering for it really to work. Better recruiter than you. If your co-founder is a better recruiter than you, this is an immediate upgrade.

Sales Recruiting 273

Sales Recruiting Engineering Product Marketing Marketing 273

SaaStr

DECEMBER 13, 2021

Either by yourself, or with a Sales Ops / Marketing Ops / Some Sort of Ops leader under you. Look for dashboards, strong project management, strong pipeline projection after $5m ARR. If you don’t see things getting more organized, that manager can’t scale. Inability to hire great Directors / managers under them.

Scale 352

Scale Sales Recruiting Scaling Sales Hiring 352

SaaStr

SEPTEMBER 10, 2020

We’ve talked a lot over the years about how not to hire a wrong VP of Sales — 70%+ of the first VPs of Sales don’t make it even 10 months. And figure out if they really are great: For your prospective VP of Sales, did her top 2 hires at least crush it and blow out their quotas ? Recruiting.

Part-Time VPE 329

Part-Time VPE Sales Hiring CTO Hire Sales Recruiting 329

SaaStr

JUNE 2, 2023

Recruit diverse leaders The goal of hiring a revenue leader is to put gasoline on finding product market fit success. How they conduct themselves, engage, market the brand, and set a tone, reflect on the brand. The team has great visionary, product, and execution capabilities and a solid go-to-market strategy.

Sales Recruiting 222

Sales Recruiting Sales Hiring Scale Branding 222

SaaStr

OCTOBER 27, 2022

You need engineering, product in all start-ups — but in SaaS, even in the very early days, you also need sales, client success, true support, demand gen marketing, etc. Routine Sales. You gotta hire 2 great sales reps as soon as you can. This didn’t work well until I had a Great VP of Sales.

Sales Hiring 280

Sales Hiring Sales Recruiting Scale Scaling 280

Buffer Resources

SEPTEMBER 11, 2023

The reality is that the best LinkedIn users are marketing machines. I've built real friendships with the best B2B marketers in the world and I’m on a text-message basis with countless founders, CEOs, VPs, and executives. They use the platform as a content distribution system, not a resume builder. Quantify your results.

Sales Recruiting 125

Sales Recruiting Sales Hiring Scale Social Media 125

SaaStr

FEBRUARY 27, 2023

In 2019, the founding team at Storyblok set out to create a content marketing solution that worked for everyone—developers and marketers alike. Storyblok started with a leadership-first hiring plan and a recruitment strategy that involved the following: A test to know how candidates handle different tasks and their expertise level.

Scale 202

Scale Sales Hiring Sales Recruiting Scaling 202

SaaStr

APRIL 7, 2021

And that means your initial leadership team often takes you faster, and further, than you might ever think. There are roughly 2 types of start-up management teams. The first type is the kind of management team hired by second+ time founders. Often folks they convince to once again be a VP of Eng or VP of Sales.

Part-Time VPE 235

Part-Time VPE Sales Hiring Sales Recruiting CTO Hire 235

SaaStr

SEPTEMBER 1, 2021

For example, a great Stretch VP of Sales might get you to from $50k to $500k a month in new bookings. A sign of a marketer that may have reached their limits. Especially, if the marketing spend keeps growing but the leads don’t. Many first-time VPs just can’t recruit great managers under them.

Sales Recruiting 237

Sales Recruiting Scale Sales Hiring Metrics 237

SaaStr

MAY 14, 2023

Daniel, you grew to 3 million in ARR before you hired a VP of Sales. You had all the reps and SDRs reporting to you, managed it all yourself. How’d you manage all that? Daniel : We followed a lean start up approach to building our sales process. An engineering team and the sales team was me with a laptop.

Sales Hiring 242

Sales Hiring Sales Recruiting Scale Payment Methods 242

SaaStr

JUNE 24, 2022

Your best sales reps can close so much more than your average rep. Move the bottom 10% out and give the best leads to your top performer, and watch sales go up 20%. The best VPs of Sales design comp plans so the team never wants to leave. You should be striving for zero voluntary attrition on your sales team.

Sales Recruiting 219

Sales Recruiting Sales Hiring Scale Customer Success 219

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.

Sales Hiring 244

Sales Hiring Sales Recruiting Interviewing Revenue 244

SaaStr

JULY 9, 2022

The role of a VP is to own everything required to hit the goals for a functional area – Sales, Marketing, Product, Engineering, Finance, or Customer Success. This includes: Recruiting the team. While the answer may sound obvious, I’m not sure it always is in early-ish stage start-ups. This can be hard.

Sales Recruiting 266

Sales Recruiting Sales Hiring Finance Engineering 266

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. You can have the great product and a great team, but the market of small or very niche.

Sales Recruiting 251

Sales Recruiting Sales Hiring Scale VP of Engineering 251

SaaStr

AUGUST 20, 2020

343: Kyle Parrish is the Head of Sales @ Figma, the company that helps teams create, test and ship better designs from start to finish. In Today’s Episode We Discuss: * How Kyle made his way into the world of SaaS and sales and came to be Head of Sales at one of the fastest-growing companies in Figma. What worked?

Sales Hiring 195

Sales Hiring Sales Recruiting Scale Technical Advisors 195

SaaStr

SEPTEMBER 11, 2023

They are all avoidable : #1: Stepping Out of Sales Ok really this is mistake #1, #2, #3, #4 and #5. I see way too many founders, in the transition from founder-led sales to their first (or second) VP of Sales, look to get that time back. Instead, how they spend time in sales changes. This almost never works.

Sales Hiring 270

Sales Hiring Scale Sales Recruiting Scaling 270

SaaStr

AUGUST 7, 2020

A few factors that contribute to high-performing sales teams: High quota attainment. The best startups invest in their sales teams and work hard so most of the reps hit and exceed quota. Turning over a sales team is very hard on the organization. A great VP of Sales is worth her weight in gold. They have low attrition.

Sales Hiring 325

Sales Hiring Scale Sales Recruiting Compensation 325

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

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. Roughly 90%.

Sales Hiring 157

Sales Hiring Sales Recruiting Scale CTO Hire 157

SaaStr

MARCH 7, 2021

I thought it would be worth drilling down deeper into each of them, and sharing the learnings and mistakes: 1/ Spending less time fixing things, more time recruiting senior folks to own them. No one spends enough time recruiting as it is, after $1m ARR or so. Yes, you can manage the sales team yourself. You can do this.

Part-Time VPE 270

Part-Time VPE Sales Recruiting Sales Hiring Scale 270