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

SEPTEMBER 27, 2023

The list of problems is endless (this is one of the hardest parts of the job), but let me try to order a few of the biggest challenges roughly based on stage: Pre-Revenue: Finding a Truly Great Co-Founder That is Just as Committed as You. Then their collective revenues often only add up to Cappuccino money. It never ends.

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Sales Recruiting Sales Hiring Startup Scale 257

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.

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Scale Sales Hiring Sales Recruiting Sales 231

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. It generated over $53 million in revenue just in 2020. Leadership.

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Sales Hiring Sales Recruiting Sales Interviewing 103

SaaStr

MAY 6, 2021

Sandi Lin, CEO and Co-founder of Skilljar, and Kathy Lord, its CRO, know a thing or two about Chief Revenue Officers. You might never have considered a Chief Revenue Officer (CRO) because it’s not been a common role until very recently, and because you might not have the kind of revenue that needs its own manager.

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Sales Hiring Sales Recruiting Interviewing Revenue 241

SaaStr

OCTOBER 3, 2023

I asked this CRO how he’d handle the fact that 66% of their revenue came from indirect and channel. It’s so, so easy to stand out in recruiting if you’ve actually done your homework. He said that was the first time he’d heard that. The other day I did a similar final, fourth round interview for a VPM. Now I see who they sell to!”

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Interviewing Sales Hiring Sales Recruiting Consulting 229

SaaStr

FEBRUARY 27, 2023

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. Additionally, they had to figure out how they would sustain the revenue stream to retain the staff.

Scale 199

Scale Sales Hiring Sales Recruiting Scaling 199

SaaStr

SEPTEMBER 1, 2021

A new revenue team. For example, a great Stretch VP of Sales might get you to from $50k to $500k a month in new bookings. To recruit the team and resources it takes not just to meet the plan this quarter, but the next one and the following quarters as well. Many first-time VPs just can’t recruit great managers under them.

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Sales Recruiting Scale Sales Hiring Metrics 235

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.

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Sales Recruiting Sales Hiring Scale Social Media 128

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.

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Sales Recruiting Sales Hiring Scale Customer Success 217

Sales Hacker

MAY 6, 2021

What’s the difference between a VP of Sales and a Chief Revenue Officer (CRO)? The VP of Sales. Great VPs of sales have gravitas and tact, command the room and hold their end of the table regardless of who is on the other side. Singular focus on sales. And this is exactly why you hired them!

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VP of Engineering Sales Hiring Sales Recruiting Sales 93

Sales Hacker

JANUARY 19, 2023

I generated millions of dollars in revenue for the company. I socialized with them at elegant black-tie events, fine client dinners, and weekend leadership retreats. Maybe it goes without saying, I never heard them mistake the mail room guy or the security guard for a leadership team member.) But they didn’t see me.

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Sales Recruiting Underperforming Technical Team Sales Hiring Sales 85

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.

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Sales Hiring Scale Sales Recruiting Compensation 323

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.

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Part-Time VPE Sales Recruiting Sales Hiring Scale 268

SaaStr

MAY 3, 2021

A new edition, new services, an outbound sales team, an account management / upsell team. From $1m to $10m ARR or so, as you build your first management team: You shouldn’t be the VP of Sales Anymore As You Scale. You still need to spend 15-20% of your time in sales. Add a layer. the prospects).

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Part-Time VPE Sales Hiring Sales Recruiting Outsourcing Services 273

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. Recruiting is easier, but the things that don’t change are customers don’t care.

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Sales Recruiting Sales Hiring Scale VP of Engineering 249

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 184

Mucker Capital

APRIL 2, 2024

In this Mucker Growth session, Mike Genstil with ValueCore delves into the concept of value selling and its application in enterprise sales. As a founder, ideally you want your sellers, marketers, and product leaders aligned in transforming product features into value-based messages to accelerate sales cycles and secure corporate deals.

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Sales Recruiting Technical Review Enterprise Cybersecurity 52

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.

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Sales Recruiting Scale Retention Sales 98

SaaSX

JULY 12, 2020

Determining if sales or customer success should own customer expansion and renewals is the age-old SaaS question. If you are a SaaS founder, sales, or CX leader you have probably spent a lot of time thinking about this topic. What matters is leadership, clarity, and team composition. . Leadership. Team composition.

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Sales Recruiting Sales Hiring Sales SaaS 90

Sales Hacker

OCTOBER 30, 2018

Welcome to Sales Hacker’s first-ever Influential Women in Sales list! In this exclusive list, we wanted to honor not just female leaders that promote their own sales platform (no shame in that!) They say “You can’t be what you can’t see,” and the sales floor is no exception.

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Sales Recruiting VP of Engineering Scale Sales Hiring 111

Sales Hacker

AUGUST 7, 2020

Fortunately, more organizers than ever before are consciously seeking out female sales experts for panels, presentations, and podcasts. At Sales Hacker, we’re serious about diversity, and for that reason, we’ve compiled a list of 530+ female sales experts to consider for your next event. Leadership. Sales Development.

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VP of Engineering Sales Recruiting Sales Hiring Payment Services 121

SaaStr

MARCH 19, 2021

No lead commit, or revenue commit. A head of sales that doesn’t recruit at least one strong rep in the first 90 days. A head of customer success that doesn’t own churn, or net revenue retention in the first 90 days. I can go on. But the top VPs of Sales know you have to get it going soon.

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Sales Recruiting Sales Hiring SMB Engineering 324

InsightSquared

MAY 15, 2019

It’s one of my favorite questions to ask a fellow professional in sales operations. Insurance sales rep. Account Manager. Sales Operations is Still Developing. Sales operations as a profession is growing, yet it is a comparatively new function in businesses. Sales Ops is Many Disciplines in One.

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Sales Recruiting Scale Technical Review Sales 110

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. For example, relationship managers who made more phone and video calls saw 4.8%

Sales Hiring 171

Sales Hiring Sales Recruiting Underperforming Technical Team Scale 171

SaaStr

JANUARY 25, 2021

Not Hiring 2-3 Sales Reps to Start. More on that here: When You Hire Your First Sales Rep — Just Make Sure You Hire Two. I should have invested a little more in sales reps, more quickly, one we had some initial traction (see above). But I couldn’t see it, because we came up about 50% short on our revenue plan.

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Sales Recruiting Sales Hiring Scale SaaS 265

FastSpring

MARCH 8, 2021

We’ll go first––only 5% of leadership roles within the tech industry are women. With high numbers of men in leadership positions and a lack of emphasis on hiring women for those leadership roles, you can see the issue here. – Chelsea Cianciolo, Customer Success Manager . Why does a toy need to be gender-specific?

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Technical Review Sales Recruiting Sales Hiring Leadership 147

Sales Hacker

OCTOBER 17, 2022

Revenue growth requires modern organizations to adapt and change with our current complex landscape. As cross-functional leadership teams across the country clamor to prioritize and agree upon the top threats to address, many underestimate the importance of effective change management. In life, change is inevitable.

Sales Recruiting 77

Sales Recruiting Underperforming Technical Team Strategy Management 77

SaaStr

NOVEMBER 21, 2020

We’ve written a lot on SaaStr on how to increase the odds your first management team is a success. How to hire a great VP of Sales (tons on that here ). What a great VP of sales really does. How to manage customer success. About recruiting and helping you scale. When to hire her (more here ).

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Sales Hiring Scale Sales Recruiting Engineering 355

Sales Hacker

OCTOBER 19, 2022

Sales compensation planning can be a tricky beast to tame — but know that you’re not alone. I asked 12 incredible sales leaders across the SaaS industry to share their biggest challenges with comp planning and how to overcome them. Related: New to sales compensation planning? Top 10 sales compensation challenges.

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Compensation Sales Recruiting Sales Finance 94

Sales Hacker

SEPTEMBER 28, 2021

In this episode of the Sales Hacker Podcast, we have Hakim Myers , Business Recruiter at Nextdoor , where he recruits for people, finance, and legal functions for startups. Join us for a revealing conversation on sales and talent from the perspective of a recruiter in an executive search firm. powered by Sounder.

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Sales Recruiting Retention Scale Sales Hiring 81

SaaStr

SEPTEMBER 25, 2020

379: From how many reps to hire, to compensation models, here are the top 10 mistakes founders make when hiring their first sales teams and how to avoid them. Announcer: In today’s SaaStr Insider, SaaStr CEO and founder, Jason Lemkin, shared the top 10 mistakes founders make when hiring their first sales team.

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Sales Hiring Sales Recruiting Scale Sales 178

ChurnZero

NOVEMBER 29, 2022

When I ventured out to build my first Customer Success department at a tech software company, my leadership team thought I was nuts. At the time, I was a sales engineer, and my job was to close deals and move on to the next prospect. However, I found there were two flaws in our customer management process. We had the talent.

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Customer Success Sales Recruiting Technical Review Compensation 98

SaaStr

JANUARY 27, 2021

“Give the VP of Sales More Time” This is always terrible advice. If a VP of Sales can’t improve things in one sales cycle or less — she never will. In one sales cycle, or less. An owner will add more net new revenue than her salary. And you are better off without her. More on that here.

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Part-Time VPE Sales Hiring Scale Sales Recruiting 302

Sales Hacker

SEPTEMBER 27, 2022

In this episode of the Sales Hacker Podcast, we have Scott Barton , VP of Industry Solutions at Varicent. He’s an expert in the sales world, particularly in revenue operations and incentive compensation. Join us for a great conversation about driving the right behaviors within your sales team. powered by Sounder.

Compensation 80

Compensation Sales Recruiting Underperforming Technical Team Leadership 80

SaaStr

MARCH 10, 2020

That was the most over the top entrance that the sales leader for a company that moves boxes around the world has ever gotten. I’m Chief Revenue Officer at Flexport. So we did about 442 million in sales last year. The top 25 freight forwarders combined to do 100 billion a year in sales. FULL TRANSCRIPT BELOW.

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Scale Sales Hiring Sales Recruiting Scaling 199

Intercom, Inc.

JULY 28, 2022

And for Intercom’s VP of Sales EMEA, Sanj Bhayro , scaling is just what you need to invest in to ensure growth becomes as constant and linear as it can be. By the time he left to join Google Cloud as EMEA VP of Operations and Customer Growth, Salesforce had around 17 billion dollars in revenue and almost 50,000 employees.

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