SaaStr

SEPTEMBER 28, 2020

And how often is he recruiting? In fact, every single day he and his team go into their Recruiting War Room, and analyze every single possible recruit coming up the next four years. But in this phase — you need to be Head Recruiter yourself. At first everyone is sort of great at recruiting — by definition.

Sales Recruiting 265

Sales Recruiting Sales Hiring Scale Engineering 265

SaaStr

JULY 13, 2023

A strong sales leader is vital to any company hoping to scale. With this in mind, hiring for the Head of Sales role is one of the most important things a business can do. Unfortunately, too many companies focus on the wrong things when hiring their sales leaders, which can lead to hires that aren’t the best fit for the business.

Sales Recruiting 244

Sales Recruiting Sales Hiring Scale Sales 244

SaaStr

JUNE 13, 2025

” Recruiters cold-calling anyone with “machine learning” on their LinkedIn. Your sales team needs to understand how AI can improve lead scoring and outreach. It cascades down through middle management. When VPs of Sales are asking, “How can we use AI to improve our pipeline?”

Sales Hiring 239

Sales Hiring Artificial Intelligence AI Sales Recruiting 239

SaaStr

JANUARY 27, 2023

In particular, hiring for your sales team is critical in an uncertain economic outlook. Additionally, sales professionals looking for a new role should choose their next company wisely. Great Companies Attract Great Talent Blond and Braverman have enjoyed successful careers as sales leaders in high-performing companies.

Sales Recruiting 244

Sales Recruiting Sales Hiring Scale Compensation 244

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.

Sales Recruiting 246

Sales Recruiting Product Marketing Scale Sales Hiring 246

SaaStr

MARCH 24, 2025

Dear SaaStr: I’m Starting as a New VP of Sales. A new VP of Sales can add value immediately by focusing on a few critical areas that drive results and demonstrate leadership from day one: Assess and Support Top Performers : A great VP of Sales will immediately identify the top-performing reps and double down on them.

Sales Recruiting 155

Sales Recruiting Sales Hiring Sales Leadership 155

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.

Sales Recruiting 187

Sales Recruiting Sales Hiring Scale Underperforming Technical Team 187

SaaStr

MAY 31, 2025

Senior Engineers / Managers : 0.2%-0.5%. For example, a VP of Sales driving ARR growth might get closer to 1%, while a VP of HR might be closer to 0.3%. Senior Managers / Directors : 0.1%-0.3%. At this stage, equity grants are more about retention than recruitment. Senior Managers / Directors : 0.05%-0.1%.

Part-Time VPE 195

Part-Time VPE Sales Hiring Sales Recruiting Compensation 195

SaaStr

MARCH 6, 2025

One of the classic original SaaStr posts was on the Top 10+ Questions to Ask a VP of Sales Candidate. It’s a different world today, AI-fueled, often distributed and hybrid, and with inflation both in titles (CRO or VP Sales) and compensation expectations. Use this updated script for hiring that first VP of Sales.

Sales Recruiting 184

Sales Recruiting Sales Hiring Scale Interviewing 184

SaaStr

JUNE 6, 2025

Whether it’s hiring a VP of Sales who’s scaled a team to $50M ARR or finding a product leader who’s built enterprise-grade solutions, the talent pool here is unparalleled. #2. You Have Access to A+ Local Engineering Talent If you can recruit the best of the best in London, Paris, etc. … It’s just much harder to manage.

Sales Recruiting 221

Sales Recruiting Scale Sales Hiring B2B 221

SaaStr

AUGUST 14, 2020

A mistake many founders make is hiring a VP of Sales who has many strengths — but not at sales per se. A VP of Sales who is smart, polished, and worked at the right place, in a management-level position. That can talk about quota attainment and sales operations and scaling and number. you might ask.

Sales Recruiting 363

Sales Recruiting Sales Hiring Scale Sales 363

SaaStr

DECEMBER 16, 2020

We’ve talked a lot on SaaStr about how to make that critical hire: the VP Sales. 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. And lessons learned on what a VP Sales really does. Job #1 is Recruiting. It all clicks.

Sales Recruiting 360

Sales Recruiting Sales Hiring Sales Engineering 360

SaaStr

NOVEMBER 25, 2020

We’ve talked a lot on SaaStr about how to hire a Great VP of Sales. And we’ll keep talking about it — so long as 70% of first-time VPs of Sales don’t make it 1 year. I wanted to take a moment to explore the flip-side … a guide to why first-time VPs of Sales that finally get their shot — fail.

Sales Hiring 359

Sales Hiring Sales Recruiting Sales Headcount 359

SaaStr

DECEMBER 9, 2023

Dear SaaStr: What’s the #1 Mistake New Sales Leaders Make? Let me just summarize my #1 observation here: the top mistake first-time sales managers make is recruiting. It is incredibly hard to figure out how to replicate the magic of the first 1 or 2 sales reps that work closely with the CEO.

Sales Recruiting 284

Sales Recruiting Sales Hiring Sales Management 284

SaaStr

MAY 22, 2025

Dear SaaStr: How Can I Crush a VP of Sales Interview? To nail a VP Sales interview, you need to demonstrate that youre not just a smooth talker with a great LinkedIn profileyou need to show youre the real deal. Too many VPs of Sales and CROs show up to interviews knowing almost nothing about the product.

Sales Recruiting 194

Sales Recruiting Interviewing Sales Hiring Scale 194

SaaStr

SEPTEMBER 8, 2024

When building a list, try to define your potential customer as granularly as possible – size, location, industry, ideal buyer, sales process, technology stack, etc. This will allow you to be much more targeted with your messaging when reaching out and will help you optimize your sales funnel. Pricing is always evolving.

Sales Recruiting 322

Sales Recruiting Scale Venture Capital Sales Hiring 322

SaaStr

SEPTEMBER 27, 2021

In the “old” days, there was a rough rule that as soon as you are bringing on more than 1–2 reps a quarter, you needed to hire a director of sales ops. That at that point, at a minimum, there would be too much administrative work for your VP of Sales to handle it herself. You want the sales ops help scaled up and helping before then.

Sales Hiring 290

Sales Hiring Sales Recruiting Scale Sales 290

SaaStr

JULY 11, 2020

When I catch up with founders on the march from $1m to $10m in ARR, the number one topic has always shifted to recruiting. Where do i find a great VP of Sales, Marketing, Engineering, Product, Customer Success, etc.? Some times, it seems like simply building a management team is all you have time for. But it’s not.

Sales Recruiting 363

Sales Recruiting Management Engineering Customer Success 363

SaaStr

DECEMBER 16, 2020

Q: What makes a great sales leader? The best sales managers / directors / VPs: Recruit great team members. Sales requires a linear number of hires to grow bookings. So you have to be a great recruiter to scale. In fact, the best sales leaders always upgrade the team within 60 days of taking a new role.

Sales Recruiting 293

Sales Recruiting Sales Hiring Scale Sales 293

SaaStr

MARCH 5, 2025

In our most recent episode of CRO Confidential , hosted by Sam Blond , Graham Moreno , VP of Worldwide Sales at Codium, shared invaluable insights on what drove this growth, the challenges they faced, and how other SaaS companies can replicate this success. Key Growth Drivers 1.

Sales Hiring 178

Sales Hiring Scale Sales Recruiting AI 178

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.

Sales Recruiting 313

Sales Recruiting Sales Hiring Sales Interviewing 313

SaaStr

JANUARY 24, 2021

2021 will be the year SaaS sales evolves the most since the Appexchange ecosystem started to take off ~15 years ago, which spawned the entire notion of a true sales app stack. The permanent move to distributed sales teams. Almost every SaaS VP of Sales and CRO I’ve talked to in the past few months isn’t going back.

Sales Recruiting 354

Sales Recruiting Scale Technical Review Sales 354

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 328

Sales Recruiting Sales Hiring Scale Sales 328

SaaStr

NOVEMBER 19, 2020

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. We’ve talked about this a lot on SaaStr, but hiring a true VP of Sales before you have 2 reps hitting quota (and thus a repeatable, if not yet fully repeating process) is too early. Earlier is better.

Part-Time VPE 363

Part-Time VPE Sales Hiring CTO Hire Scale 363

SaaStr

APRIL 29, 2019

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.

Sales Recruiting 278

Sales Recruiting Sales Hiring Scale Management 278

Tom Tunguz

SEPTEMBER 7, 2020

Whether you manage a team of engineers, a team of regional sales managers, or the company, your first responsibility is to hire and successfully manage the seven people who will form your leadership team. First, as a company grows, the most important thing is recruiting.

Sales Hiring 263

Sales Hiring Sales Recruiting Management Leadership 263

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. Don’t just check who they managed at their last company. Not inherited as a manager. And you end up with hires that can’t recruit great people.

Part-Time VPE 352

Part-Time VPE Sales Hiring CTO Hire Sales Recruiting 352

The Daily Egg

MAY 13, 2021

Getting your sales job advertisement in front of eyeballs can be an uphill task but doable with targeted keywords. Most managers and recruiters will admit to having a hard time crafting appealing job postings. The post Sales Job Descriptions and Titles – The Complete Guide appeared first on The Daily Egg.

Sales Recruiting 283

Sales Recruiting Sales Advertising Management 283

SaaStr

JANUARY 3, 2024

Dear SaaStr: Should I Go Into SaaS Sales? If you aren’t sure you want to go into sales — don’t do it. Maybe in 2021, when many SaaS leaders were growing at simply unprecedented rates, could succeed in sales if you weren’t sure you wanted to sell. link] You will build amazing people, management and recruiting skills.

Sales Recruiting 293

Sales Recruiting Sales SaaS Management 293

Tom Tunguz

APRIL 5, 2020

If we tally the reductions by category, travel, retail, fitness, real estate, transportation, and recruiting constitute the top 6 categories. Aside from recruiting, these are all consumer discretionary spend categories. ClassPass, one of the fitness startups to reduce headcount, reported a 95% drop in sales in 10 days.

Sales Recruiting 357

Sales Recruiting Startup Headcount Sales Hiring 357

TechEmpower SaaS

MARCH 4, 2024

Key Functions with High Impact Generative AI is revolutionizing sales by enabling dynamic pricing and personalized customer interactions, boosting conversion rates and customer satisfaction. Post-sale, AI analyzes customer data to improve service and loyalty, making it a cornerstone of modern sales methodologies.

Generative AI 443

Generative AI CTO Hire AI Sales Recruiting 443

SaaStr

JANUARY 27, 2021

We’ve talked a ton on SaaStr over the years on how to make sure your VP of Sales and top hires really work out. We can pretty much summarize a lot of it into the following: Your VP of Sales should have lots of experience selling at your average ACV. for that type of sale. That they are the right ones. Ask who they are.

Sales Recruiting 332

Sales Recruiting Sales Hiring Scale Sales 332

SaaStr

JANUARY 30, 2021

Most of us can’t afford to hire a VPM 12 months before we have our first customer, and we can’t survive through 10 sales reps without one. It’s not quite as terrible as waiting too long for a VP of Sales. A great VP of Marketing can help make the sales reps better qualitatively, even before you have a VP of Sales.

Sales Hiring 352

Sales Hiring Sales Recruiting Scale Marketing 352

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. Way too many folks give managers a pass here that never understand the product. Sales is hard.

Sales Hiring 303

Sales Hiring Sales Recruiting Sales Interviewing 303

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.

Sales Recruiting 246

Sales Recruiting Sales Hiring Scale Enterprise 246

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 354

Scale Sales Recruiting Sales Hiring Scaling 354

SaaStr

MAY 17, 2021

Q: Dear SaaStr: What is the path to become a great VP of Sales? Each story is different, but there is one clear penultimate step: recruiting and managing a small team yourself. What 95 times out of 100 is a recipe for failure is jumping straight from successful individual rep to VP of sales. Not just managing one.

Sales Recruiting 228

Sales Recruiting Sales Hiring Sales Startup 228