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. In 2021, there was much less focus on efficiency and more on revenue metrics like ARR. The 2022 Economic Climate, Barriers to Growth, and Recruitment.

Sales Recruiting 209

Sales Recruiting Sales Hiring Leadership Interviewing 209

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. Higher than he imagined in terms of the founder quality bar and, the stage of the business, and growth and efficiency metrics. On the sales side, people hired way too much.

Sales Hiring 259

Sales Hiring Sales Recruiting Scale Headcount 259

Tom Tunguz

JUNE 18, 2019

Over the last decade or so, I’ve compiled a metrics sheet to summarise a SaaS business. Redpoint SaaS Metrics Template. The template is broken into six sections: People, Bookings & Revenue, Cash, Sales, Marketing, Customer Success. This section covers employee satisfaction, headcount, and recruiting metrics.

Metrics 210

Metrics Sales Recruiting Startup SaaS 210

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 217

Sales Recruiting Sales Hiring Scale Customer Success 217

SaaStr

AUGUST 7, 2021

And your existing market. But if you can’t tell me the future (in your market) at least 3 years out … then it’s hard for me to believe in SaaS you’ll ever build a unicorn. So I always have to pass here, no matter how good the metrics look today. Gaming the metrics doesn’t help here.

Sales Recruiting 336

Sales Recruiting Scale AWS Investment 336

SaaS Metrics

JUNE 18, 2023

Picture a business model whereby a company doesn’t need a dedicated sales department to sell its wares or services. Instead, an ever-growing workforce of independent agents, working on commission, make the sales. Each independent distributor recruits more distributors for the business, essentially creating an expanding sales network.

Sales Recruiting 52

Sales Recruiting Engagement SaaS Marketing 52

SaaStr

NOVEMBER 13, 2022

When You Fall Out of Product-Market Fit. SaaStr 603: SaaStr CRO Confidential Presents the Ultimate Guide to Sales Compensation, Quotas and Recruiting with SaaStr CEO and Founder, Jason Lemkin. Live: SaaStr Workshop Wednesday with Battery Ventures on SaaS Metrics. Top Podcasts This Week: 1. Top Videos This Week: 1.

Sales Recruiting 227

Sales Recruiting AWS Compensation Enterprise 227

SaaStr

JULY 11, 2023

How do you win with a high-velocity sales strategy in a fast-moving, competitive market? In a special session of Workshop Wednesday, Gorgias Founder & CEO Romain Lapeyre and Gorgias VP of Sales & Partnerships Aasif Osmany share their learnings, advice, and hacks for optimizing your sales process. Mid-Market?

Sales Hiring 167

Sales Hiring SMB Sales Recruiting Payment Methods 167

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 249

Sales Recruiting Sales Hiring Scale VP of Engineering 249

SaaStr

JULY 29, 2021

Someone great at something core you aren’t: Sales, Engineering, Marketing. Great at sales. Great at marketing. If you hire someone to do the first sales, you’ll never understand it yourself. When you go to hire your first sales rep, hire 2. Hire a great marketer early. Make NPS a top company metric.

Sales Hiring 300

Sales Hiring Sales Recruiting Interviewing Engineering 300

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

AUGUST 11, 2021

A ways back at SaaStr, we did a post “If Your VP Sales Isn’t Going to Work Out — You’ll Know in 30 Days” At first, so many VPs of Sales I know hated the post. A great VP can’t always double sales in a month or two. Shares the key metrics they plan to improve. They can’t recruit.

Sales Recruiting 277

Sales Recruiting Scale Sales Hiring Scaling 277

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 98

Sales Recruiting Scale Retention Sales 98

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. What a great VP of marketing really does (tons on that here ). How to manage customer success. About this and that.

Sales Hiring 355

Sales Hiring Scale Sales Recruiting Engineering 355

Sales Hacker

DECEMBER 8, 2023

Rather, how you go-to-market is a significant determinant of success. Instead, how you launch them into the market is a huge factor in success. Today, we’re diving straight into the details with product marketing leaders. The greatest technology does not always win. Frame solutions, rather than features alone. Show, don’t tell.

Sales Recruiting 99

Sales Recruiting Generative AI AI AWS 99

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”. What does this mean for product design and product management? Today’s episode continues our enterprise go-to-market podcast series.

Product Marketing 81

Product Marketing Scale Sales Hiring Sales Recruiting 81

Tom Tunguz

JUNE 11, 2020

Recently, we welcomed Hollie Wegman to SaaS Office Hours to talk about marketing to developers. During our chat, Hollie shared some valuable wisdom from her experience as a marketing leader at Segment, Envoy, Mulesoft, and Salesforce. A recruiter in the audience submitted a question often discussed in startup boardrooms.

Sales Hiring 248

Sales Hiring Sales Recruiting Product Marketing Acquisition 248

SaaStr

NOVEMBER 12, 2022

Especially when some other crappy company just got funded last week with worse metrics. Some VCs will pay up even for very little growth and revenue so long as the management team is strong. They believe a strong team can literally will revenue into existence as long as there is the most basic product-market fit.

Scale 339

Scale Sales Recruiting Machine Learning Artificial Intelligence 339

User Pilot

JULY 27, 2023

Account Managers: They serve as the lead point of contact for all customer account management matters. Product Marketing Manager: This person is tasked with developing product marketing campaigns , crafting compelling marketing messages, and coming up with ideas to retain customers.

Sales Hiring 94

Sales Hiring SaaS Payments Sales Recruiting CTO Hire 94

SaaStr

JANUARY 28, 2022

When you think of scaling up, many things may come to mind, like hiring, culture, marketing, and sales. The go-to-market playbook. The go-to-market segment worked together on key metrics across the revenue board. You need people with fresh thinking, especially sales athletes and leaders who know your market.

Scale 181

Scale Sales Hiring Scaling Sales Recruiting 181

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.

Sales Hiring 178

Sales Hiring Sales Recruiting Scale Sales 178

SaaStr

MAY 2, 2021

“A Step by Step Guide to Build a Marketing Strategy to Take You to the First $100M with Snowflake” An A+ session from SaaStr Build 2021. #5. “The 5 Metrics You Should Track to Maximize Your Company’s Valuation with Tomasz Tunguz” A great session from the recent SaaStr Build with Tomasz. #9.

Sales Recruiting 143

Sales Recruiting Scale CTO Scaling 143

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. Sales Development. Sales Growth.

VP of Engineering 121

VP of Engineering Sales Recruiting Sales Hiring Payment Services 121

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

SaaStr

APRIL 5, 2021

I bet the freemium metrics appeared good, with positive growth and solid conversion rates. Because I suspected that small but interesting early traction was just bottom-feeding in the market. Not a true disruption in the market. Harder to Recruit. You’ll have to develop a very lean sales culture.

Scale 239

Scale Sales Recruiting Underperforming Technical Team Pricing 239

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

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. Related: 8 High-Paying Sales Jobs (And How to Get Them). Instead, respect recruiters’ time by showing them only enough information to secure the interview. Identify market trends. Manage pipeline.

Leadership 76

Leadership Sales Recruiting Sales Hiring Sales 76

SaaStr

AUGUST 25, 2023

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. If, in one sales cycle, things aren’t improving on several core metrics, they never will. The best VPs of Sales hit the ground running.

Part-Time VPE 185

Part-Time VPE Scale Sales Hiring CTO Hire 185

SaaStr

APRIL 17, 2019

Prior to Harness, Stephen was VP of Marketing at Glassdoor, managing a team of 52 in product marketing, helping grow B2B revenue from $19m to $90m in just 2 years, leading to their $1.2Bn acquisition. Steve has previously said, “Sales and marketing must be one team.” Why does he believe this is so important?

DevOps as a Service 100

DevOps as a Service Sales Recruiting Scale Sales Hiring 100

Baremetrics

NOVEMBER 25, 2021

Your marketing and sales budgets, and the personnel assigned to those teams, will also rise. A strong hiring plan will consider the growth trajectory of your company, the prevailing salary expectations of your market, and the staffing requirements to meet your needs. It helps maintain consistent growth.

Sales Hiring 97

Sales Hiring Sales Recruiting Finance Forecasting 97

InsightSquared

OCTOBER 10, 2019

With communication taking on digital forms, tech-based tools and solutions are lucrative to the success of a modern sales and marketing strategy. With your communication strategy in place, design your company branding to construct your sales and marketing digital presence. Implement Tech-based Tools.

Communication 70

Communication Sales Recruiting Marketing Sales 70

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

Tom Tunguz

MAY 15, 2017

It’s another thing altogether to have the sales team staffed to close that amount of business. The bookings capacity of the business is the amount of business a sales team should book in a certain period. They build a pipeline, learn the sales motion, and close a few accounts in the first few months.

Sales Hiring 120

Sales Hiring Sales Recruiting Scale Sales 120

SaaStr

NOVEMBER 25, 2019

The headline metrics: 15,000+ attendees. With power, snacks, and more, we’ll have lounges just for Founders; just for Sales + Marketing professionals; just for Builders (Dev + Product), and just for VCs to issue term sheets. Recruiting Fair. March 10-11-12 in San Jose, CA just south of San Francisco. 4,000+ CEOs.

New CTO 261

New CTO Sales Recruiting CTO Coach Scale 261

Kellblog

MAY 10, 2021

In this post, I’ll present what I view as the minimum sales management framework for an enterprise SaaS startup — i.e., the basics you should have covered as you seek to build and scale your sales organization [1]. Pipeline management rules, with an optional stage matrix. Quarterly metrics. Value (e.g.,

Sales Hiring 110

Sales Hiring Scale Sales Recruiting Enterprise 110

Unbounce

OCTOBER 18, 2021

When done right, marketing can be about more than return on investment or brand metrics. When we talk about “marketing that moves,” global brands like Nike or Dove easily come to mind. For small and midsize businesses (SMBs), marketing campaigns may be smaller —c’mon, who has the budget to advertise in the Superbowl?!—

Artificial Intelligence 136

Artificial Intelligence Marketing Scale Sales Recruiting 136

Valuize Consulting

JANUARY 25, 2024

While they touched on data strategy, tooling and metrics, all 3 experts emphasized that successful Digital Customer Success programs demand a holistic approach, embracing cross-functional collaboration and strategic adaptation. Next, apply these efficiency gains to upscale markets and develop predictive recommendations.

Customer Success 52

Customer Success Sales Recruiting Scale Strategy 52