SaaStr

JANUARY 24, 2024

What should you look for in an Enterprise rep vs. a Mid-Market rep? Solving High Volume, Low Conversion at Lattice Dini Mehta joined Lattice at $3M in revenue when it had just 10 people in seat for Go-To-Market and 7 salespeople. How do you diagnose and solve churn? From a GTM execution standpoint, they weren’t focused.

Scale 215

Scale Sales Hiring Scaling Revenue 215

SaaStr

JANUARY 30, 2021

One of the starkest differences I see between First Timers in SaaS and Second Timers is when they hire their VP of Marketing. They often hire a VP of Demand Gen Marketing even before they have their first paying customers. It’s not quite as terrible as waiting too long for a VP of Sales. Second Timers know.

Sales Hiring 350

Sales Hiring Sales Recruiting Scale Marketing 350

OpenView Labs

APRIL 29, 2021

OpenView, Work-Bench , Primary Venture Partners , and Lerer Hippeau just hosted the fourth and final session of SaaS Growth Camp—a series for the firms’ portfolio companies tailored to the complex ideas behind SaaS growth and go-to-market strategies. Recruiting top talent is the common denominator across all scaling startups.

Sales Recruiting 81

Sales Recruiting Outsourcing Services Sales Hiring Scale 81

SaaStr

MAY 16, 2024

They dive into the nuances of topics like: Evolving dynamics of remote work The most effective marketing channels of 2024 Owned assets vs. “walled gardens” The practical realities vs. the hype around AI As everyone here at SaaStr knows, Jason sold his first company, Echosign, for $400M. As a manager, you have to do things differently.

Sales Recruiting 216

Sales Recruiting AI Search B2B Sales Hiring 216

SaaStr

AUGUST 9, 2023

I had a great CTO, but I also needed a truly great VPE to scale past $10m ARR and deal with all those issues. Not becoming a better recruiter. I recruited a great VP of Sales, a strong VP of Marketing, a great VP of Product (now COO at Gong), and a great VP of Customer Success. But I was a sequential recruiter.

Part-Time VPE 191

Part-Time VPE Sales Recruiting CTO Scale 191

SaaStr

SEPTEMBER 27, 2023

From $1m in ARR, and Then Forever After: Recruiting Great VPs. You need to learn to become great at recruiting. As you finally begin to scale, you’ll have enough revenue to hire some great folks, but not enough to build very redundant teams. More here: From Initial Traction to Initial Scale (~$10M in ARR): The Hardest Phase.

Sales Recruiting 244

Sales Recruiting Sales Hiring Startup Scale 244

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 361

Sales Recruiting Sales Hiring Scale Sales 361

SaaStr

JUNE 17, 2023

The toughest part in the end is always recruiting. Recruiting. Over time, that’s recruiting more and more senior folks, so the target changes. As your company scales, you’ll start to hit 15%+ attrition in your employee base just naturally each year. You’ll have to be recruiting new ones all the time.

Sales Recruiting 166

Sales Recruiting Scale Compensation Business Model 166

SaaStr

MARCH 5, 2021

Flock Safety’s Founder and CEO, Garrett Langley, and its VP of Growth, Alex Latraverse, know a bit about sales. Enough to go from 0 to 100 sales reps in about 18 months — and they’re looking to be well beyond 100 by the end of this month. Here are some things to remember when you think about scaling your next big SaaS company.

Sales Recruiting 170

Sales Recruiting Sales Hiring Scale Sales 170

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 221

Sales Recruiting Technical Cofounder Scale Investment 221

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 184

Scale Sales Hiring Sales Recruiting Scaling 184

Intercom, Inc.

SEPTEMBER 10, 2020

It’s an approach that’s served him well along the road to building the HubSpot sales team, where he was CRO for nine years. That experience led to his bestselling book, The Sales Acceleration Formula. A data-driven framework for scaling. Mark’s latest ebook, The Science of Scaling , outlines a precise framework for success.

Scale 226

Scale Scaling Sales Recruiting Sales Hiring 226

SaaStr

AUGUST 28, 2020

I know we’ve hit a number of these points individually before on SaaStr, but after getting asked about the top mistakes hiring your first sales team so many times over the years, I thought it would be worthwhile to assemble a Top 10 List. Make fewer of them and you’ll scale faster with less stress. Yes, you may be terrible at sales.

Sales Hiring 320

Sales Hiring Sales Recruiting Scale Sales 320

SaaStr

FEBRUARY 25, 2021

Ah the VP of Sales. The first post is What a Great VP of Sales Actually Does. The second post is a script for you to use (and modify as you see fit) – 10 Great Questions to Ask a VP Sales Candidate. Just so you know, there are 48 Different Types of VP Sales. Corporate Marketing). The toughest hire.

Sales Hiring 362

Sales Hiring Scale Sales Recruiting Sales 362

SaaStr

DECEMBER 11, 2020

On how to recruit in the early days, when not everyone gets it. The Q+A at the end is especially good — stay for it: #3: “Zendesk’s Secret Sauce to Scaling to $1B: SMB and Mid-Market Success” with VP Global SMB Sales Sharon Prosser and VP GTM Strategy Astha Malik. . And much more! And much more.

Scale 173

Scale Sales Recruiting Scaling SMB 173

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 278

Sales Hiring Sales Recruiting Scale Scaling 278

SaaStr

JANUARY 23, 2024

Dear SaaStr: Does it get easier or harder to scale SaaS as your company grows? Generally, it gets easier to grow at a “good”/modest rate at you scale, but harder to grow at an outsize rate. Efficiency goes down in other places (sales efficiency usually, marketing efficiency often). Account expansion starts to work.

Scale 190

Scale Sales Recruiting Scaling Branding 190

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 244

Sales Hiring Sales Recruiting Scale Headcount 244

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

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. Sanj has plenty of experience scaling sales teams at growing businesses, and that’s precisely why, as of November of last year, he‘s overseeing EMEA sales at Intercom.

Scale 210

Scale Scaling Sales Hiring Sales Recruiting 210

SaaStr

JANUARY 28, 2022

When you think of scaling up, many things may come to mind, like hiring, culture, marketing, and sales. But what are the essentials of scaling up, and how do you navigate obstacles along the way to function as a high-impact organization? The go-to-market playbook.

Scale 169

Scale Sales Hiring Scaling Sales Recruiting 169

SaaStr

SEPTEMBER 1, 2021

Pretty incredible at scale. 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. What changed? A new revenue team. Be on the lookout.

Sales Recruiting 226

Sales Recruiting Scale Sales Hiring Metrics 226

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. Not just with buzzwords.

Scale 217

Scale Sales Hiring Sales Recruiting Sales 217

SaaStr

AUGUST 26, 2020

Founder-led sales generally stops scaling around $1m-$2m ARR. A sign to hire a real sales leader. Over the years at SaaStr we’ve talked a lot about hiring a great VP of Sales, when it works, when it does, and how it moves the needle. The distraction of building a real sales team isn’t worth it yet.

Sales Hiring 276

Sales Hiring Sales Recruiting Scale Sales 276

SaaStr

FEBRUARY 5, 2023

SaaStr 630: Sales-led vs. Product-led? SaaStr 629: CRO Confidential: Sales Recruitment in 2023 For Candidates and Hiring Managers With Flexport’s Ben Braverman   3. SaaStr 628: Revenue Alignment: How to Pull Marketing, Sales, and Customer Success Together with Divvy CRO Sterling Snow  5.

Sales Recruiting 183

Sales Recruiting Sales Hiring Scale Venture Capital 183

Sales Hacker

JANUARY 30, 2023

The first goal of sales at a startup isn’t to bring in revenue — it’s to get customer feedback. I’ve spent the last year working to find product-market fit for my startup, Dock. I’ve used our sales process to iterate our way to product market-fit and wanted to share what I’ve learned along the way.

Sales Recruiting 88

Sales Recruiting Product Marketing Scale Sales Hiring 88

SaaStr

MARCH 10, 2020

Ben Braverman explains how Flexport entered a competitive market with a unique model and continues to grow. Rely on your success, know you are doing something right and scale faster. That was the most over the top entrance that the sales leader for a company that moves boxes around the world has ever gotten.

Scale 196

Scale Sales Hiring Sales Recruiting Scaling 196

SaaStr

JULY 22, 2019

SaaStr Scale, our one day, San Francisco based event. The Playbook To… Hear from different revenue leaders on the playbooks to revenue growth, scaling, building better teams and more. The Playbook to Building a Thriving Sales Culture with PatientPop SVP of Sales Justin Welsh. The post SaaStr Scale is coming to SF!

Scale 185

Scale Sales Recruiting Scaling Sales Hiring 185

SaaStr

MAY 14, 2023

Check out this week’s top blog posts, podcasts, and videos: Top Blog Posts This Week: 15+ of The Top Sales & Marketing Mistakes SaaS Startups Make (Updated) Cloudflare: Our Top Reps Are Hitting 129% of Quota. 7 Things All Founders Should Know About Sales with Dave Kellogg: SaaStr Workshop Wednesday LIVE 2.

Sales Recruiting 189

Sales Recruiting Scale Generative AI AI 189

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 203

Sales Recruiting Sales Hiring Scale Customer Success 203

SaaStr

JANUARY 29, 2023

SaaStr 628: Revenue Alignment: How to Pull Marketing, Sales, and Customer Success Together with Divvy CRO Sterling Snow  2. SaaStr 629: CRO Confidential: Sales Recruitment in 2023 For Candidates and Hiring Managers With Flexport’s Ben Braverman   3.

Sales Recruiting 178

Sales Recruiting Sales Hiring Scale AWS 178

Sales Hacker

APRIL 23, 2024

Before Common Room, Linda led product marketing for serverless computing at Amazon Web Services, where she saw firsthand the impact connected data and person-level insights had on accelerating product adoption, earning new customers, and expanding account revenue. 11:07 – Differences between intent data and signal-based selling.

Sales Recruiting 85

Sales Recruiting Scale AWS Management 85

SaaStr

DECEMBER 10, 2020

I hear again and again from SaaS founders growing to $5m, $10m ARR or even more that they don’t need a certain VP — with the exception of a VP of Sales. That they can get away without no one in the role, or a just a junior person in marketing, in product, in success, in biz dev, etc. I Need a VP of Sales.

Sales Hiring 349

Sales Hiring CTO Hire Sales Recruiting Scale 349

Tom Tunguz

FEBRUARY 7, 2018

However, continuing this way isn’t the path to huge scale. To recruit 100 people. To understand the competitive dynamics in the market. To answer these questions, the team must look beyond this today’s one-on-ones and this month’s engineering milestones this quarter’s sales pipeline.

Scale 228

Scale Scaling Sales Recruiting Startup 228

SaaStr

JUNE 23, 2020

Q: What’s the number one challenge for scale-up founders? In SaaS, it is recruiting your VPs and management team : SaaS products mostly don’t sell themselves. You can hack managing and finding 1–3 reps yourself, but after that, you really need a VP of Sales. Marketing is also an art and science.

Part-Time VPE 230

Part-Time VPE CTO Hire Fractional VPE Sales Recruiting 230

SaaStr

SEPTEMBER 3, 2021

An oldie but a good on that here: Your #1 Sales Rep Should Be Driving an M8 Convertible By Month 12. It also means cutting lose folks who after a sales cycle or two will never hit quota. Sales is hard. Fourth, make the OTE (“On Target Earnings”) market correct. This sets an example for everyone.

Sales Recruiting 226

Sales Recruiting Scale Sales Startup 226

SaaStr

APRIL 17, 2023

4,000+ of us will get together there to share, scale and learn. Tons of VPs of Sales, Marketing, Product and CS still come to Europa. founder I talked to last week that went to both last year said it was easier to meet other founders at Europa, and easier to meet sales execs to recruit at Annual. It’s special.

Sales Recruiting 235

Sales Recruiting Scale Cloud Scaling 235