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. Want to see more content like this?

Sales Recruiting 262

Sales Recruiting Sales Hiring Scale Sales 262

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

APRIL 30, 2022

Check out this 2018 Europa session with Guillaume Princen, Head of France and Southern Europe @ Stripe, where he talks about the metrics you need to be focused on in your startup. If you don’t have the time to watch the whole session, here are the main metrics you should be mindful of. Average Revenue per Customer.

SaaS Payments 239

SaaS Payments Metrics Payment Methods Scale 239

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

JULY 10, 2022

She brings in even better reps, and the revenue per rep goes up. A great VP of Customer Success in just a quarter or so decreases churn and increases account revenue growth. It’s hard enough just to maintain KPIs and metrics as you scale. Sales growth slowly declines as she struggles to bring in enough reps.

Sales Recruiting 194

Sales Recruiting Sales Hiring Scale Churn 194

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

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!

VP of Engineering 93

VP of Engineering Sales Hiring Sales Recruiting Sales 93

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

MAY 14, 2023

Algolia went from zero to seven figures in revenue in 12 months, and the launch of their search as a service product, and grew pricing from $19 a month to $100,000, which sounds amazing. 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.

Sales Hiring 242

Sales Hiring Sales Recruiting Scale Payment Methods 242

SaaStr

JULY 29, 2021

Someone great at something core you aren’t: Sales, Engineering, Marketing. Great at sales. Somehow, find enough cash to make it 24 months to first real revenue. Even if on their own, they aren’t enough revenue to really pay for all that much. If you hire someone to do the first sales, you’ll never understand it yourself.

Sales Hiring 300

Sales Hiring Sales Recruiting Interviewing Engineering 300

SaaStr

OCTOBER 3, 2022

When approaching a GTM exercise, one thing needs to be very clear: the company’s revenue strategy. This revenue strategy consists of three core questions: What is the market opportunity—the problem that needs to be solved? Sales Cycle. Post Sales. Hire talent strategically and be two steps ahead with sales capacity.

Scale 223

Scale Sales Hiring Sales Recruiting Scaling 223

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

AUGUST 9, 2022

Investments I've made that didn't work out: – Momentum investment – CEO a bit of bulls**t artist – CEO good at sales but weak product team / CTO. Some sales-y, some very technical. CEO good at sales, but CTO not that great. — Jason 2022 SaaStr Annual Sep 13-15 Lemkin (@jasonlk) August 6, 2022.

Investment 272

Investment Sales Recruiting CTO Startup 272

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 180

Sales Hiring Sales Recruiting Scale Sales 180

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.

Sales Recruiting 251

Sales Recruiting Sales Hiring Scale VP of Engineering 251

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 ).

Sales Hiring 356

Sales Hiring Scale Sales Recruiting Engineering 356

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 279

Sales Recruiting Scale Sales Hiring Scaling 279

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

OpenView Labs

NOVEMBER 16, 2021

Generally, success hinges on a company’s ability to acquire a deep understanding of the metrics that most accurately gauge company performance and profitability. A Quick Glossary of SaaS Metrics. Annual Recurring Revenue (ARR). ACV Ratio = Expense of marketing campaigns : Revenue from marketing campaigns.

Benchmarks 71

Benchmarks Scale Metrics Sales Recruiting 71

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. Manage large teams, both in-office and remote.

Leadership 76

Leadership Sales Recruiting Sales Hiring Sales 76

SaaStr

JULY 1, 2020

An open discussion with Sam Blond, CSO at Brex, and Kristen Habacht, VPS at Atlassian, about adjusting their sales process during Covid-19. Kristen Habacht runs EDR sales at Atlassian, which I got a check today, $40 billion-$50 billion company. She manages a huge global team. Four, people in the sale? Jason Lemkin: None.

Merchant Services 180

Merchant Services Scale Sales Recruiting Sales 180

Tom Tunguz

MAY 15, 2017

How much revenue do you want to book for your SaaS startup next quarter? 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. So does recruiting time.

Sales Hiring 120

Sales Hiring Sales Recruiting Scale Sales 120

Baremetrics

SEPTEMBER 10, 2021

Before we look at the promised SaaS revenue models, let’s get a couple definitions out of the way. We need to differentiate among three similar sounding but very different concepts: revenue stream, revenue model, and business model. Revenue stream: This is a single source of revenue for a company.

Payments 102

Payments SaaS Payments Revenue Payment Solutions 102

SaaStr

NOVEMBER 12, 2022

Especially when some other crappy company just got funded last week with worse metrics. Still, some VCs want to see at least one solid VP on the team, or at least, one solid manager you can scale under. Some VCs will pay up even for very little growth and revenue so long as the management team is strong.

Scale 339

Scale Sales Recruiting Machine Learning Artificial Intelligence 339

SaaStr

JANUARY 28, 2022

When you think of scaling up, many things may come to mind, like hiring, culture, marketing, and sales. Here are three things that helped 6sense reach this mark and beyond: Defining their revenue operating model by hiring for RevOps and not taking the common DevOps and SalesOps approach. The friction between sales and marketing.

Scale 183

Scale Sales Hiring Scaling Sales Recruiting 183

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 188

Part-Time VPE Scale Sales Hiring CTO Hire 188

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. Average salary: $46,035/yr.

Sales Hiring 92

Sales Hiring SaaS Payments Sales Recruiting CTO Hire 92

Sales Hacker

MAY 20, 2021

You should approach this tactically with honed and consistent metrics. You need to measure and repeat so you and your sales team only put effort into promising prospects abroad. Develop a focused sales approach. More than any other time, with limited travel, companies must be very focused in their international sales approach.

Scale 90

Scale Metrics Outsourcing Services Sales Recruiting 90

SaaStr

NOVEMBER 28, 2021

.” Nearly a decade and 500 episodes of the podcast later, we invited back our original SaaStr podcast host, Harry Stebbings of 20VC for a catch-up chat with Jason to discuss the world of venture today and how to scale a successful SaaS sales team from the bottom up. You never get to spend less time in sales as a SaaS CEO.

Scale 192

Scale Sales Hiring Sales Recruiting Scaling 192

Sales Hacker

OCTOBER 7, 2021

Women in sales often have a polarizing experience. In the Sales Hacker video series Aha Moments , I asked 10 women: “What is one ‘aha moment’ you’ve had in your sales career?”. The conversations that followed were so authentic and encouraging that we decided to expand this conversation to other badass women in the sales world.

Scale 130

Scale Sales Recruiting Sales Hiring VP of Engineering 130

SaaStr

JULY 30, 2020

356: Pete Kazanjy is the Co-Founder @ Atrium, the startup providing proactive, always-on insights for sales operations, managers, and leaders. Alongside Atrium, Pete is also the Founder of Modern Sales Pros, a community of 15,000 focused on sales operations and sales management. Stop asking questions.

Part-Time VPE 202

Part-Time VPE Scale Sales Recruiting Sales Hiring 202

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”. So in that shift from product-market fit to product-market-SALES fit, how much should you optimize your go-to-market for product… and even the other way around?

Product Marketing 80

Product Marketing Scale Sales Hiring Sales Recruiting 80

SaaStr

DECEMBER 3, 2020

403: Sam Taylor is the VP of Sales and Success @ Loom, the startup that helps you get your message across by making it easy to record instantly shareable videos. As for Sam, prior to Loom, Sam spent over 4 years at Salesforce following their acquisition of Quip, a startup Salesforce acquired for $750M where Sam was also the 1st sales leader.

Scale 174

Scale Sales Hiring Sales Recruiting Sales 174

OpenView Labs

AUGUST 19, 2021

Sales recruiting is broken. The sad truth is that VP of Sales are turning over within 19 months —and that timeline is shrinking. . Not only that, the market has heated way back up and the VP of Sales is one of the most sought after roles. This isn’t linear and there are many shades of grey when it comes to sales. .

Sales Hiring 82

Sales Hiring Sales Recruiting Scale Startup 82

SaaStr

OCTOBER 12, 2020

You can also totally change your sales team. And driving down churn increases revenue just as clearly and surely as closing net new deals. In a way, this is the same point as #1, almost — except you can recruit even more of the team here. The sales team can call back every single prospect, not just the good ones.

Sales Recruiting 347

Sales Recruiting Sales Hiring Churn Onboarding 347

Tom Tunguz

OCTOBER 9, 2013

One number investors use to benchmark SaaS startups across sectors and industries is sales efficiency. There are a handful of variants of this metric, sometimes called the magic number, but ultimately they all aim to provide some sense of the incremental revenue returned by sales and marketing investment.

Benchmarks 120

Benchmarks Sales Recruiting Startup Sales 120

Sales Hacker

MARCH 17, 2021

Getting past the first stage of revenue growth and building an initial customer base is the easy part, but what happens when you hit a revenue plateau and can’t seem to take that next step? Combatting missed revenue growth for second-stage startups. 5 revenue growth mistakes second-stage startups make. And why blame them?

Scale 93

Scale Revenue Startup Sales Recruiting 93