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 221

Sales Recruiting Sales Hiring Scale Customer Success 221

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

JULY 10, 2022

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. More here: Should You Fire an OK-but-Not-Great VP of Sales?

Sales Recruiting 195

Sales Recruiting Sales Hiring Scale Churn 195

SaaStr

AUGUST 7, 2021

So I always have to pass here, no matter how good the metrics look today. “Quarterly MRR”, 100% Gross Margins, and Other Crazy Metrics. But if your metrics make truly zero sense, to me, that’s a flag. Gaming the metrics doesn’t help here. You’re in sales. Recruit the VPs?

Sales Recruiting 336

Sales Recruiting Scale AWS Investment 336

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. And now it’s all about like, can you really scale and execute? Dev Ittycheria : Thank you.

Sales Recruiting 251

Sales Recruiting Sales Hiring Scale VP of Engineering 251

SaaStr

NOVEMBER 12, 2022

Especially when some other crappy company just got funded last week with worse metrics. They see it as a key differentiator to win as you scale. You never have a perfect management team until you are at $10m+ ARR, at the earliest, in 98/100 cases. Or their friends got 7 term sheets with good-but-not- as -good companies.

Scale 339

Scale Sales Recruiting Machine Learning Artificial Intelligence 339

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

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 280

Sales Recruiting Scale Sales Hiring Scaling 280

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

MAY 2, 2021

“Lessons in Scaling a Low Code Platform with Airtable’s CEO Howie Liu” How did Airtable remake a cateogy? 5. “How to Build a Unicorn in 8 Simple Charts with SafeGraph” Just a great session on how to scale faster and easier with Safegraph CEO Auren Hoffman. #6. Learn from CEO Howie Liu here! #3.

Sales Recruiting 143

Sales Recruiting Scale CTO Scaling 143

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

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

Sales Hacker

DECEMBER 8, 2023

Accordingly, the recruiting of beta customers and roadmap selling happen earlier, providing for customer quotes as part of the launch. Subscribe now More for your eyeballs: TechCrunch released an article detailing the most important metrics for SaaS funding in 2024. Now organizations can customize demos at scale even easier.

Sales Recruiting 99

Sales Recruiting Generative AI AI AWS 99

SaaStr

AUGUST 25, 2023

On top of that, founders are full of excuses preventing them from scaling. 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. The best VPs of Sales hit the ground running. It never works, folks!

Part-Time VPE 189

Part-Time VPE Scale Sales Hiring CTO Hire 189

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 93

Sales Hiring SaaS Payments Sales Recruiting CTO Hire 93

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 181

Sales Hiring Sales Recruiting Scale Sales 181

SaaStr

APRIL 5, 2021

I bet the freemium metrics appeared good, with positive growth and solid conversion rates. Because at this scale, there will be room at the bottom. But then the leaders break through, achieve Scale, and the outlines become clear. Harder to Recruit. You’ll have to develop a very lean sales culture.

Scale 240

Scale Sales Recruiting Underperforming Technical Team Pricing 240

SaaStr

NOVEMBER 25, 2019

With Dreamforce and SaaStr Europa and Scale behind us, little tiny Team SaaStr is 100% focused on 2020 SaaStr Annual. The headline metrics: 15,000+ attendees. But we’re turning this around this year and letting our top-rated practioner speakers do “Masterclasses” on new content teaching you how to scale faster.

New CTO 262

New CTO Sales Recruiting CTO Coach Scale 262

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.

Sales Hiring 110

Sales Hiring Scale Sales Recruiting Enterprise 110

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

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

Valuize Consulting

JANUARY 25, 2024

Greg, Karen and Leah generously shared their learnings, challenges and triumphs in building, scaling and maturing their Digital CS programs. Effective Cross-Functional Collaboration Your Digital CS program should be directed by Customer Success but also requires close partnership with Marketing, Product, Sales, and Revenue Operations.

Customer Success 52

Customer Success Sales Recruiting Scale Strategy 52

Intercom, Inc.

APRIL 22, 2019

Rick started Guru in 2013, after successfully founding Boomi (a cloud integration and data management company) and selling it to Dell. He joined me for a conversation on tackling issues that come up as you scale your customer experience. When scaling your customer experience, remember AI can’t simulate human empathy.

Scale 156

Scale Scaling AI Search Underperforming Technical Team 156

Sales Hacker

NOVEMBER 29, 2018

Company raises money and is now ready to “scale the sales team.” Their current seller has done a great job, so the natural inclination is to assume that we want to replicate that person and sales will continue to grow, right? Fast forward 1 year later: “Oh no, my entire sales team looks the exact same…”. Sound familiar?

Sales Hiring 74

Sales Hiring Sales Recruiting Scale Sales 74

OpenView Labs

FEBRUARY 3, 2022

It’s one of my favorite questions, even though it’s really not a financial or operating metric at all. . The market need for SaaS products has exploded and investment in SaaS companies has accelerated, requiring more talent to grow and scale. Accelerate hiring of internal recruiters. That talent pool has not kept pace.

Sales Hiring 82

Sales Hiring Sales Recruiting Scale Startup 82

Natalia Luneva

NOVEMBER 24, 2021

On this episode of the podcast, I interview Arthur Nobel and we discuss scaling SaaS companies. What we discovered is companies sometimes struggle with scaling so we dived into the reasons for that. Levers of scaling a SaaS company. He is passionate about enabling entrepreneurs to realize their vision.

Scale 52

Scale Scaling Sales Recruiting SaaS 52

Sales Hacker

JANUARY 29, 2018

In this blueprint, we provide insights on how to structure your sales organization. The changes in SaaS require that we no longer look at salespeople as individual contributors, but rather a team that crosses disciplines, not just within sales but also across other parts of the organization such as marketing and product.

Sales Recruiting 74

Sales Recruiting Scale Sales Hiring Sales 74

ChurnZero

JANUARY 25, 2024

Skillset 1: Sales acumen In 2024, driving revenue is a primary responsibility of CS. This means that sales acumen is no longer just a bonus for CS professionals—it’s a new baseline for many companies. In 2024, tracking these metrics and demonstrating their impact are essential skills for CS professionals.

Customer Success 52

Customer Success Sales Recruiting Sales Hiring Scale 52

Sales Hacker

APRIL 5, 2021

In 2020 I was building my sales team at Livestorm , and at the time we were going through a big hiring boom. For the first time in my life, I was in charge of vetting and hiring new team members at scale. Over the course of time, I’ve interviewed and talked to hundreds of sales candidates. Value-based recruitment.

Sales Hiring 92

Sales Hiring Sales Recruiting Company Culture Interviewing 92

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

Valuize Consulting

DECEMBER 7, 2021

The question now is, how big should CS organizations be, and what’s the best way to staff and scale its success? To uncover how today’s CS leaders are successfully building and scaling their CS organizations, Valuize’s Founder and CEO, Ross Fulton, spoke to TSIA’s Vice President, Customer Success Research, Stephen Fulkerson.

VP of Engineering 98

VP of Engineering Customer Success Sales Hiring Interviewing 98

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 175

Scale Sales Hiring Sales Recruiting Sales 175

Sales Hacker

DECEMBER 21, 2017

What is Sales Operations? Sales operations refers to the unit, role, activities and processes within a sales organization that support, enable, and drive front line sales teams to sell better, faster, and more efficiently. But perhaps more than anything else, sales operations brings a system to selling. Technology.

Scale 87

Scale Sales Recruiting Sales Hiring Technical Review 87

SaaStr

APRIL 17, 2019

What were Steve’s biggest takeaways from seeing the hyper-scaling at AppDynamics? Steve has previously said, “Sales and marketing must be one team.” Where does Steve find common points of tension between sales and marketing? I mean, my career started as a software engineer, and out of frustration, I went into sales.

DevOps as a Service 100

DevOps as a Service Sales Recruiting Scale Sales Hiring 100

SaaStr

APRIL 23, 2019

And can you talk a little bit about touching on the hiring point, because you did say that you focused a lot on talent, and recruiting. And coming from Brazil without a big network in Silicon Valley, un-launched, without a website, it was actually really hard to recruit the first ten people. I’m going to go, and scale it up.”

Sales Hiring 162

Sales Hiring Sales Recruiting Scale Payment Methods 162

Natalia Luneva

NOVEMBER 11, 2021

How he founded Sales playbook. I founded SalesPlaybook after getting frustrated by the lack or absence of sales support for startup founders. A lot of these companies have never done outbound sales and they don’t have a repeatable process in place and they haven’t really nailed down their ideal customer profile.

Sales Recruiting 52

Sales Recruiting Sales Hiring Scale Sales 52

Intercom, Inc.

MAY 13, 2021

Although Linda started her career in sales, she has spent the past twelve years scaling post-sales teams and moving hyper-growth companies like Zendesk, Slack, and now Gong upmarket into the enterprise realm. What “customer success” looks like evolves as your company and customers scale upmarket.

Scale 177

Scale Customer Success Strategy Sales Hiring 177