SaaStr

MAY 29, 2025

At SaaStr + AI Summit 2025, Jason Lemkin and Kyle Norton CRO of $1B+ vertical SaaS leader Owner (where Jason is on the board) did a deep dive on AI in Sales today. This isn’t about being an AI expertit’s about demonstrating active engagement with AI tools and genuine interest in how they can transform sales outcomes.

Sales Hiring 231

Sales Hiring Underperforming Technical Team AI Scale 231

SaaStr

JANUARY 8, 2025

It was started in 2014 when founders Daniel and Jonathan were working together at a delivery startup and experienced firsthand how slow background checks were slowing down worker onboarding. The SMB sales team was incentivized purely on logo acquisition rather than revenue. With only 4% conversion by month two versus a 10% goal.

Revenue 293

Revenue Scale Sales Hiring Compensation 293

SaaStr

APRIL 2, 2025

Dear SaaStr: How Long Should You Give a New Sales Rep? sales cycles. Sales is tough. And while sales is pretty similar in SaaS at a given price point / ACV, different products are still different to sell.A Not all reps can work with the limited support, onboarding, and training you get at a start-up.

Sales Hiring 169

Sales Hiring Sales Onboarding Pricing 169

SaaStr

DECEMBER 11, 2024

AI-powered Customer Onboarding and Customer Support We’re seeing a lot of companies using either AI tools they built themselves or through 3rd-party AI SaaS vendors have success helping users understand a new behavior or use a product for the first time. What’s Currently Working in AI for SaaS 1.

AI Search 284

AI Search AI Artificial Intelligence B2B 284

SaaStr

MAY 3, 2025

Heres how Id break it down: 0 t o $ 1M ARR: Founder-Led Everything Sales : Founders should lead sales. No VP of Sales yetdont even think about it. Customer Success and Support : You can hire 1-2 individual contributors to handle onboarding and support, but its still very hands-on. More on that here.

Sales Hiring 237

Sales Hiring Part-Time VPE CTO Hire Scale 237

SaaStr

MAY 4, 2025

Dear SaaStr: How will Ai Change Sales in The Next 12 Months? It’s already fundamentally remade the contact center and post-sales. And it’s just getting there in sales. This will take sales calls from 10% being great to 95% being great because the AI will always be prepared and accurate.

AI 157

AI Scale Sales SMB 157

SaaStr

DECEMBER 22, 2022

At OnBoard , we believe board meetings should be informed, effective, and uncomplicated. Launched in 2011, today, OnBoard serves as the board intelligence platform for more than 2,000 organizations and their 12,000 boards and committees in 32 countries worldwide. Qwilr is the tool of choice for scaling B2B sales teams.

Scale 54

Scale Onboarding Government compliance 54

SaaStr

MARCH 13, 2025

Dear SaaStr: Should I Let My VP of Sales Go? All Your VPs Really Need to Do is Tilt the Curve A great VP of Sales should show meaningful progress within one sales cycle. All Your VPs Really Need to Do is Tilt the Curve A great VP of Sales should show meaningful progress within one sales cycle.

Sales Hiring 161

Sales Hiring Scale Sales Onboarding 161

SaaStr

MAY 10, 2025

Nail Onboarding, and Make It a Key KPI for CS Onboarding is where you win or lose customers. Use it to guide customers through onboarding and deliver value quickly. And be very careful if you have Customer Success report to a CRO or to sales. Measure time-to-value and/or time-to-go-live. And relentlessly bring it down.

Sales Hiring 232

Sales Hiring Customer Success Scale Retention 232

SaaStr

NOVEMBER 12, 2021

So you wanna build a channel sales program: Don’t Copy HubSpot! All these companies are great companies with great channel sales programs. . Any channel sales program goes through an evolution. There are many reasons to start a channel sales program. Everything is harder with a channel sales program.

Sales Recruiting 300

Sales Recruiting Sales Technical Support Onboarding 300

Predictable Revenue

NOVEMBER 7, 2022

Learn how to set new sales development reps up for success with these five steps for an effective sales team and smoother SDR onboarding process. The post 5 Steps to Onboard Your SDR Team Successfully appeared first on Predictable Revenue.

Onboarding 226

Onboarding Development Sales Revenue 226

Predictable Revenue

MARCH 14, 2022

The post Should AEs Be Training and Onboarding SDRs? Learn the top five reasons why AEs should be included in the SDR training process, and how greater communication between these roles can help you close more deals. appeared first on Predictable Revenue.

Onboarding 263

Onboarding Communication Revenue Development 263

SaaStr

JUNE 13, 2025

Your sales team needs to understand how AI can improve lead scoring and outreach. When VPs of Sales are asking, “How can we use AI to improve our pipeline?” 10K for an AI workflow that cuts onboarding time by 20%. They became woven into the fabric of how every team operated. The same applies to AI today.

Sales Hiring 242

Sales Hiring Artificial Intelligence AI Sales Recruiting 242

SaaStr

JUNE 10, 2024

So in the earlier days especially, you’ll be tempted to lean on the sales team to do more than just … sell. It has some positives, the more you ask sales to do. Renewals, if they are tough, are sometimes better handled by sales who at least isn’t a brand-new name Customers like continuity.

Sales Hiring 322

Sales Hiring Scale Sales Customer Success 322

SaaStr

OCTOBER 27, 2022

At OnBoard , we believe board meetings should be informed, effective, and uncomplicated. Launched in 2011, today, OnBoard serves as the board intelligence platform for more than 2,000 organizations and their 12,000 boards and committees in 32 countries worldwide. Qwilr is the tool of choice for scaling B2B sales teams.

Merchant Services 240

Merchant Services Payment Solutions Onboarding Payments 240

SaaStr

DECEMBER 12, 2024

They improve onboarding, and integrations, and training, and sales comp plans, and more, and that all helps and is crucial. And this is the similar journey I see with many SMB SaaS start-ups. Growth gets strong, customers are happy but churn still remains stubbornly high. It comes down a bit, but not enough.

Churn 273

Churn SMB Payments Payment Solutions 273

SaaStr

NOVEMBER 1, 2024

At least until you have a dominant brand, remove friction from sales. One caveat: if your product requires significant onboarding and business process change, monthly pricing sometimes just doesn’t work. And that includes pricing. Be flexible in the beginning at least.

SaaS 261

SaaS Payment Features Churn Pricing 261

SaaStr

MARCH 3, 2022

With over 70 million users worldwide, Zoho’s 50+ products aid your sales and marketing, support and collaboration, finance and recruitment needs—letting you focus only on your business. Outreach is the only solution provider to integrate sales engagement, conversation intelligence, and revenue intelligence into one platform.

Payments 49

Payments Payment Solutions Sales Recruiting Onboarding 49

ChurnZero

APRIL 11, 2025

Your customer onboarding strategy is the foundation of your future retention and expansion revenue. The right onboarding strategy means more than just getting a customer using your product. But how do you know if your onboarding tactics really work? Is your onboarding process a framework or a free-for-all?

Onboarding 86

Onboarding Strategy Technical Review Customer Lifetime Value 86

SaaStr

DECEMBER 30, 2020

There’s a set of questions I get asked all the time: Should you pay sales reps on renewals? Should you pay sales reps on upsells a long time down the road? Should you pay sales reps on … ? I am a huge proponent of paying sales professionals well. for the sales team. Pay closers on closing. Not renewing.

Scale 311

Scale Sales Hiring Sales Churn 311

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 330

Sales Recruiting Sales Hiring Scale Sales 330

SaaStr

JULY 9, 2021

Q: What are the common mistakes in the sales process that may lead to customer loss? In SaaS, the prospect is expecting the sales rep to be their guide, their expert on the product. In SaaS, the prospect is expecting the sales rep to be their guide, their expert on the product. A few thoughts: Do better onboarding.

Sales Hiring 300

Sales Hiring Sales Pricing Onboarding 300

SaaStr

DECEMBER 5, 2024

.” The AI Categories with the Most Traction in the Market McKinsey found that sales and marketing teams are seeing the biggest gains with AI adoption, followed closely by engineering and customer success teams. So between sales and marketing, let’s dissect first why Sales teams have been early adopters.

AI 273

AI Software Data SaaS 273

SaaStr

MAY 21, 2024

So G2 put out a survey and report on customer success recently that was an eye-opener: 67% of CS execs report having a sales quota 53% of CS execs now view their job as primarily a sales role Now some of this may be semantics. CS now is primarily an upsell and sales function in many cases. To solve onboarding issues?

Customer Success 324

Customer Success Sales Trends Retention 324

SaaStr

JUNE 21, 2024

Sam Blond, the former CRO at Brex with 15 years in tech sales, took the stage at SaaStr Europa 2024 to share nine easy sales concepts that so many get wrong. Sam got his first job in tech sales as an SDR for Jason Lemkin’s company, EchoSign, which later sold to Adobe and launched his career. They did this right at Brex.

Sales Recruiting 290

Sales Recruiting Sales Hiring Scale Outsourced Development 290

SaaStr

JANUARY 23, 2025

You need: Sales leaders who understand complex, multi-stakeholder deals Customer success teams ready for high-touch support Legal expertise for enterprise contract negotiation Product leaders who can balance current needs with future vision Pro tip: Hire enterprise reps in pairs.

Enterprise 244

Enterprise Sales Hiring Scale Outsourced Development 244

SaaStr

MARCH 16, 2023

A rough structure from 1–25 sales reps: Early days: CEO acts as VP of Sales. CEO starts looking for true VP of Sales by $1m ARR, ideally hires one by $1m-$2m in ARR. VP of Sales hires next 5–10 reps herself. If VP of Sales is good, most of reps 5-10 perform. Segmenting by customer size, and sometimes geography.

Sales Hiring 326

Sales Hiring Scale Startup Compensation 326

SaaStr

FEBRUARY 8, 2022

Scaling a sales organization isn’t easy. Knowing which metrics matter and how to analyze them to increase your revenue and hit organizational sales goals is essential. . What makes a sales organization grow? What’s the best way to grow a sales organization? Enter your email below for the latest SaaStr updates.

Scale 291

Scale Sales Hiring Compensation Sales 291

SaaStr

AUGUST 12, 2021

Q: What are the top 3 biggest concerns in managing a first sales team? Top sales people want to work for a great VP of Sales. If you don’t have one, it’s very hard to attract top sales reps. Too many startups don’t train or onboard reps properly. All sales execs want to make a lot of money :).

Sales Recruiting 284

Sales Recruiting Sales Hiring Sales Onboarding 284

SaaStr

SEPTEMBER 20, 2024

What are the top 10 mistakes founders are still making today when hiring their VP of Sales? In this post, we’ll delve into the common pitfalls founders encounter when hiring a VP of Sales. 1: You Can’t Stay Founder-Led Sales Forever. . #1: 1: You Can’t Stay Founder-Led Sales Forever. This one is newer.

Sales Hiring 304

Sales Hiring Sales Recruiting Scale Technical Review 304

SaaStr

NOVEMBER 20, 2024

Once they brought it to market, they knew they needed better user admin features, onboarding capabilities, SSO integration, etc. Other Learnings in the GTM Journey GitHub has had to adjust to new sales stages and new buyer personas. You need to be able to react quickly to what’s happening in the market and make adjustments as you go.

Scale 261

Scale AI Scaling Marketing 261

SaaStr

JANUARY 19, 2025

And we’ve done several great live Workshop Wednesdays with top CROs and VPs of Sales in Vertical SaaS in particular recently that are all A+ and worth watching: #1. It takes getting out in the field, and creating a ton of true value — before the sale. #2. See you there! How Kyle does it here: #3. How Kyle does it here: #3.

Scale 189

Scale Sales Hiring Scaling SMB 189

SaaStr

FEBRUARY 28, 2022

A few ideas on how to help the sales team make this your best year so far: Hire dedicated sales / revenue ops. Many of you will have little to no dedicated help in sales operations , even up to $10m ARR or beyond. If that’s you, or your VP of Sales, or even your VP of Marketing … it can sort of work for a while.

Scale 246

Scale Sales Hiring Sales Enterprise 246

SaaStr

AUGUST 9, 2021

So how do you simplify and speed up your sales cycles? He started as the first sales hire at TripActions when the company was small and he helped scale the business to 5,000 customers, 1,200 employees and a $5 billion private valuation. Read on for Michael’s insightful advice for driving faster sales cycles. Sales Enablement.

Scale 293

Scale Sales Hiring Enterprise Sales 293

SaaStr

MAY 5, 2022

What are some of the foundational ways sales leaders can think about building their sales teams as their company continues to expand and grow? There’s no shortage of ways to tackle this challenge, but one thing is clear: build sales teams thoughtfully and intentionally. Principle #1: Ownership is Key.

Scale 246

Scale Sales Hiring Scaling Sales 246

SaaStr

JANUARY 17, 2023

Sales-led vs. product-led is a hot topic right now, and Jason Eubanks, Chief Revenue Officer of Harness, shares the answer during this week’s Workshop Wednesday — held every Wednesday at 10 a.m. What’s his response to startups figuring out which strategy to begin with, product-led or sales-led? “It How do you achieve both?

Startup 297

Startup Sales Sales Funnel Education 297