OpenView Labs

APRIL 29, 2021

Recruiting top talent is the common denominator across all scaling startups. Nine out of 10 founders and CEOs I connect with are involved in recruiting on a weekly, if not daily, basis. Many of them are learning on the fly and trying to juggle being CEO and Chief People Officer/Lead Recruiter/Brand Evangelist all at once.

Sales Recruiting 81

Sales Recruiting Outsourcing Services Sales Hiring Scale 81

Kellblog

MARCH 17, 2020

Rephrasing Lewis Carroll, “if you don’t know what you’re recruiting for, any candidate looks great.” ” I liken executive recruiters to Realtors. ” That know-not-what, by the way, is that it’s for sale. Let’s switch to executive recruiting. Nice to Have. 4 bedrooms.

Sales Recruiting 76

Sales Recruiting Sales Enablement Startup Pricing 76

SaaStr

JULY 2, 2021

I’ve written a lot about this, but for most start-ups, you can boil it down to two criteria any first VP of Sales just has to meet: Has she built at least a small team before? Do the diligence here to make sure she’s really been able to recruit at least a few successful reps. Has she sold as your price point, approximately ?

Sales Recruiting 278

Sales Recruiting Sales Hiring Scale Development Team Review 278

SaaStr

MARCH 14, 2022

We’ve talked a ton about How to Hire a Great VP of Sales on SaaStr, but I wanted to highlight a few VP of Sales “personas” that I rarely, if ever, see work out. Because again and again, many of your will hire this VP of Sales. Here are the types of VP of Sales that just never work out. Sales is hard.

Sales Recruiting 267

Sales Recruiting Sales Hiring Technical Review Scale 267

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. Yes, you may be terrible at sales. It’s sales, after all. Here’s my Top 10 list: #1.

Sales Hiring 328

Sales Hiring Sales Recruiting Scale Sales 328

SaaStr

MARCH 12, 2021

We’ve talked a lot about hiring a great VP of Sales at SaaStr, and I’ve relinked to some of the most popular posts below. Do the diligence here to make sure she’s really been able to recruit at least a few successful reps. Has she sold as your price point, approximately ? This is a tough skill to develop.

Sales Hiring 263

Sales Hiring Sales Recruiting Scale Development Team Review 263

SaaStr

JULY 12, 2021

Q: What are some common blind spots and mistakes startups make when hiring for and building out a sales team? Some of the top blind spots founders and even VPs of Sales make: #1. You hire a sales rep to sell before you can prove you can do it yourself. You hire a VP of Sales to sell before you prove you can do it yourself.

Sales Hiring 268

Sales Hiring Sales Recruiting Sales Branding 268

SaaStr

JULY 12, 2022

One of the first what How to Hire a Great VP of Sales at the New York Enterprise Tech Meet-Up (thank you to John Lehr and Work-Bench for setting this up). The Number One Thing You Can Do to Accelerate Your Business Post-Initial Traction is Hiring a Great VP of Sales. I don’t know anything about sales. More power to you.

Sales Hiring 271

Sales Hiring Part-Time VPE VP of Engineering Sales Recruiting 271

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 251

Sales Hiring Sales Recruiting Scale Payment Methods 251

Andreessen Horowitz

FEBRUARY 8, 2024

But building a sales compensation plan that both aligns your sales team’s compensation with your customers’ objectives and recruits top salespeople can be incredibly difficult in usage-based pricing. Determine where your sales team makes your customers more successful In usage-based pricing, value = usage.

Compensation 91

Compensation Sales Recruiting Sales Systems Review 91

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 231

Sales Recruiting Sales Hiring Scale Customer Success 231

SaaStr

FEBRUARY 2, 2024

The backup of 2020 was great, 2021 comes in and somehow we have 600 unicorns and everyone can burn 500 million a year or have huge sales teams. But the meta point is this, if you’re recruiting in 2024, beware of the “Lost Generation” candidate and persona you may come across. It’s part of the job now.

Sales Recruiting 300

Sales Recruiting Trends Sales Hiring Software Review 300

SaaStr

FEBRUARY 26, 2021

Brendon Cassidy, my VP of Sales wrote a version of this piece a while back. I though an updated version of this would be good for founders thinking about hiring a VP of Sales … VPs of Sales themselves … and VPs-to-be to read — Jason, ed. … 10 Rules to Being a VP of Sales in a Startup.

Sales Hiring 294

Sales Hiring Sales Recruiting Startup Sales 294

SaaStr

SEPTEMBER 5, 2022

Going from sales-led to PLG is doable, but it is not easy. Sales-led organizations struggle to adapt to a PLG mindset.”. Let’s use sales-led organizations as a comparison point. If a company has started out with a heavy sales focus, its onboarding process within the actual product may not be intuitive enough for customers.

Sales Recruiting 264

Sales Recruiting Business Pricing Churn 264

SaaStr

AUGUST 7, 2021

If I wouldn’t work for you … then I can’t help you recruit folks that will. You’re in sales. Recruit the VPs? Telling Me the Price is Going Up. If the price goes up, and it’s still good for both of us, so be it. CEO Doesn’t like Sales — and The Hunt. And/or Late.

Sales Recruiting 339

Sales Recruiting Scale AWS Investment 339

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 204

Sales Hiring Sales Recruiting Scale Technical Advisors 204

SaaStr

APRIL 30, 2022

Customer acquisition is basically how much do you spend in terms of sales people, sales team, and in terms of marketing to acquire a new customer. The key here is knowing what your sales model is. And there are basically two sales models out there. Kind of extreme sales models out there for SaaS businesses.

SaaS Payments 241

SaaS Payments Metrics Payment Methods Scale 241

SaaStr

MAY 24, 2022

Yes, public stock prices are way down, which creates a lot of pressure in general and on venture fundraising in particular. Even the very best VPs of Sales I know admitted to lowering the bar a bit on their sales teams, when I quietly pushed them. A related post here: How To Get Better at Recruiting. (We We All Need To).

Sales Hiring 276

Sales Hiring Sales Recruiting Interviewing Startup 276

SaaStr

OCTOBER 3, 2023

It’s so, so easy to stand out in recruiting if you’ve actually done your homework. I spent a week preparing and about halfway into that I realized that something was off about the pricing page, so I redid it from scratch and presented towards the end of the “workshop” Chalk and cheese I was told afterwards.

Interviewing 242

Interviewing Sales Hiring Sales Recruiting Consulting 242

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 used our sales process to iterate our way to product market-fit and wanted to share what I’ve learned along the way. Use sales conversations as a tool to get product feedback. So how do you get there?

Sales Recruiting 88

Sales Recruiting Product Marketing Scale Sales Hiring 88

SaaStr

MAY 3, 2021

A new edition, new services, an outbound sales team, an account management / upsell team. Double your pricing for new customer, on the largest deals. From $1m to $10m ARR or so, as you build your first management team: You shouldn’t be the VP of Sales Anymore As You Scale. Add a layer. You Have To.

Part-Time VPE 278

Part-Time VPE Sales Hiring Sales Recruiting Outsourcing Services 278

SaaStr

OCTOBER 3, 2022

What is the pricing? Imagine a coverage model, from end to end, for the full customer life cycle: from demand generation to sales to post-sales. Sales Cycle. This includes everything from inside sales to account executives to strategic asset allocation. Post Sales. What is the product strategy?

Scale 233

Scale Sales Hiring Sales Recruiting Scaling 233

SaaStr

MARCH 3, 2020

Brendon introduces his playbook to hiring the first VP of Sales from his experiences as VP of Sales at LinkedIn, EchoSign, Talkdesk and more. Learn the dos and don’ts to make the correct hire the first time and not rush into hiring the wrong VP of Sales, which can cost the company months or even years. Roughly 90%.

Sales Hiring 162

Sales Hiring Sales Recruiting Scale CTO Hire 162

SaaStr

APRIL 5, 2021

Once the players in a new market get pretty big themselves, they’ll ultimately most likely raise prices. And at a sales perspective, they’ll move to optimizing revenue per lead, over closing every possibly lead. Harder to Recruit. You’ll have to develop a very lean sales culture. More on that here.

Scale 242

Scale Sales Recruiting Underperforming Technical Team Pricing 242

SaaStr

NOVEMBER 12, 2022

The main issue is price. Growing too slowly after Initial Traction at a minimum means a lot of VCs will rule you out at any price. Lack of a (at least the Genesis of a) Management Team. You never have a perfect management team until you are at $10m+ ARR, at the earliest, in 98/100 cases. I don’t, but many do).

Scale 342

Scale Sales Recruiting Machine Learning Artificial Intelligence 342

Sales Hacker

MARCH 30, 2023

If you’re new to sales (or don’t have an economics degree), decoding the sales compensation plan on offer can make your head spin. There are 3 key questions you must ask your hiring manager or recruiter when offered a sales role to maximize your earnings and career potential. Variable OTE. Quota attainment.

Compensation 75

Compensation Underperforming Technical Team Sales Recruiting Sales Hiring 75

Tom Tunguz

NOVEMBER 24, 2018

You might have a few account executives and a sales leader in place; maybe some revenue and a handful of customers. The sales team costs real money, and the question before the company is: how do you know what quota plan to assign to the account executives? Stage 1: Management by Objectives.

Compensation 151

Compensation Sales Recruiting Sales Hiring Scale 151

Mucker Capital

APRIL 2, 2024

In this Mucker Growth session, Mike Genstil with ValueCore delves into the concept of value selling and its application in enterprise sales. As a founder, ideally you want your sellers, marketers, and product leaders aligned in transforming product features into value-based messages to accelerate sales cycles and secure corporate deals.

Sales Recruiting 52

Sales Recruiting Technical Review Enterprise Cybersecurity 52

SaaStr

JANUARY 24, 2024

Sales reps were hosting 4-6 calls daily but most of these calls were early demos or top-of-funnel discovery calls Sales was closing really small deals on one end while talking to really large companies with hundreds of thousands of people on the other. Define your ICP as early as you can and segment your sales team accordingly.

Scale 243

Scale Sales Hiring Scaling Revenue 243

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 255

Sales Recruiting Sales Hiring Scale VP of Engineering 255

Kellblog

JUNE 27, 2020

I’ve worked with several startups that fell into the following pattern: Selling a SaaS application at a healthy price (e.g., The problem is the company is not charging the appropriate price for the services needed. If you sell: A recruiting app, running your first recruiting campaign. 100K to $200K ARR).

Consulting 144

Consulting Sales Recruiting Sales Hiring Startup 144

Neil Patel

OCTOBER 20, 2020

Always make sure to talk with a sales representative and be as detailed as possible about your current and future situation to make sure they can handle everything you need. On the other hand, some offer everything you could ever possibly need… but at a higher price point. Types of services. Short-term vs. long-term.

Outsourcing Services 118

Outsourcing Services Outsourced Development Sales Recruiting Sales Hiring 118

Tom Tunguz

DECEMBER 16, 2020

Acquirers, emboldened by higher stock prices, brace themselves and outbid each other with premium multiples for high-growth startups. I thought the remote trend would be a powerful recruiting advantage; I didn’t foresee a global pandemic obligating companies to work remotely. Distributed work becomes the norm.

Sales Recruiting 279

Sales Recruiting Blockchain Banking Machine Learning 279

SaaStr

DECEMBER 28, 2019

Enough with the excuses for not having hired your real VP of Sales, or that VP of Engineering, or whatever. Hire a real recruiter. Increase Pricing For New Customers in January — The Right Way. Pricing is a nuanced topic. And if you don’t think you can support higher pricing yet, that’s OK.

Part-Time VPE 296

Part-Time VPE Sales Hiring Scale Sales Recruiting 296

SaaStr

JUNE 4, 2019

I actually worked in sales for five and a half years and that’s probably why I have tended to gravitate to B2B marketing. Worked as an AE and then a sales manager. Decided to go to business school, did that for a little bit and then came out in management consulting, a company. So, they’re a B2B piece.

Sales Recruiting 181

Sales Recruiting Scale Underperforming Technical Team Pricing 181

SaaStr

JANUARY 27, 2021

“Give the VP of Sales More Time” This is always terrible advice. If a VP of Sales can’t improve things in one sales cycle or less — she never will. In one sales cycle, or less. At twice the price. “The Leads are There, the Problem is the Sales Team.” More on that here.

Part-Time VPE 313

Part-Time VPE Sales Hiring Scale Sales Recruiting 313

SaaStr

JULY 1, 2021

I want to come be your VP of sales and, you’re going to meet me for the first time. Spencer : For me, the key things for a VP of sales is, “OK, tell me about your best reps. We’re trying to recruit someone that’s way above our weight class, so that we can actually scale. You hire a search firm.

VP of Engineering 276

VP of Engineering Sales Hiring Sales Recruiting Underperforming Technical Team 276