SaaStr

FEBRUARY 4, 2021

One of the very first SaaStr presentations ever was How to Hire a Great VP Sales (And Not Screw It Up). One was how my First Real VP of Sales Doubled Our Net New Revenue in 90 days. Brendon Cassidy joined as our VP Sales at a tough time, as we’ve discussed before, as we were coming out of our Year of Hell.

Sales Hiring 343

Sales Hiring Sales SMB Pricing 343

SaaStr

MAY 27, 2024

His best deals by cash are: Sales Loft : $2.5 He didn’t predict that Sales Loft, Pipe Drive, and Harry’s would be his top three cash returners. He also learned that some founders just can’t lose, like Kyle from Sales Loft. billion cash, $100 million ARR. Pipe Drive: $1.5 billion cash.

CTO Hire 208

CTO Hire Development Team Review Software Review Technical Review 208

SaaStr

APRIL 24, 2022

BowtiedCocoon: Top SaaS SMB AEs have $125k OTEs. Don’t Hire a VP of Sales Everybody Loves. SaaStr 548: How to Build a Super High-Retention Sales Team with Twilio SVP & GM of North America Sales, Alice Katwan. Revenue Marketing: Build for Scale with Podium’s SVP, Revenue Marketing Jess Weimer.

Sales Hiring 273

Sales Hiring Revenue Scale SMB 273

SaaStr

MAY 20, 2024

It can take years for some SMB SaaS companies to hit and cross 100% NRR, for example. If your churn is too high, a lot of that revenue isn’t even real. #3. Will marketers really buy your product if sales execs do? Not Addressing Deteriorating Sales Performance Things just change in sales.

Trends 286

Trends Scale Sales Hiring Venture Capital 286

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 217

Scale Sales Hiring Scaling Sales 217

SaaStr

OCTOBER 27, 2023

Catch up on part one here , where he deep dives into what he really thinks about AI, Sales and lead Gen for SaaS in 2024. Q: When Should A Slow Growth Company Hire a Head of Sales? They have one salesperson but want to skip having two scaled reps and immediately hire the VP of Sales. This is the VP of Sales’ job.

Sales Hiring 243

Sales Hiring Scale Venture Capital Generative AI 243

SaaStr

APRIL 8, 2023

Over the years, we’ve done just an incredible number of deep dives, AMAs, and more with many of the best CROs and VPs of Sales in SaaS!

Scale 252

Scale Sales Hiring SMB SaaS 252

SaaStr

APRIL 5, 2024

Leandra has over 30 years of experience leading large sales and revenue teams. Apollo is a next-gen sales tool that combines sales intelligence and execution workflows with AI. What they did for marketers, Apollo is trying to do for sales. This hypergrowth platform raised $100M at a $1.6B How do you do that?

Sales Hiring 190

Sales Hiring Scale Pricing SMB 190

SaaStr

OCTOBER 30, 2021

Their CEO will join us at SaaSr Scale 2021 on December 15 to talk about using data to get to 10,000 SMB customers! I asked Aasif Osmany to share his learnings as a top-performing SMB VP of Sales, below. Together we combed through AngelList and found companies that we saw potential in, however, most were not hiring.

Scale 261

Scale Sales Hiring Sales SMB 261

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? Are you compensating your teams to sell recurring revenue?

Scale 228

Scale Sales Hiring Compensation Sales 228

SaaStr

NOVEMBER 28, 2022

From 2010 until 2015, the SaaS world was becoming more complex with the introduction of static bundles and recurring revenue as an addition to the annual/monthly subscription model. We are seeing more agile packaging and pricing methods, dynamic deals, ramp-up revenue, and consumption and usage. Hire ahead of the curve.

Scale 200

Scale Finance Sales Hiring Scaling 200

SaaStr

MAY 8, 2024

Sales is much harder than in 2021. Therefore, sales and marketing practices made no sense in 2020. How Does That Impact Sales and Marketing? The average public company today has over $300k of revenue per employee; in 2021, it was just over $100k. In 2021, many sales folks were marginally efficient.

Metrics 209

Metrics Scale Sales Hiring SaaS 209

SaaStr

OCTOBER 11, 2023

Monday has gone from $7m in 2017 to over $700m in revenue today, showcasing the sheer power of compounding revenue. You don’t want to overwhelm SMB customers, and Monday made this a focus from day one. Big Brain was an internal tool to track revenue, marketing expenses, and usage of the product. They were wrong.

Scale 164

Scale Sales Hiring Scaling Banking 164

SaaStr

SEPTEMBER 1, 2023

119% NRR from SMBs Profitable, and only burned $15m net to date 130,000 total customers There’s not much to not love here! But the metrics, especially for an SMB-focused SaaS business, are breathtaking. 36% of Revenue Outside the U.S. Not suprising– over 50% of HubSpot’s revenue is outside the U.S.

Scale 225

Scale SMB Sales Hiring Interviewing 225

SaaStr

JANUARY 4, 2023

A nice sweet spot for a mix of inside and outside sales. #3. Very Few Professional Services — Only 3% of Revenues. ProServ is only 3% of Okta’s revenues. International Revenue Steady at 22% of Revenues — and EMEA is strong. Customer Count Up 22%, While Revenues Up 37%. It only grew 4.5%

Scale 282

Scale Headcount Sales Hiring SMB 282

SaaStr

DECEMBER 26, 2020

Even once you hit just $2m-$3m ARR — fairly early — the trade-offs start to become clear for startups with customers both Smaller and Larger: Small customers consume just as many sales, success, and marketing resources. And produce a lot less revenue per interaction. Small customers are great for training the sales team.

SMB 348

SMB Sales Hiring Marketing Enterprise 348

Tom Tunguz

AUGUST 4, 2015

The prevailing wisdom for hiring the first VP of Sales is roughly $1M in ARR, or whenever the company has figured out some repeatable sales process. I catalogued the first VPS hire for about 20 fast growth SaaS companies founded in the past five or so years, and compared it to the date they were founded.

Sales Hiring 100

Sales Hiring Sales Recruiting Scale Startup 100

Sales Hacker

AUGUST 29, 2023

Previously, he served as the VP of Sales & Services at Mixpanel, where he ran the more than 100-person global revenue team. Before Mixpanel, Meka spent four years at Stripe and scaled and matured its sales organization during the company’s rapid growth from 250 to 2000 people. by Slack), Snackpass and Stytch.

SMB 77

SMB Scale Compensation Finance 77

SaaStr

NOVEMBER 18, 2020

Mistake #1: Hiring Too Inexperienced and Junior Managers and “VPs” Stretch VPs can do amazing things if you get it right. Hiring someone who’s never really been a manager at all, for a management role, for a true “owner” role … is usually a stretch too far. More on that here.

Sales Hiring 363

Sales Hiring Scale SaaS Enterprise 363

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. Make the revenue recur, I’m interested.

Sales Hiring 258

Sales Hiring Part-Time VPE VP of Engineering Sales Recruiting 258

SaaStr

MARCH 19, 2021

No lead commit, or revenue commit. I see this all the time in marketing hires that come out of non-demand gen roles. A head of sales that doesn’t recruit at least one strong rep in the first 90 days. A head of customer success that doesn’t own churn, or net revenue retention in the first 90 days. I can go on.

Sales Recruiting 320

Sales Recruiting Sales Hiring SMB Engineering 320

Andreessen Horowitz

APRIL 23, 2024

Whether it’s creating better tools to write code and test code, better tools for customers to engage with reps, better tools for sales teams to engage with their prospects, all those things are happening inside of Bill. Both of you sell into SMBs, which is a notoriously difficult segment.

Payments 108

Payments Forecasting Payment Services Payment Solutions 108

SaaStr

JUNE 23, 2021

I recently put together a list on Quora of 6 things sales reps recently said to me as a buyer of SaaS products myself that killed the deal: “You are wasting my time”. Sales is there to serve. If sales was routed the wrong lead, that’s the company’s fault, not the prospect’s. I’m basically an SMB these days.

Scale 281

Scale Sales Hiring Sales SMB 281

SaaStr

MARCH 7, 2021

Yes, you can manage the sales team yourself. Fixing it yourself becomes the biggest time sink and excuse for not hiring there is. You end up spending all your time backfilling roles you should have hired. And even worse, you often sort of give up trying to make the hire. These are all full-time jobs by $1m ARR.

Part-Time VPE 265

Part-Time VPE Sales Recruiting Sales Hiring Scale 265

SaaStr

MAY 25, 2020

I recently put out a call on Twitter and LinkedIn on folks’ top tip to take friction out of their sales processes. “Presumptive close in a transactional sale. “At “Help people buy how they want to buy and be as transparent as you can with pricing ” – Ken Edwards, Sales leader, Uberflip.

Sales Hiring 337

Sales Hiring Sales Outsourced Development Technical Review 337

Sales Hacker

JUNE 14, 2018

There are many levers a sales leader or organization may pull to gain scale, accelerate revenue, drive cost savings, or augment sales team structures. A viable and proven option is handing over some or all of your sales efforts to outsourced sales professionals. 5) DO ensure sales and marketing are aligned.

Outsourcing Services 60

Outsourcing Services Sales Hiring Sales Outsourcing Outsourced Development 60

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 173

Scale Sales Hiring Sales Recruiting Sales 173

SaaStr

DECEMBER 3, 2021

12 SaaStr 196: Stripe COO Claire Hughes Johnson on How The Best Leaders Inspire with Confidence and Stability, The Key To Successful Decision-Making & How To Hire Quality Teams At Scale. #11 Lecturer and Former Hubspot CRO Mark Roberge on His Step by Step Guide to Revenue Growth. If you missed #25-#13, you can catch up here! #12

Scale 201

Scale Sales Hiring SMB Benchmarks 201

SaaStr

SEPTEMBER 14, 2022

In the early days, UserZoom struggled with deciding whether its target market should focus on enterprise or SMB. They adhered to the “75% Rule,” in which recurring revenue of their software made up three-quarters of their business while making the rest from their consultancy, research, and other professional services. Key Takeaways.

Scale 213

Scale Venture Capital Sales Hiring SMB 213

Tom Tunguz

AUGUST 2, 2016

Channel distribution represents one of the biggest and most important changes in customers acquisition for SMB SaaS startups in quite a while. IBM, Intel, Cisco and their kin generate more than 80% of their revenues through a universe of resellers and distributors. It’s the most successful SMB SaaS acquisition channel ever built.

Outsourcing Services 107

Outsourcing Services SMB Acquisition Scale 107

SaaStr

MARCH 10, 2020

Hiring senior leaders can set companies up to fail and see how sticking with a current, successful model can be the key to hypergrowth. That was the most over the top entrance that the sales leader for a company that moves boxes around the world has ever gotten. I’m Chief Revenue Officer at Flexport. FULL TRANSCRIPT BELOW.

Scale 198

Scale Sales Hiring Sales Recruiting Scaling 198

SaaStr

FEBRUARY 8, 2019

Bridget Gleason is VP of Sales @ Logz.io, the startup that uses predictive analytics and machine learning to provide monitoring, troubleshooting and security. Before Logz, Bridget was VP of Corporate Sales @ Sumo Logic where she drove ARR up by a record 237%. How does one structure commissions for the sales team with that in mind?

Sales Hiring 114

Sales Hiring Scale Sales SMB 114

SaaStr

APRIL 13, 2022

For 2 days, more than 50+ sessions and 75 expert speakers will be sharing their best practices in Barcelona on scaling, revenue, recruiting, expansion and so much more. 7 Tips for Nailing Your SMB Go-To-Market Strategy with PayFit’s CEO and Co-founder Firmin Zocchetto and. Check out the full detailed agenda here.

Sales Recruiting 211

Sales Recruiting Cloud Sales Hiring Scale 211

SaaStr

JANUARY 12, 2022

Another top mistake SMB folks make trying to sell enterprise. As a founder, you’ll just run out of time to properly manage key customers and partners yourself. Hire that person, and make sure they are someone the top customers can really trust and count on. We all underresource customer success vs. sales.

CTO Hire 277

CTO Hire Sales Hiring New CTO CTO 277

Intercom, Inc.

OCTOBER 22, 2019

If you are new to sales management, it can be hard to know what concrete steps you can take to improve your skills, be recognized, and eventually, rise to a senior leadership role. These lessons come from LB Harvey, our SVP of Sales and Support. 4 steps to stand out as a sales leader. Short on time?

Sales Hiring 123

Sales Hiring Underperforming Technical Team Sales Management 123

Sales Hacker

JULY 21, 2021

“We’re looking for a strategic rockstar sales rep who knows how to leverage and optimize our customers’ digital transformation to really move the needle!”. There are sales buzzwords that we love and some that we really hate. When you use sales buzzwords correctly, you’ll sound like you’re an industry insider.

Sales Hiring 125

Sales Hiring Underperforming Technical Team Sales Sales Enablement 125

Intercom, Inc.

JULY 29, 2021

Ever since he was hired as the Director of EMEA Sales at BrowserStack , a web and mobile testing platform that lets developers test their websites and mobile applications across browsers, operating systems, and mobile devices, he had to completely rethink how to successfully onboard hundreds of salespeople just as everyone was going remote.

Sales Hiring 223

Sales Hiring Scale Sales Recruiting Underperforming Technical Team 223