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.

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SaaStr

JANUARY 30, 2021

One of the starkest differences I see between First Timers in SaaS and Second Timers is when they hire their VP of Marketing. They often hire a VP of Demand Gen Marketing even before they have their first paying customers. But it’s very, very easy to make the hire late. Second Timers know. But she can help.

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Sales Hiring Sales Recruiting Scale Marketing 346

SaaStr

JANUARY 5, 2024

In the latest episode of CRO Confidential, host Sam Blond, partner at Founders Fund and former CRO at Brex, sits down with Ashley Kelly, VP of Global Sales Development at Rippling. For context – Ashley had previously helped Sam scale Brex’s outbound sales from $2M to over $300M in ARR as Senior Director of SDR.

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Sales Hiring Sales Recruiting Scale Outbound Sales Team 255

SaaStr

OCTOBER 27, 2022

In SaaS, I think one of the biggest traps you can get yourself into as a founder is doing Low ROI things for one minute longer than you have to. But quickly, in SaaS, it becomes worse. Why didn’t we just hire another 3 guys in TechOps much, much. I was lucky to have a great hire who handled our first few large customers.

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Sales Hiring Sales Recruiting Scale Scaling 274

SaaStr

NOVEMBER 19, 2020

IME, rough order to make hires in: VPM: $0.2m He asked which to hire first. If you have a few nickels in the bank, and you somehow find a great VP a half stage or even full stage early, just hire her. Hiring is so hard as it is. Make the hire now. ARR VPS: $1-$1.5m More here: [link].

Part-Time VPE 363

Part-Time VPE Sales Hiring CTO Hire Scale 363

SaaStr

MAY 24, 2022

Many mediocre hires were made to fill slots, reference checks not made, etc. If there really is a slowdown (and I’m not sure will be in SaaS), folks will have to work harder. So I’m not yet convinced times are really tougher for SaaS companies. Everyone talks about making 10x hires, and each hire being better than the last.

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Sales Hiring Sales Recruiting Interviewing Startup 263

SaaStr

JANUARY 8, 2022

We’ve talked a lot on SaaStr about how to hire a Great VP of Sales, and how you have to close the first 10 or so customers yourself, and how when you do go to hire your first sales rep — make sure you hire two. But how do you get those first few reps right, when you haven’t made the hire before?

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SaaStr

MAY 10, 2023

In this week’s episode of CRO Confidential, host Sam Blond, Partner at Founders Fund, continues a mini-series on founder-led sales with Colin Zima, founder and CEO of Omni. Leverage Your Network First When you’re ready to hire your first AE, don’t create a job posting and see who comes in. Instead, leverage your network.

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SaaStr

MAY 5, 2024

Dear SaaStr: How Do I Motivate a Sales Team Working Commission Only? While I am sure there are examples of “1099 reps” that have done extremely well, I haven’t seen it work in SaaS. If you’ve ever worked with a contingent recruiter, you’ll see this. But if you don’t want to hire any of them, they drift away.

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SaaStr

FEBRUARY 1, 2021

That you absolutely, positively, have to only hire “Rockstars” in your startups. If you don’t think you need a great VP of Sales, Product, Marketing, Customer Success, and Engineering — then all that all that means is you’ve never worked with a great one. We’re just not far enough along in SaaS 3.0

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Sales Hiring Part-Time VPE Scale Sales Recruiting 267

TechEmpower SaaS

MARCH 4, 2024

Key Functions with High Impact Generative AI is revolutionizing sales by enabling dynamic pricing and personalized customer interactions, boosting conversion rates and customer satisfaction. Post-sale, AI analyzes customer data to improve service and loyalty, making it a cornerstone of modern sales methodologies.

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Generative AI AI CTO Hire Sales Recruiting 443

SaaStr

JULY 20, 2024

The best SaaS companies Lightspeed has seen in their portfolio are maniacal about defining these key metrics and tracking them with specific targets in mind on a consistent basis. Work with Great Executive Recruiters ”The first time I saw an invoice for an executive search, I think I had a heart attack,” Shrav joked.

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Sales Recruiting Sales Hiring Scale Engineering 240

SaaStr

JUNE 26, 2023

Dear SaaStr: What’s the Best Way to Get Ahead in SaaS Sales? It is important to decide which of 3 life tracks you want to be on: Super-successful sales rep / individual contributor. Successful sales manager. I.e., become a VP of Sales someday. Leverage “sales” to become a founder, business owner , etc.

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SaaStr

AUGUST 8, 2023

So there’s a sort of org chart you’ll probably end up with at least twice as you start scaling in SaaS: The “Headless” Sales Org. It’s a bunch of sales reps without anyone to manage them other than … you. But if you end up not hiring a VP of Sales at that perfect moment in time (and most don’t), you’ll end up headless.

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Sales Hiring Sales Recruiting Scale Sales 221

SaaStr

NOVEMBER 25, 2020

We’ve talked a lot on SaaStr about how to hire a Great VP of Sales. And we’ll keep talking about it — so long as 70% of first-time VPs of Sales don’t make it 1 year. Reason #1 is jumping to Stretch VP of Sales one stage too early. Not hiring people better than you. Do not do this.

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SaaStr

DECEMBER 16, 2023

Dear SaaStr: What Are The Top 10 Things to Know Before Starting a SaaS Company? Finally you have great customers and traction — but you can’t afford to hire all the people you need to meet their needs. It takes 7–10 Years in SaaS to Get Anywhere. And 99% of SaaS companies will need 7–10 years to get to $100m ARR and beyond.

Part-Time VPE 224

Part-Time VPE CTO Hire Sales Recruiting VPCs (Virtual Private Cloud) 224

SaaStr

DECEMBER 16, 2020

We’ve talked a lot on SaaStr about how to make that critical hire: the VP Sales. But when you make a mis-hire, it’s about the worst mis-hire you can make. You’ll end up with a crummy sales team under a mis-hire. We’ve posted a script to use when interviewing a VP Sales.

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Sales Recruiting Sales Hiring Sales Engineering 315

SaaStr

MARCH 20, 2024

At SaaStr Miami, former Founder’s Fund Partner and CRO of Brex Sam Blond — host of the SaaStr CRO Confidential Podcast — sat down with SaaStr CEO and founder Jason Lemkin for a fireside chat about finding success as a SaaS company in 2024. On the sales side, people hired way too much. More salespeople do not equal more sales.

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Tom Tunguz

MAY 31, 2021

The cost of a failed account executive hire is about 8 months of lost productivity. What does it cost the organization to hire the wrong executive? In terms of time cost to the startup, a failed executive hire is roughly similar, 9 months. Hiring takes longer and is less fruitful. Looker was one of those examples.

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SaaStr

NOVEMBER 5, 2020

One of the biggest challenges in scaling a SaaS company has always been VP and SVP level talent. The companies that create the SVPs you’ll need, especially in Sales and Marketing, are still mostly based in the SF Bay Area. But for now, if you are beginning to scale, aggressively recruit that Bay Area VP you always wanted to hire.

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Sales Hiring Sales Recruiting Scale Scaling 313

Tom Tunguz

JULY 25, 2020

But I see this company structure more frequently across SaaS startups. In interviewing great CMOs , the product marketing leader is the first marketer most startups should recruit, and often the first key mishire. By hiring two focused people, the startup is free to find the best person in each role. This makes sense.

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Sales Recruiting Product Marketing Scale Sales Hiring 200

SaaStr

MAY 29, 2022

So we’ve talked so much over the years on SaaStr on how to hire a great VP of Sales, the difference they’ll make, and how the level-up comes quickly. And VPs of Sales do, too. Don’t hire a VP of Sales that isn’t truly comfortable selling to your buyer persona, especially in B2D and fintech.

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Sales Hiring Sales Recruiting Startup Sales 260

SaaStr

JANUARY 21, 2021

We’ve talked a lot about hiring a VP, Sales. It’s just such a critical accelerate-or-decelerate decision for a post-Initial Traction SaaS company. We’ve talked about the 48 Different Types of VP Sales , What a VP Sales Really Does , and a Script to Use When Interviewing a VP Sales.

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For Entrepreneurs with David Skok

SEPTEMBER 6, 2018

Stephanie has been an executive in 3 successful startups and was most recently the SVP of Sales and Customer Success at Xamarin which has since been acquired by Microsoft. Stephanie joined Xamarin as its first non-engineering hire in.

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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.

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Sales Hiring Sales Recruiting Scale Sales 187

SaaStr

SEPTEMBER 17, 2020

Director+ of Sales at Slack / Zoom / DropBox / Pick Your Brand Name SaaS Company. Because it’s not ARR growth or even an IPO alone that determines if a VP of Sales him or herself is great. And there were probably 100+ RVPs of Sales at that point. Because often, the managers were given a team, or a lot of it.

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SaaStr

JUNE 14, 2020

One of the biggest changes since we started SaaStr is the massive number of SaaS veterans out there. The decade-long run of next-generation SaaS start-ups, and the explosion since 2015 of SaaS unicorns and decacorns has led to a lot of experienced execs on the market. Because SaaS is hard. This is great.

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Sales Hiring Scale Sales Recruiting SaaS 222

SaaStr

JANUARY 27, 2021

We’ve talked a ton on SaaStr over the years on how to make sure your VP of Sales and top hires really work out. We can pretty much summarize a lot of it into the following: Your VP of Sales should have lots of experience selling at your average ACV. for that type of sale. That they are the right ones.

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Sales Recruiting Sales Hiring Scale Sales 315

SaaStr

MARCH 1, 2024

In SaaS, once you have even a few million in ARR, the #1 challenge is recruiting top-tier VPs and building a truly top-tier management team: SaaS products mostly don’t sell themselves. You can hack managing and finding 1–3 reps yourself, but after that, you really need a VP of Sales. It’s the people.

Scale 254

Scale Part-Time VPE CTO Hire Fractional VPE 254

SaaStr

OCTOBER 22, 2020

Recently, a good friend of mine running a Hot SaaS Start-up asked me if he should hire a particular VP of Product candidate I knew well. The team he’d be managing was a big thumbs up on him. Just don’t hire her. This was for a VP Sales position for a fast-growing SaaS company at about $4m in ARR.

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Sales Hiring Sales Recruiting SaaS Engineering 176

SaaStr

MARCH 18, 2021

We’ve talked a lot about hiring a VP of Sales at SaaStr , and if you hire a stretch VP of Sales (as most of you will) … how much you can stretch. A related question is — just how quickly can you gain the requisite experience to be a true first time VP of Sales? Had about 8 mos.

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Sales Hiring Sales Recruiting SMB Sales 280

Sales Hacker

JANUARY 6, 2020

The number one thing I grade candidates on is how well did they run their sales process on me? If you’re a job candidate in sales, you should be managing your job application process just like you’d run your sales process with a potential customer. Again, I’m running this like a sales process.

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Sales Recruiting Sales Hiring Sales Consulting 73

SaaStr

JUNE 22, 2021

The other day I saw a VP of Sales flame out and resign with no notice from a SaaS company doing $10m ARR growing quickly. There were a lot of flags in this hire, but I remember one vividly. So I thought it might be helpful to brush off the topic of alignment between Sales and Marketing by updating a classic post on the topic.

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SaaStr

MARCH 5, 2021

Flock Safety’s Founder and CEO, Garrett Langley, and its VP of Growth, Alex Latraverse, know a bit about sales. Enough to go from 0 to 100 sales reps in about 18 months — and they’re looking to be well beyond 100 by the end of this month. Flock Safety is a hardware-enabled SaaS company dedicated to stopping crime.

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Sales Recruiting Sales Hiring Scale Sales 174

SaaStr

MAY 16, 2024

On the first episode of the Angles and Insight podcast, SaaStr Founder and CEO Jason Lemkin chats with Zapier CEO Wade Foster about the future of B2B SaaS in 2024 and beyond. He is a top VC in the industry and runs SaaStr, the largest SaaS event in the world. They had no hiring expertise and little money.

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SaaStr

MARCH 25, 2023

So one recent survey we did really brought out a healthy debate: does your VP of Sales really need to be a product expert? Many of the comments said it was more important a VP of Sales understand process and leadership more than the product itself. Then I say … you probably made a mis-hire. They often melt. Be present.

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Scale Sales Hiring Sales Recruiting Sales 235

OPEXEngine

APRIL 12, 2022

Emboldened by this seeming endorsement, I dashed off what turned into a lengthy email on interviewing and recruiting, a topic about which I am passionate not because I think I am good at it but because I think I am not. Thoughts on The Recruiting Process. Remember it’s a mutual sales process. Know what you’re looking for.

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