SaaStr

JANUARY 24, 2021

2021 will be the year SaaS sales evolves the most since the Appexchange ecosystem started to take off ~15 years ago, which spawned the entire notion of a true sales app stack. The permanent move to distributed sales teams. Almost every SaaS VP of Sales and CRO I’ve talked to in the past few months isn’t going back.

Sales Recruiting 350

Sales Recruiting Scale Technical Review Sales 350

SaaStr

FEBRUARY 25, 2021

Ah the VP of Sales. The first post is What a Great VP of Sales Actually Does. The second post is a script for you to use (and modify as you see fit) – 10 Great Questions to Ask a VP Sales Candidate. Just so you know, there are 48 Different Types of VP Sales. The toughest hire. Such a high failure rate.

Sales Hiring 363

Sales Hiring Scale Sales Recruiting Sales 363

Intercom, Inc.

SEPTEMBER 10, 2020

It’s an approach that’s served him well along the road to building the HubSpot sales team, where he was CRO for nine years. That experience led to his bestselling book, The Sales Acceleration Formula. A data-driven framework for scaling. Mark’s latest ebook, The Science of Scaling , outlines a precise framework for success.

Scale 226

Scale Scaling Sales Recruiting Sales Hiring 226

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.

Sales Hiring 264

Sales Hiring Sales Recruiting Scale Headcount 264

SaaStr

AUGUST 9, 2023

My top mistakes as a SaaS founder/CEO: Not convincing the very, very, very best VPE I knew to join as our VPE. I had a great CTO, but I also needed a truly great VPE to scale past $10m ARR and deal with all those issues. Not becoming a better recruiter. But I was a sequential recruiter. I tried and I tried for years.

Part-Time VPE 215

Part-Time VPE Sales Recruiting CTO Scale 215

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. As a manager, you have to do things differently. 2021 was the boom.

Sales Recruiting 245

Sales Recruiting AI Search B2B Sales Hiring 245

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. The VPM giving their all to create leads, opportunities, and more. 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.

Sales Recruiting 297

Sales Recruiting Scale Sales Hiring Revenue 297

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

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. If they are just saying the wrong things to customers and prospects. Be present.

Scale 238

Scale Sales Hiring Sales Recruiting Sales 238

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.

Sales Recruiting 177

Sales Recruiting Sales Hiring Scale Sales 177

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. Ask who they are.

Sales Recruiting 321

Sales Recruiting Sales Hiring Scale Sales 321

SaaStr

JANUARY 23, 2024

Dear SaaStr: Does it get easier or harder to scale SaaS as your company grows? Generally, it gets easier to grow at a “good”/modest rate at you scale, but harder to grow at an outsize rate. And that brand generates leads organically, and fairly low-cost leads. Account expansion starts to work.

Scale 207

Scale Sales Recruiting Scaling Branding 207

SaaStr

SEPTEMBER 27, 2023

More here: If You’re Going to Do a SaaS Start-Up … You Have to Give it 24 Months – SaaStr Post-Revenue: Staying the Course When Revenues Are Trivial. From $1m in ARR, and Then Forever After: Recruiting Great VPs. You need to learn to become great at recruiting. Wait too long, you’ll never get there. It never ends.

Sales Recruiting 261

Sales Recruiting Sales Hiring Startup Scale 261

Tom Tunguz

FEBRUARY 2, 2021

Throughout her time there, she scaled the SaaS company from $1M ARR to pre- IPO, along the way, creating the category of customer success software, and paving the way for Gainsight’s $1.1B COOs have become more common in management teams as ways for founders & CEOs to build the management team to scale a business.

Scale 286

Scale Sales Recruiting Sales Hiring Customer Success 286

OpenView Labs

APRIL 29, 2021

OpenView, Work-Bench , Primary Venture Partners , and Lerer Hippeau just hosted the fourth and final session of SaaS Growth Camp—a series for the firms’ portfolio companies tailored to the complex ideas behind SaaS growth and go-to-market strategies. Recruiting top talent is the common denominator across all scaling startups.

Sales Recruiting 81

Sales Recruiting Outsourcing Services Sales Hiring Scale 81

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. Most of us can’t afford to hire a VPM 12 months before we have our first customer, and we can’t survive through 10 sales reps without one. In the early days, Revenue Per Lead is critical.

Sales Hiring 348

Sales Hiring Sales Recruiting Scale Marketing 348

SaaStr

MARCH 10, 2020

Rely on your success, know you are doing something right and scale faster. That was the most over the top entrance that the sales leader for a company that moves boxes around the world has ever gotten. We’ve scaled it pretty far pretty quickly. So we did about 442 million in sales last year. FULL TRANSCRIPT BELOW.

Scale 198

Scale Sales Hiring Sales Recruiting Scaling 198

SaaStr

JULY 14, 2022

What started as a simple WordPress blog in 2012 has now become the world’s largest community of SaaS executives, founders, and entrepreneurs. We do that with a combination of industry-leading content and community connections. And SaaStr Europa brings 2,500+ SaaS execs, founders, and VCs together to Europe every summer.

Scale 284

Scale Sales Recruiting CTO Hire New CTO 284

SaaStr

JUNE 24, 2022

We’ve recently been posting polls on SaaStr’s LinkedIn account to get a feel for what SaaS companies are doing in the current environment. In the video below, he discusses the results and where he thinks SaaS companies are on track or need improvement. #1. This is particularly important for a VP of Sales.

Sales Recruiting 223

Sales Recruiting Sales Hiring Scale Customer Success 223

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. Routine Sales. You gotta hire 2 great sales reps as soon as you can. This didn’t work well until I had a Great VP of Sales.

Sales Hiring 278

Sales Hiring Sales Recruiting Scale Scaling 278

SaaStr

JANUARY 27, 2021

But I thought I’d take a stab at the Top 10 Pieces of Classic SaaS Advice … that, in my experience at least, are usually Just Plain Wrong. If a VP of Sales can’t improve things in one sales cycle or less — she never will. In one sales cycle, or less. SaaS compounds. Not always, but usually.

Part-Time VPE 310

Part-Time VPE Sales Hiring Scale Sales Recruiting 310

SaaStr

AUGUST 25, 2023

Hundreds of thousands of experts are telling you how to succeed in SaaS. 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.

Part-Time VPE 194

Part-Time VPE Scale Sales Hiring CTO Hire 194

SaaStr

MARCH 7, 2021

I thought it would be worth drilling down deeper into each of them, and sharing the learnings and mistakes: 1/ Spending less time fixing things, more time recruiting senior folks to own them. No one spends enough time recruiting as it is, after $1m ARR or so. Yes, you can manage the sales team yourself. You can do this.

Part-Time VPE 271

Part-Time VPE Sales Recruiting Sales Hiring Scale 271

SaaStr

AUGUST 30, 2022

This happens with some regularity in SaaS, I’ve learned (and to be clear: I’m not talking about any company I’ve invested in, am an advisor to, board member of, etc – Because when it’s still a very small team, with no true management team … co-founders can kind of hack it to $1m-$2m in ARR together.

Sales Recruiting 242

Sales Recruiting Technical Cofounder Scale Investment 242

SaaStr

JUNE 29, 2019

The Playbook: To Recruiting Your Sales Team, with Brex CSO Sam Blong. To Scaling High-Performing Teams, with Gusto COO Lexi Reese. To Growth Hacking at Scale, with ex-Drift and Segment VP Growth Guillaume Cabane. To Defining the Journey from Prospect to Champion with Kathy Lord, SVP Sales at Intacct.

Scale 122

Scale Sales Recruiting Scaling Growth Hacking 122

SaaStr

JULY 9, 2019

Join Anish Shivdasani, CEO of Giraffe, as he provides unique African experiences learned from scaling to 1M users. Giraffe is a mobile job matching platform that helps medium skilled workers get access to opportunities and helps businesses to recruit staff faster, and easier, and more affordably than any other way. How’s it guys?

Scale 162

Scale Sales Recruiting Scaling SaaS Payments 162

SaaStr

JUNE 23, 2020

Q: What’s the number one challenge for scale-up founders? In SaaS, it is recruiting your VPs and 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. She can be your CTO forever.

Part-Time VPE 237

Part-Time VPE CTO Hire Fractional VPE Sales Recruiting 237

Point Nine Land

OCTOBER 23, 2023

P9 Panel on Hiring Sales Leaders — Founders Summit 2023 “You are going to fire your first sales manager!” — A lesson too many founders learn the hard way. The Founder isn’t willing to be the first salesperson Many of the best founders we work with don’t have a sales background and are either product or engineering focused.

Sales Hiring 125

Sales Hiring Scale Technical Advisors Technical Cofounder 125

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

FEBRUARY 5, 2023

5 Interesting Learnings from ServiceNow at $8 Billion in ARR Pitchbook & IVP: Top Tier SaaS Companies Usually Raise at 15x ARR. SaaStr 630: Sales-led vs. Product-led? SaaStr 629: CRO Confidential: Sales Recruitment in 2023 For Candidates and Hiring Managers With Flexport’s Ben Braverman   3.

Sales Recruiting 207

Sales Recruiting Sales Hiring Scale Venture Capital 207

SaaStr

JANUARY 25, 2021

I thought updating that list would create a useful checklist for things not to do in SaaS in the early days … since they are all avoidable. – My Top 10 Mistakes Starting An (Ultimately Successful) SaaS Company. – My Top 10 Mistakes Starting An (Ultimately Successful) SaaS Company. – Launching Too Early.

Sales Recruiting 263

Sales Recruiting Sales Hiring Scale SaaS 263

SaaStr

MAY 14, 2023

Check out this week’s top blog posts, podcasts, and videos: Top Blog Posts This Week: 15+ of The Top Sales & Marketing Mistakes SaaS Startups Make (Updated) Cloudflare: Our Top Reps Are Hitting 129% of Quota. 7 Things All Founders Should Know About Sales with Dave Kellogg: SaaStr Workshop Wednesday LIVE 2.

Sales Recruiting 211

Sales Recruiting Scale Generative AI AI 211

SaaStr

APRIL 17, 2023

4,000+ of us will get together there to share, scale and learn. People mainly come to meet other leaders in SaaS, but also to enjoy London or Paris or Barcelona, depending on where we are. Tons of VPs of Sales, Marketing, Product and CS still come to Europa. The highest % of global VCs in SaaS. A great Europe-to-U.S.

Sales Recruiting 256

Sales Recruiting Scale Cloud Scaling 256

SaaStr

MAY 3, 2021

In the past, we’ve touched on several different ideas to help you scale, to do Even Better: Imagine capital doesn’t matter. the prospects). But even if you’ve hired the world’s best VP of Sales … you can’t opt out of sales entirely. And see where that takes you. Add a layer.

Part-Time VPE 271

Part-Time VPE Sales Hiring Sales Recruiting Outsourcing Services 271

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.

Sales Hiring 227

Sales Hiring Scale Sales Recruiting SaaS 227

SaaStr

MARCH 17, 2021

The other day, I met with a great founder who talked with me about how he was about to top his VP of Sales. in ARR in pretty short order, recruiting a great small team of reps under her, and had really nailed the formula. Time to get the management team in order. You’re going to need a whole series of sales managers.

Sales Hiring 290

Sales Hiring Sales Recruiting Scale SMB 290

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. Especially, past $10m ARR and beyond. Even today. With SMBs, you can hack it a bit more.

Sales Hiring 315

Sales Hiring Sales Recruiting Scale Scaling 315