SaaStr

FEBRUARY 13, 2024

How do you build out a Sales Development (SDR) function at your SaaS company? First, they had six AEs before they started hiring any SDRs. First, they had six AEs before they started hiring any SDRs. When Sam joined, there were two AEs, and he hired four additional AEs. The answer didn’t show up in the data.

Sales Hiring 165

Sales Hiring Scale Underperforming Technical Team Revenue 165

SaaSHolic

JULY 31, 2023

” Bookkeeping, planning, and modeling are skills and activities that someone in the founding team should perform at a good-enough level. Accounting and payroll should definitely be outsourced. It just so happens that these CEOs typically prioritize pressing operational needs (a sales rep, a developer, etc.),

Sales Hiring 52

Sales Hiring Payment Services Underperforming Technical Team Outsourced Development 52

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. Jokes aside, this is listed as number 1 because we’ve yet to see a successful B2B SaaS company where one of the founders wasn’t the first person doing sales.

Sales Hiring 125

Sales Hiring Scale Technical Advisors Technical Cofounder 125

SaaStr

NOVEMBER 9, 2020

Maybe: – Go grab that office lease at half off – Hire Bay Area VPs now while they'll work anywhere. My top suggestions: Hire those “Bay Area VPs” now while they’ll (still) work with startups HQ’d anywhere. Go hire those VPs now that aren’t in your city. Make the hires.

Underperforming Technical Team 315

Underperforming Technical Team Sales Hiring Travel Cloud 315

Totango

OCTOBER 20, 2022

Hiring team members with the right customer success manager skills is critical for the effectiveness of your CS team and strategy. Here we’ve identified the 13 most essential qualities to consider when hiring a CS manager. What Is a Customer Success Manager (CSM)?

Sales Hiring 90

Sales Hiring Customer Success Sales Recruiting Technical Review 90

SaaStr

JANUARY 29, 2023

Basically all of the SaaS CEOs/founders I know of have made at least one terrible VP+ level hire. Sometimes it’s VP Sales (OK, often, this is the most common mishire — another post here on what a really great VPS can do for you, and how a poor one can wreck your company, coming). Only money. First, some context.

Sales Hiring 261

Sales Hiring Scale Underperforming Technical Team Startup 261

SaaStr

MARCH 20, 2021

I’ve seen sales reps great at $20k deals join a start-up with tons of leads but at a $2k price point and fail. Pick a sales process you are comfortable with. Account management? Can you do truly competitive sales? But larger sales organizations put sales operations processes in place that keep you more organized.

Sales Hiring 337

Sales Hiring Underperforming Technical Team Branding Pricing 337

Intercom, Inc.

MARCH 12, 2019

A little over a year ago, I got the opportunity to start a new team within our sales organization – a team of Relationship Managers dedicated to growing our current customers at scale. The opportunity emerged out of a shift in how we practice sales. We had split into two distinct but complementary functions.

Sales Hiring 171

Sales Hiring Sales Recruiting Underperforming Technical Team Scale 171

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. They are: What is the pay mix?

Compensation 74

Compensation Underperforming Technical Team Sales Recruiting Sales Hiring 74

SaaStr

JANUARY 24, 2024

How should you handle presenting challenges to your C-suite team when you’ve just joined the company? She was hired because they saw a bit of softening in new business growth, and she came to help diagnose what was going on and help scale the business. The bad news is it wasn’t driving the results they wanted.

Scale 207

Scale Sales Hiring Scaling Revenue 207

SaaStr

APRIL 5, 2023

A bad experience with a revenue operations leader might taint your view of the position at all future companies, but that would be a mistake, as CRO Confidential podcast host Sam Blond learned first-hand. Considering aspects of sales and GTM strategies. A good range for this hire might be between 2-8 sales reps.

Sales Hiring 179

Sales Hiring Education Scale Strategy 179

OpenView Labs

OCTOBER 29, 2021

This is why, even for early-stage startups, the sooner you hire your first product person, the better. But when, exactly, should you make that hire? Who should you hire? On a recent episode of the BUILD Podcast , Blake Bartlett spoke with Nikita Miller about best practices for building an early-stage product team.

Sales Hiring 60

Sales Hiring Sales Recruiting Development Team Review Management 60

SaaStr

JANUARY 16, 2023

Not that they are just "great at sales" — Jason Be Kind Lemkin  (@jasonlk) January 12, 2023. So a while back we did a deep dive on why 95% of the VPs of Sales candidates just won’t thrive at your start-up. I think it’s important to repeat that analysis, but for your first few sales reps.

Sales Hiring 241

Sales Hiring Startup Underperforming Technical Team Branding 241

Sales Hacker

DECEMBER 19, 2022

As the president of Sales Xceleration, a firm specializing in assessing and implementing sales strategy , sales processes, and sales execution to drive growth, I’ve seen how job hopping can affect otherwise stable sales teams. But also the cost it has on their careers — and your sales team.

Sales Hiring 79

Sales Hiring Underperforming Technical Team Sales Recruiting Compensation 79

OnStartups

MAY 18, 2021

First off, just to be clear, I’ve never been a sales person. I’ve never even played a sales person on TV. All the points below have been pulled from startup sales teams that I think work pretty well (including the team at CRM software company, HubSpot). Building Startup Sales Teams.

Sales Hiring 110

Sales Hiring Scale Underperforming Technical Team Startup 110

Sales Hacker

MARCH 12, 2020

Like most things in life, hiring sales talent is a matter of timing. Especially since the best candidates with strong sales skills are usually snatched up within 10 days. That’s why it’s critical to overcome indecision and move quickly when recruiting sales talent. Is it unrealistic sales quotas?

Sales Hiring 76

Sales Hiring Sales Recruiting Compensation Underperforming Technical Team 76

SaaStr

OCTOBER 30, 2021

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. I considered the four companies and chose Gorgias based on my experience with their team during the interview process.

Scale 243

Scale Sales Hiring Sales SMB 243

Sales Hacker

DECEMBER 5, 2019

When hiring sales reps, what qualities do you look for? Having spent time as a BDR himself, Scott correctly identified that grit and curiosity are key identifiers for success in business development: “Intellectual curiosity & ridiculous grit. This is the traditional mindset when looking for new team members.

Sales Hiring 56

Sales Hiring Scale Sales Recruiting Sales 56

InsightSquared

JANUARY 16, 2019

Bad onboarding can have lasting repercussions that continue to have a negative impact on your company for years. This is especially true of Sales Development Reps, SDRs, as they are such an integral part of your sales process. Here’s why bad onboarding compounds, and what a great onboarding strategy looks like.

Sales Hiring 70

Sales Hiring Onboarding Underperforming Technical Team Strategy 70

SaaStr

OCTOBER 10, 2022

From a venture capital perspective, there’s now a premium on driving efficient growth rather than growth at any cost. . “Sales and marketing alignment is a terrific place to figure out and improve efficient growth.” . From the get-go, ensure alignment between sales and marketing teams on goals and anticipated outcomes.

Scale 248

Scale Sales Hiring Marketing Venture Capital 248

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.

Sales Hiring 240

Sales Hiring Part-Time VPE VP of Engineering Sales Recruiting 240

OpenView Labs

MARCH 24, 2021

Without fail, every week I speak to 5–10 startup founders who are dealing with one of these two painful situations: They’re going through the process of parting ways with the wrong VP of Sales or the wrong enterprise salespeople. For either one, the bottom line is that the cost of a bad hire is significant.

Sales Hiring 56

Sales Hiring Underperforming Technical Team Company Culture Interviewing 56

OpenView Labs

FEBRUARY 3, 2022

Startup founders are seeing hiring become their day jobs . In 2021, 42% of founders were kept up at night by concerns about hiring the best talent. Despite the shift to remote work, the great resignation, and the insane amount of hiring that is occurring, it still surprised us to see hiring becoming such a focus.

Sales Hiring 82

Sales Hiring Sales Recruiting Scale Startup 82

SaaStr

DECEMBER 14, 2020

If you already have a few bigger deals under your belt, but most are smaller … a few higher-level suggestions: Hire a Very Good VP of Sales that has sold at your “high end” price point. If you can make this hire now — you will do much, much better. More here: The 48 Types of VP Sales. Get zen about longer sales cycles.

Scale 287

Scale Sales Hiring Underperforming Technical Team Point of Sale 287

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. You can have the great product and a great team, but the market of small or very niche. Jyoti Bansal: Yeah.

Sales Recruiting 234

Sales Recruiting Sales Hiring Scale VP of Engineering 234

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.

Sales Hiring 123

Sales Hiring Underperforming Technical Team Sales Management 123

OpenView Labs

MARCH 27, 2020

When I first wrote this for OpenView, we were in a place where unemployment was at an all-time low and hiring was top of mind. Whether your company has paused hiring, is still hiring or will be in the future, having the right people for your business and stage will always be a priority.

Sales Hiring 52

Sales Hiring Enterprise Underperforming Technical Team Scale 52

Casey Accidental

MARCH 5, 2018

A common question I receive is how to hire analysts and where they fit into an organizational structure. Below I share some tribal knowledge around common team structures, options I think work best and hiring tips that leverage this talent. Functional vs. Embedded Teams. The Hybrid Model.

Sales Hiring 65

Sales Hiring Underperforming Technical Team Scale Interviewing 65

User Pilot

JULY 27, 2023

Before hiring, assess your current needs and hire as your company grows. Engineering Manager: In charge of planning, designing, and overseeing projects. They also manage finances and supervise one or more engineering teams. Much of the success here depends on how competent and motivated the CTO and their team is.

Sales Hiring 98

Sales Hiring SaaS Payments Sales Recruiting CTO Hire 98

Sales Hacker

JUNE 17, 2020

The cost of hiring the wrong SDR is high. The longer and more complex the sales cycle is (like in enterprise sales), the longer and more complex the onboarding and training process will be. So, how do you ensure you’re hiring the right SDRs for your team? Determine the Skills You Need. Convincing. Being passionate.

Sales Hiring 65

Sales Hiring Enterprise Interviewing Underperforming Technical Team 65

Sales Hacker

MARCH 8, 2018

Sales interviews are nerve-wracking. Not just for candidates, but also for hiring managers. You may have to pass on hundreds of excellent sales hires—it’s definitely frustrating. Prepare For Your Next Sales Interview with These 5 Pro Tips. Demonstrate the depth of your skills, not the breadth.

Sales Hiring 68

Sales Hiring Interviewing Sales Recruiting Underperforming Technical Team 68

OpenView Labs

MARCH 17, 2020

When you ask average questions, you get average hires. So I’m always on the lookout for provocative interview questions that help you learn much more about the person than just their canned answer to “What’s your biggest weakness?” Related: Are You Hiring for Culture Fit or Culture Add?

Sales Hiring 52

Sales Hiring CTO Hire Interviewing Underperforming Technical Team 52

SaaStr

NOVEMBER 26, 2019

Hear from Duo Security’s VP of Inside Sales America on how to build a $2.3B sales team. Jennifer Lawrence | VP, Inside Sales @ Duo Security. Today I’m going to start by telling you a little bit about me, a little bit about Duo, and then the secrets to building a killer inside sales org. Good afternoon.

Scale 210

Scale Sales Hiring Underperforming Technical Team Sales 210

OpenView Labs

JULY 20, 2020

Interviewing is hard , and interviewing candidates for sales roles can be doubly so. Sales requires a mix of left- and right-brained qualities, and accurately evaluating a candidate’s skills is a challenge for hiring managers. Hiring well or poorly will literally make or break your business.

Interviewing 73

Interviewing Sales Hiring Sales Recruiting Underperforming Technical Team 73

Point Nine Land

MARCH 7, 2019

Lemkin recently posted a tweetstorm about his observation that most startups are bad at finance. No proper finance or account until even after raising millions, even to $5m+ ARR. If there’s a trade-off between hiring a CFO and, say, a marketing leader or 1–2 developers, most founders will understandably go for the latter.

Sales Hiring 72

Sales Hiring Outsourcing Services Payment Services Finance 72

Intercom, Inc.

JUNE 21, 2018

Whether you’re at an early-stage startup that’s just made its first sales hires, or part of a fast-moving sales team in a large organization, the key to success often comes down to efficiency. That means your focus should be on building the right customer profile and developing precise messaging to reach them.

Sales Hiring 183

Sales Hiring Scale Sales Recruiting Technical Advisors 183

Intercom, Inc.

JULY 29, 2021

And so, Mark Rudden and his team had to figure it all out by themselves. Fortunately, Mark had quite a bit of experience working and scaling teams in demanding, hypergrowth environments. In fact, in some form or another, he’s been working in sales for most of his career. The journey to sales is a bit of a random one.

Sales Hiring 223

Sales Hiring Scale Sales Recruiting Underperforming Technical Team 223