SaaStr

SEPTEMBER 27, 2023

From $1m in ARR, and Then Forever After: Recruiting Great VPs. You need to learn to become great at recruiting. Why is my sales team less efficient at $20m ARR than at $2m in ARR? Many functions simply need more bodies to keep up with larger bookings goals, and inefficiencies come from that, especially in sales-driven models.

Sales Recruiting 284

Sales Recruiting Sales Hiring Startup Scale 284

SaaStr

MAY 1, 2021

Who can help me find that first VP of Sales? This does help with recruiting and partnerships. There are influencer VCs, and at the margin, it’s better to have one for recruiting and partnership building. #5. It’s a pretty small work, venture capital. . #8. Who can truly help the most? Pick that one.

Sales Recruiting 313

Sales Recruiting Venture Capital Sales Hiring Startup 313

SaaStr

JANUARY 5, 2021

1% equity considered low as a startup Director of Sales? How stressful is it to run a venture-backed startup? I’m Head of Product and I think our CEO is actively recruiting a VP of Product. How do Venture Capital Firms really feel about founder salaries? What do partners at venture capital firms do?

Software Review 293

Software Review CTO Coach Technical Review Sales Recruiting 293

SaaStr

AUGUST 29, 2023

So I was on a group Zoom with a number of CROs and VPs of Sales the other day and a consistent theme came up: everyone was surprised how high OTEs (On Target Earnings) had held up in the current environment. I heard the same story from a Salesforce sales exec the other day who had recently left. Look, it just makes sense.

Sales Recruiting 246

Sales Recruiting Venture Capital Enterprise Sales 246

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 293

Part-Time VPE Sales Recruiting Sales Hiring Scale 293

SaaStr

OCTOBER 25, 2023

For part one of this Ask Me Anything session, Jason covers everything you need to know about hiring your first VP of Sales, what he really thinks about AI, what the future of lead generation in 2024 looks like, and much more. Lead generation tools do change, but the basic motions of sales and marketing haven’t changed much.

Scale 284

Scale Sales Hiring Sales Recruiting AI 284

SaaStr

NOVEMBER 12, 2019

I started a software company in college to make it easy to update websites called Content Management Software Now, and I had this idea for Pardot, I wanted to make it easy for marketers to run campaigns online and measure their results. We raised $0 of venture capital. From a product point of view, our timing was impeccable.

Sales Recruiting 196

Sales Recruiting Scale Outsourcing Services Sales Hiring 196

SaaStr

JUNE 27, 2024

At the same time, you want to give trust and power to people who recruit, and you do that by ensuring they understand what the culture is. So that support person, Mafalda, started doing sales, too. Job always thought he’d hire a sales leader and be done with it forever. Your culture can’t be ephemeral, where only the CEO knows.

Scale 261

Scale Sales Hiring Scaling Sales Recruiting 261

SaaStr

APRIL 7, 2022

I am a partner at Accel, the Global Venture Capital Fund, and I’m very happy to be here with one of these mythical creatures that people were talking about earlier. We took the series A, interesting enough, the first executive hired by, thanks to the sales coaching, actually was marketing. The technology is perfected.

Sales Hiring 274

Sales Hiring Scale Sales Recruiting Outsourcing Services 274

SaaStr

JULY 1, 2021

You’re in the valley, you raise venture capital. 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. Spencer : This is something we screwed up a lot of different times.

VP of Engineering 293

VP of Engineering Sales Hiring Sales Recruiting Underperforming Technical Team 293

SaaStock

FEBRUARY 13, 2019

from 500 Durians, Kima Ventures, and others. Talkpush is a conversational recruiting CRM that allows employers and job seekers to connect in new ways across the globe. It also gives recruiters a faster process through its chatbot and application management tool. from CKD Venture Capital Corporation, and others.

SaaS Payments 225

SaaS Payments Payment Solutions Merchant Services Payment Methods 225

SaaStr

AUGUST 25, 2023

You have to understand how venture capital works. 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. If, in one sales cycle, things aren’t improving on several core metrics, they never will.

Part-Time VPE 242

Part-Time VPE Sales Hiring Scale CTO Hire 242

Kellblog

JUNE 27, 2020

If you sell: A recruiting app, running your first recruiting campaign. A sales enablement app, it’s training your first reps. Involve your services team in the sale well before the contract is signed so they propose the right prix fixe package (e.g., A financial planning app, it’s making your first plan.

Consulting 144

Consulting Sales Recruiting Sales Hiring Startup 144

SaaStock

FEBRUARY 14, 2019

With an MBA from the Kellogg School of Management, Rodrigo Baer launched a successful career in consultancy and entrepreneurship, and today is among the top figures in venture capital for early-stage tech companies in Brazil. Starting as VP of Sales, in less than two years he became CEO. Patrick Campbell, CEO, ProfitWell.

Technical Review 207

Technical Review Scale Entrepreneurship Sales Hiring 207

Sales Hacker

APRIL 19, 2022

In this article, I’ll outline the principles of compensation design , how to build sales compensation plans , and include resources to set OTEs and quotas that keep your reps happy and hungry for more. Why Sales Comp Planning is Key to Rep Retention. Who should be responsible for sales compensation planning?

Compensation 98

Compensation Sales Recruiting Sales Hiring Retention 98

Baremetrics

SEPTEMBER 24, 2021

What is the difference between Equity Financing, Loans, and Venture Capital Funding? Venture Capital Funding When should you be thinking about Equity Financing? Debt financing is preferable for sales and marketing acceleration since it has a lower long-term cost and enables the company to expand quicker.

Finance 98

Finance Venture Capital SaaS Payments Payments 98

Sales Hacker

OCTOBER 13, 2020

If you missed episode 130, check it out here: Turning Junior-level Talent into Top Sales Professionals with Eddie Baez. Subscribe to the Sales Hacker Podcast. Sales enablement is easy. REGIE uses artificial intelligence to create entire outbound inbound, and even follow-up sales campaigns faster. We’re on iTunes.

Marketplace as a Service 111

Marketplace as a Service CTO Hire Sales Recruiting Scale 111

The Angel VC

AUGUST 10, 2011

One could almost say that CAC and CLTV are for a SaaS company what wholesale price and sales price are for a retailer. So for a bigger SaaS player, sales and marketing costs are the driver of profitability. along the way. The one area where we think you do have to excel is your product.

Sales Recruiting 155

Sales Recruiting Startup Customer Lifetime Value SaaS 155

SaaStr

AUGUST 5, 2019

We’re over 600 employees, and we’re currently privately backed, and you could see the list of a lot of our venture capital backers who have some common Silicon Valley names. They are like Kleiner Perkins, Google Ventures. First off, the land, this is your typical initial sale.

Sales Recruiting 198

Sales Recruiting Construction Scale SaaS 198

Sales Hacker

AUGUST 4, 2020

This week on the Sales Hacker podcast, we speak with Matt Rizzetta , founder of North 6th Agency, which is a communications and PR firm based in New York City. Years later, he’s got a thriving business that is not venture capital backed. Subscribe to the Sales Hacker Podcast. How to get better at sales [21:37].

Scale 120

Scale Sales Hiring Sales Recruiting Outsourcing Services 120

Intercom, Inc.

SEPTEMBER 8, 2021

When it comes to launching sales teams in hyper-growth startups, few people have walked the walk as much as Maggie Hott. She “stumbled” into it, as she told us, first as one of the earliest sales hires of Eventbrite, where she stayed for four years, and then into Slack in early 2015 as the first sales rep in the Bay Area.

Scale 118

Scale Sales Hiring Sales Recruiting Underperforming Technical Team 118

SaaStr

NOVEMBER 13, 2020

394: Where is Venture Capital today? Sunil Dhaliwal: I was at one of the biggest firms around and I think we had a $200 million fund and people were like, I can’t believe we’re running $200 million in venture capital. And how do you hack it? This episode is sponsored by Outgrow. Jason Lemkin: Crazy.

Sales Recruiting 214

Sales Recruiting Development Team Review Technical Review Sales Hiring 214

Kellblog

MAY 29, 2021

Someone who, when times are tense, can work as an intermediary between the differing parties, often but certainly not always, the investors on one side and founders/management on the other. Former sales leaders often perform well in this situation [6]. Someone who can help make the game plan for getting something done (e.g.,

Sales Hiring 143

Sales Hiring Sales Recruiting Consulting Government 143

The Angel VC

DECEMBER 12, 2018

While this is generally true for most companies, it’s particularly true for SaaS businesses, which invest heavily in product development, sales, and marketing upfront and get payments from customers over a delayed period of time, usually several years. The main reason is that your customer acquisition costs are highly front-loaded.

Sales Recruiting 106

Sales Recruiting Sales Hiring SaaS Payments Scale 106

OpenView Labs

MARCH 17, 2021

“He has the unique ability to move between strategic and tactical level of analysis, from positioning opportunities in the context of larger market trends, to discerning actionable sales and marketing insights.” My Partner Blake Bartlett says it best: “OpenView is a unique firm with a unique approach to venture capital.

Sales Recruiting 96

Sales Recruiting Venture Capital Construction Investment 96

SaaStr

DECEMBER 5, 2019

And the very first thing that I did, like any neurotic person is I Googled corporate venture capital. They might be sales operations challenges. Can we put our product on your paper and your sales team of 4,000, 5,000 people sell a product? That’s how much I knew about it. ” And not just open ended.

Development Team Review 144

Development Team Review Scale Technical Review Software Review 144

SaaStr

JULY 8, 2020

” From a sales perspective, how is that going to change sales? The fact that a lot of our portfolio comes in enterprise, they got a lot of sales done or relationship building done around conferences whether it’s-. What if this is 36 months? What if nobody can get on a plane until summer of 2021 the earliest?”

Investment 205

Investment Technical Review Part-Time VPE Development Team Review 205

Outseta

JANUARY 20, 2020

In light of the sale of Buildium last month I figured now is as good of a time as any to reflect on the most important ones. There was no strike price or vesting schedule associated with these units—they were simply granted to employees based on performance or as a recruiting tool. You read that right—two!

SaaS Payments 145

SaaS Payments Sales Hiring Payment Methods Payment Services 145

SaaStr

FEBRUARY 26, 2019

And we were about a $50 million sales run rate, but I’d never done a media interview. For the first 10 years when we didn’t do one media interview and we got to 50 million in sales. You could recruit, you could do fundraising rounds, you could do all this stuff and then you would have arrived. Think about that.

Acquisition 156

Acquisition Sales Recruiting Scale Sales Hiring 156

ChurnZero

APRIL 27, 2021

Other signs of explosive growth potential at this early stage are a highly efficient sales motion, though this is most often still a work in progress at this stage. Interest from channel partners and sales via channel partners can be another meaningful indicator. . I’ve seen this so many times that is has become predictable. .

Scale 98

Scale Customer Success Payments Underperforming Technical Team 98

Kellblog

JULY 18, 2019

In venture capital (VC) land, you should view investors as long-term partners in value creation. While the sales-and-marketing types will emphasize “its proven-ness” you will want to know how much technical debt there is associated with this old architecture. You might well be doing so. Strong investors.

Underperforming Technical Team 85

Underperforming Technical Team Startup Software Technical Cofounder 85

SaaStr

NOVEMBER 19, 2019

Then I went over to the sales department. The demo is the sale and we close everybody in month. Heidi Jannenga : When we’ve again, first started going out and looking for funding, everybody wants to amplify your sales strategy. The first thing you bring in your playbook on sales. We schedule a demo in the same day.

Scale 184

Scale SMB VP of Engineering Leadership 184

SaaStr

NOVEMBER 21, 2019

To give an example, I was talking to one founder before his B2B SaaS company, and he’s like, “Well, I want to hire a VP of sales to prove what our cost of acquisition is and our payback, et cetera, et cetera.” Ophelia : So we sit down and say, “Okay, how much do you need to put into sales and marketing?

New CTO 175

New CTO Sales Hiring B2C CTO Hire 175

ChurnZero

SEPTEMBER 26, 2019

The SaaS investor award selection process was driven by feedback from entrepreneurs and portfolio companies based on the value an investor adds, whether in terms of strategic advice, recruiting, fundraising, M&A, and network introductions. Promod Haque – Senior Managing Partner – Norwest Venture Partners.

Software Review 45

Software Review Sales Recruiting Technical Review Systems Review 45

Sales Hacker

DECEMBER 17, 2019

This week on the Sales Hacker podcast, we speak with Pete Kazanjy , co-founder of Atrium and author of Founding Sales. As a serial founder, Pete has built up an impressive library of knowledge on scaling businesses and optimizing sales motions. How selling as a founder will help you understand your sales motions.

Scale 53

Scale Sales Recruiting Sales Hiring Technical Review 53

Kellblog

FEBRUARY 21, 2019

Happily, in the past several years startups are increasingly recognizing the value of strong sales enablement and sales productivity teams. So it’s no surprise that I hear a lot about high-growth companies building onboarding programs to enable successfully scaling their sales organizations and sustain their growth.

Sales Hiring 53

Sales Hiring Onboarding Sales Recruiting Scale 53

Point Nine Land

DECEMBER 12, 2018

While this is generally true for most companies, it’s particularly true for SaaS businesses, which invest heavily in product development, sales, and marketing upfront and get payments from customers over a delayed period of time, usually several years. The main reason is that your customer acquisition costs are highly front-loaded.

Sales Recruiting 61

Sales Recruiting SaaS Payments Sales Hiring Scale 61