SaaStr

DECEMBER 16, 2020

Q: What makes a great sales leader? The best sales managers / directors / VPs: Recruit great team members. Sales requires a linear number of hires to grow bookings. So you have to be a great recruiter to scale. But the best sales leaders know where they are #1. Decrease sales cycles.

Sales Recruiting 261

Sales Recruiting Sales Hiring Scale Sales 261

SaaStr

AUGUST 14, 2020

A mistake many founders make is hiring a VP of Sales who has many strengths — but not at sales per se. A VP of Sales who is smart, polished, and worked at the right place, in a management-level position. That can talk about quota attainment and sales operations and scaling and number. you might ask.

Sales Recruiting 361

Sales Recruiting Sales Hiring Scale Sales 361

SaaStr

SEPTEMBER 27, 2021

In the “old” days, there was a rough rule that as soon as you are bringing on more than 1–2 reps a quarter, you needed to hire a director of sales ops. That at that point, at a minimum, there would be too much administrative work for your VP of Sales to handle it herself. You want the sales ops help scaled up and helping before then.

Sales Hiring 213

Sales Hiring Sales Recruiting Scale Sales 213

SaaStr

JULY 7, 2022

Q: Dear SaaStr: When Should The CEO Step Away From Sales? It’s just, as you scale, what you do in the sales process as CEO evolves and changes. Anyhow, my VP of Customer Success, VP of Product and I were in one small conference room working with the Sales Operations team. But you don’t get to stop doing sales.

Sales Recruiting 212

Sales Recruiting Sales Hiring Scale Sales 212

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. 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. The original version here on Lattice Engines’ Sales and Marketing Hub.

Sales Recruiting 300

Sales Recruiting Scale Sales Hiring Revenue 300

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. Here are some things to remember when you think about scaling your next big SaaS company.

Sales Recruiting 170

Sales Recruiting Sales Hiring Scale Sales 170

SaaStr

JANUARY 24, 2024

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. Lattice had a product-led growth flow on the website while the sales team was still trying to sell the PLG companies The good news is Lattice had a lot of activity and initiatives at play.

Scale 218

Scale Sales Hiring Scaling Revenue 218

SaaStr

JULY 2, 2021

I’ve written a lot about this, but for most start-ups, you can boil it down to two criteria any first VP of Sales just has to meet: Has she built at least a small team before? If you can hire 2–3 great ones, you can likely scale and hire 20–30. No VP of Sales is equally great at both inbound and outbound sales.

Sales Recruiting 272

Sales Recruiting Sales Hiring Scale Development Team Review 272

SaaStr

AUGUST 28, 2020

I know we’ve hit a number of these points individually before on SaaStr, but after getting asked about the top mistakes hiring your first sales team so many times over the years, I thought it would be worthwhile to assemble a Top 10 List. Make fewer of them and you’ll scale faster with less stress. Yes, you may be terrible at sales.

Sales Hiring 321

Sales Hiring Sales Recruiting Scale Sales 321

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 346

Sales Recruiting Scale Technical Review Sales 346

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

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 323

Sales Recruiting Sales Hiring Scale Sales 323

OpenView Labs

APRIL 29, 2021

Recruiting top talent is the common denominator across all scaling startups. Nine out of 10 founders and CEOs I connect with are involved in recruiting on a weekly, if not daily, basis. Many of them are learning on the fly and trying to juggle being CEO and Chief People Officer/Lead Recruiter/Brand Evangelist all at once.

Sales Recruiting 81

Sales Recruiting Outsourcing Services Sales Hiring Scale 81

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. They often melt. I say, you just gotta know the product. Not just with buzzwords.

Scale 219

Scale Sales Hiring Sales Recruiting Sales 219

SaaStr

AUGUST 26, 2020

Founder-led sales generally stops scaling around $1m-$2m ARR. A sign to hire a real sales leader. Over the years at SaaStr we’ve talked a lot about hiring a great VP of Sales, when it works, when it does, and how it moves the needle. The distraction of building a real sales team isn’t worth it yet.

Sales Hiring 278

Sales Hiring Sales Recruiting Scale Sales 278

SaaStr

AUGUST 9, 2023

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. I recruited a great VP of Sales, a strong VP of Marketing, a great VP of Product (now COO at Gong), and a great VP of Customer Success. But I was a sequential recruiter.

Part-Time VPE 193

Part-Time VPE Sales Recruiting CTO Scale 193

SaaStr

JULY 18, 2023

Some engineers by training, others in sales or product originally. But a few uniting characteristics of the very best: Relentless Recruiters. You have to be constantly recruiting the best. The best founders usually spend at least 20% of their time recruiting. You can’t do it all yourself, at least not as you scale.

Sales Recruiting 205

Sales Recruiting Scale Scaling Engineering 205

SaaStr

MARCH 12, 2021

We’ve talked a lot about hiring a great VP of Sales at SaaStr, and I’ve relinked to some of the most popular posts below. If you can hire 2–3 great ones, you can likely scale and hire 20–30. Do the diligence here to make sure she’s really been able to recruit at least a few successful reps. That takes years to learn.

Sales Hiring 246

Sales Hiring Sales Recruiting Scale Development Team Review 246

SaaStr

SEPTEMBER 27, 2023

From $1m in ARR, and Then Forever After: Recruiting Great VPs. You need to learn to become great at recruiting. As you finally begin to scale, you’ll have enough revenue to hire some great folks, but not enough to build very redundant teams. More here: From Initial Traction to Initial Scale (~$10M in ARR): The Hardest Phase.

Sales Recruiting 246

Sales Recruiting Sales Hiring Startup Scale 246

Tom Tunguz

SEPTEMBER 8, 2022

It formed the basis for a career at HubSpot predicated on consistent quantitative analysis to scale the go-to-market, which he detailed in the Sales Acceleration Formula in 2015. I think it’s still one of the best books on how to repeatably scale sales teams. What would the chart above look like for your sales team?

Sales Hiring 345

Sales Hiring Sales Recruiting Scale Marketing 345

SaaStr

MAY 7, 2019

Sales is hard. Third, make sure your sales leaders can recruit good reps under them. The best sales cultures come from the CEO yes, but also in very large part from the VP of Sales. The best sales cultures come from the CEO yes, but also in very large part from the VP of Sales.

Sales Recruiting 189

Sales Recruiting Scale Sales Scaling 189

SaaStr

JUNE 17, 2023

The toughest part in the end is always recruiting. Recruiting. Over time, that’s recruiting more and more senior folks, so the target changes. As your company scales, you’ll start to hit 15%+ attrition in your employee base just naturally each year. You’ll have to be recruiting new ones all the time.

Sales Recruiting 168

Sales Recruiting Scale Compensation Business Model 168

SaaStr

MARCH 20, 2024

They discuss Sam’s learnings at Founders Fund, what the 2024 playbook looks like, hiring and motivating sales teams, and a handful of audience questions. On the sales side, people hired way too much. More salespeople do not equal more sales. Sam just finished 18 months at Founders Fund after joining in mid-to-late 2022.

Sales Hiring 246

Sales Hiring Sales Recruiting Scale Headcount 246

OpenView Labs

DECEMBER 16, 2019

So if scaling your sales organization is a priority in 2020, here are the things you need to be aware of to make sure you do so successfully. In my experience both as a salesperson and as a recruiter, it’s primarily been four things: They want the work they’re doing to matter to them. Hiring sales leaders will get harder.

Sales Recruiting 53

Sales Recruiting Sales Hiring Scale Trends 53

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 223

Sales Recruiting Technical Cofounder Scale Investment 223

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

FEBRUARY 27, 2023

Storyblok started with a leadership-first hiring plan and a recruitment strategy that involved the following: A test to know how candidates handle different tasks and their expertise level. Their first step to achieving this was hiring a sales leader to build a sales team. Prioritize customer and employee satisfaction.

Scale 186

Scale Sales Hiring Sales Recruiting Scaling 186

SaaStr

OCTOBER 27, 2022

You need engineering, product in all start-ups — but in SaaS, even in the very early days, you also need sales, client success, true support, demand gen marketing, etc. 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. That was me.

Sales Hiring 279

Sales Hiring Sales Recruiting Scale Scaling 279

SaaStr

JANUARY 30, 2021

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. It’s not quite as terrible as waiting too long for a VP of Sales. A great VP of Marketing can help make the sales reps better qualitatively, even before you have a VP of Sales.

Sales Hiring 350

Sales Hiring Sales Recruiting Scale Marketing 350

SaaStr

DECEMBER 11, 2020

On how to recruit in the early days, when not everyone gets it. The Q+A at the end is especially good — stay for it: #3: “Zendesk’s Secret Sauce to Scaling to $1B: SMB and Mid-Market Success” with VP Global SMB Sales Sharon Prosser and VP GTM Strategy Astha Malik. . How to recruit in a less hot space.

Scale 173

Scale Sales Recruiting Scaling SMB 173

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. Efficiency goes down in other places (sales efficiency usually, marketing efficiency often). Account expansion starts to work.

Scale 192

Scale Sales Recruiting Scaling Branding 192

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

JULY 22, 2019

SaaStr Scale, our one day, San Francisco based event. The Playbook To… Hear from different revenue leaders on the playbooks to revenue growth, scaling, building better teams and more. The Playbook to Building a Thriving Sales Culture with PatientPop SVP of Sales Justin Welsh. The post SaaStr Scale is coming to SF!

Scale 185

Scale Sales Recruiting Scaling Sales Hiring 185

Sales Hacker

APRIL 23, 2024

Lessons learned from scaling innovative products and go-to-market motions at AWS. Strategies for recruiting exceptional talent and building a customer-centric culture. 21:12 – Linda’s strategy for recruiting and retaining exceptional talent at Common Room. It’s flexible, scalable ABM built for you.

Sales Recruiting 81

Sales Recruiting Scale AWS Management 81

SaaStr

JUNE 24, 2022

Your best sales reps can close so much more than your average rep. Move the bottom 10% out and give the best leads to your top performer, and watch sales go up 20%. The best VPs of Sales design comp plans so the team never wants to leave. You should be striving for zero voluntary attrition on your sales team.

Sales Recruiting 205

Sales Recruiting Sales Hiring Scale Customer Success 205

SaaStr

SEPTEMBER 1, 2021

Pretty incredible at scale. For example, a great Stretch VP of Sales might get you to from $50k to $500k a month in new bookings. To recruit the team and resources it takes not just to meet the plan this quarter, but the next one and the following quarters as well. What changed? A new revenue team. I see this again and again.

Sales Recruiting 227

Sales Recruiting Scale Sales Hiring Metrics 227

SaaStr

JANUARY 28, 2022

When you think of scaling up, many things may come to mind, like hiring, culture, marketing, and sales. But what are the essentials of scaling up, and how do you navigate obstacles along the way to function as a high-impact organization? Does PLG really help scale by a large amount? The go-to-market playbook.

Scale 170

Scale Sales Hiring Scaling Sales Recruiting 170