by Jason Lemkin | Nov 23, 2021 | Blog Posts, Early, Featured Q&A, Sales, Sales |
Q: How do you structure a sales team when you’ve got zero experience doing sales? Well, first go get some experience with sales. 🙂 At least, close the first 10 customers yourself. If you don’t, you’ll never have any idea how to do it. And the odds your first rep...
by Jason Lemkin | May 15, 2021 | Blog Posts, Featured Q&A, Q&A, Sales, Sales |
Dear SaaStr: How is low/mid-ticket sales different from enterprise sales? They are very, very different. If I had to boil down how to filter potential sales professionals based on just 1 controlling criterion, it would be deal size. Enterprise sales: Reps often hunt...
by Jason Lemkin | Jan 5, 2021 | Blog Posts, Featured Q&A, Q&A |
It’s been a fun experience being on Quora for … a decade ???? We’ve crossed 60,000,000 views of our answers there, so let’s take a look at the Top 50 most viewed SaaStr Answers on Quora in 2020: Why do many startup owners sell their firm and...
by Louise Lee | Mar 10, 2020 | Blog Posts, Company Culture, Featured Q&A, Hiring, Leadership, SaaStr Events, Videos
Ben Braverman explains how Flexport entered a competitive market with a unique model and continues to grow. Hiring senior leaders can set companies up to fail and see how sticking with a current, successful model can be the key to hypergrowth. Rely on your success,...
by Louise Lee | Feb 25, 2020 | Blog Posts, Customer Success, Featured Q&A, Growth, Leadership, SaaStr Events, Sales, Videos
Creating champions requires detailed focus on the journey. Kathy Lord, SVP of Sage People explains how asking hard questions, embracing feedback and making personal connections with your customers can move the sales journey from prospect to champion. Want to see more...
by Deborah Findling | Nov 15, 2019 | Career Growth & Advice, Company Culture, Featured Q&A, Hiring, Human Resources, Leadership, Podcasts |
Ep. 282: Michael Pryor, Co-Founder & CEO @ Trello, now Head of Trello Product with Atlassian following their recent acquisition. Kolton Andrus is the Founder & CEO @ Gremlin, the failure as a service startup finds...
by Jason Lemkin | Nov 14, 2019 | Blog Posts, Featured Q&A, Q&A, Scale |
We were recently asked: Dear SaaStr: Are there any examples of a unicorn startup that was bootstrapped? Of course the answer is yes. But I didn’t have a sense of how many, and how the data might look. So I fired up the 2019 Forbes Cloud 100, which isn’t...
by Deborah Findling | Sep 20, 2019 | Featured Q&A, Marketing, Marketing, Podcasts, SaaS Product Pricing |
Ep. 266: Janine Pelosi is the CMO @ Zoom, the next-generation enterprise phone system. Prior to their very successful IPO, Zoom raised funding from some of the best in the business including Sequoia, Emergence Capital, Horizons Ventures and...
by Jason Lemkin | Jul 14, 2019 | Blog Posts, Featured Q&A, Q&A |
What skills do you look for in an entry level sales person? If you are a founder hiring salespeople to manage yourself (i.e., you don’t have a VP of Sales or other sales leader yet) … your #1 criteria should be trust. Specifically, does your gut and time with him/her...
by Jason Lemkin | Dec 30, 2018 | Featured Q&A, Q&A |
It can be harder than you might think. The further you are along in your career, the easier it is to have the time, networks and personal capital to be an investor. No question. And it can take a decade or more to make any real money from investing. It’s hard to have...
by Jason Lemkin | Dec 27, 2018 | Featured Q&A, Q&A |
So far, my ‘13–’15 investments are at about 10x. My ‘16-’18 investments are much earlier, and are sitting just under 2x. A few lessons for me: “Power laws” is an annoying phrase, but they do matter. Your top investments will likely return the bulk of your returns. A...