Dear SaaStr: Why Do VC Backed Startups Seem To Almost Always Be Running Out of Money?
Dear SaaStr: Why Do VC Backed Startups Seem To Almost Always Be Running Out of Money? The #1 issue I see is not understanding what investments really are accretive — and which aren’t. And so the money goes far, far faster than anticipated. Venture capital, if you...
CRO Confidential: How to Sell in a Hyper-Competitive Space with Apollo CRO Leandra Fishman
SaaStr’s CRO Confidential podcast host Sam Blond chats with the CRO of Apollo, Leandra Fishman, about Apollo’s success in a competitive market, emphasizing product differentiation, value-based selling, and the importance of customer relationships in driving sales success.
Dear SaaStr: Is It Normal to Feel Like a Pest When Prospecting for Customers For a Startup?
Dear SaaStr: Is It Normal to Feel Like a Pest When Prospecting for Customers For a Startup? Yes. Get better at it, get over it, and hire folks who know how to do it. Boy sales is hard. It’s being told No a lot. It’s having literal, or virtual, doors shut on your...
The New CRO’s First Job Now is To Aggressively Raise Prices. Be Wary.
One of our top vendors just got a new CRO He got on the phone with us and said he was doubling pricing because "their costs are up". No heads up, just to make his plan. Now, we are looking at their competitor. Before … we weren't. Worth it for...
The Path to CRO with TigerEye, CircleCl, Lattice, and Notion
The path to Cheif Revenue Officer (CRO) is different for many people. Tracy Young, CEO and co-founder at TigerEye, sits down with three CROs to talk about how they navigated the journey to revenue leader. Jane Kim, former CRO of CircleCl, Laurabeth Harvey, President of Field Operations at Lattice, and Erica Anderson, Notion’s CRO, all share the key decisions or events that shaped their careers.
Dear SaaStr: For High Dollar Vertical SaaS, Does The First VP of Sales Need Domain Expertise?
Dear SaaStr: If you were hiring a head of sales for a high-priced, niche B2B SaaS product, would you focus on general B2B SaaS sales experience or on market/customer knowledge, assuming it will be very difficult to find a candidate with both? This is the scenario when...
The Playbook to Hiring Your First VP of Sales and Not Screwing it Up with Brendon Cassidy (Video + Transcript)
So a ways back we did our first SaaStr Scale event in SF, a 1000 person event just on scaling revenue with top CROs, CMOs, and more. It’s since morphed into digital events and this year, the first SaaStr AI Day in March 2024. Brendon introduced his playbook to...
A Look Back: Learning to Love the Art of Sales (As a Technical Founder) with Harry Stebbings and Ross Mason, Founder of MuleSoft
At the first SaaStr Europa, Harry Stebbings sat down with MuleSoft Founder and CTO Ross Mason to discuss the organization’s sales strategy, building a strong company culture, how to think about international expansion, and much more. Unsurprisingly, it was one...
How to Double Your Magic Number and Increase Your Go-to-Market Efficiency with Sapphire Ventures
Rajeev Dham and Karan Singh, Partners at Sapphire Ventures, and Jane Lee, Vice President at Sapphire walk us through how to double your “Magic Number,” a shorthand for your SaaS sales and marketing efficiency. In recent years, the average Magic Number and benchmark for go-to-market efficiency has dropped from .7x to just .3x. How has the happened? And what can founders and revenue leaders do to turn around their budgets for efficient growth?
High-Velocity Techniques to Maximize Sales with Gusto’s CRO and Head of Go-to-Market
Tolithia (Gusto’s CRO and Head of Go-To-Market Ops, or GTM Ops) and Jamie (Gusto’s Principal, GTM Strategy & Operations) about their high-velocity techniques for maximizing sales. They first discuss their aim of helping other professionals grow their businesses, the importance of proper territory management, especially in high-velocity, high-scale operations, and the difficulties of geographic territories. Following that, they discuss dynamic territory management, the problems of static sales books, and how industry does not necessarily dictate business models. They also touch upon tools and strategies they implemented at Gusto, such as the Next Best Action tool and dynamic books, to decide which leads to work and how. At the end of the discussion, they answer several questions from the audience.
A Soft Miss vs. A Hard Miss in Sales (Updated)
I've never seen a great VP of Sales hide from a miss — Jason ✨Be Kind✨ Lemkin 🇮🇱 (@jasonlk) August 26, 2023 We’re coming up on the quarter. We always are, really. Some of you are going to beat the plan! Most of you maybe, even. I hope. But not all....
The #1 Hack To Making Sure a VP of Sales or Top AE Will Work Out
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. That they are the right ones. We can pretty much summarize a lot of it into the following: Your VP of Sales should have lots of experience selling at...
The Best Salespeople Make You Feel Like You Matter
Dear SaaStr: What one thing or characteristic do you appreciate the most in a salesperson? That I matter. This is a rare skill, and hard to hone: That I’m not just a transaction. That my concerns matter. That I won’t be abandoned the second the deal closes. That all...
Dear SaaStr: How Often Will a Sales Engineer Also Wear a Customer Success Hat in an Early Stage of a SaaS Startup?
Dear SaaStr: How often will a sales engineer also wear a customer success hat in an early stage of an SaaS startup? Pretty darn common. The “traditional” role of a sales engineer is to support the sales team through the close of a deal. And as you scale, the role...
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