Dear SaaStr: How Do We Reduce Churn? Churn is one of the most critical metrics in software. Maybe really the most critical in the end. With too much churn … in the end, it just doesn’t compound. It’s the silent killer of growth. You can’t scale effectively if you’re constantly losing customers faster than you’re…
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Dear SaaStr: Our VC Is Encouraging Us to Hire Aggressively and Increase the Burn Rate. Should We Listen to Them? In my experience, about 66-70% of the time this is bad advice, especially if it is coming from a Very Large VC. Not always. But more often than not. Why? Because you pretty much know…
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Dear SaaStr: What Happens if One Founder Wants to Quit When the Startup Has Just Raised VC Funding? This, unfortunately, is more common that you might think. First, be completely upfront with your investors immediately. As tough as this may be, it’s not the first time. Let them know, and let them know you are working…
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Dear SaaStr: From 0 to $10m ARR, At What Point Do We Start Hiring and Whom? From $0 to $10M ARR, every hire has an outsized impact, and there’s little to no redundancy. So timing and prioritization are critical. Here’s how I’d break it down: $0 to $1M ARR: Founder-Led Everything Sales: Founders should lead…
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Dear SaaStr: What’s The Best Way to Set Targets for the Sales Team? First, I try to model 3 overall plans for the year: C-90, C-60, and C-10, not just for the sales team, but the whole company. The C is for “Confidence”. The odds you think you can hit it, from the CEO’s perspective. …
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Dear SaaStr: How Much Do B2B Sales People Make in Commission? "How to Build a Successful Sales Team Where Everyone Makes Good Money" @lennysan + @jasonlk More here -> https://t.co/XTFG4gqi0v pic.twitter.com/yD3Ub0VROa — Jason ✨👾SaaStr.Ai✨ Lemkin (@jasonlk) May 20, 2024 Dear SaaStr: How Much Do SaaS Sales People Make in Commission? In SaaS, the fundamentals haven’t…
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Dear SaaStr: When should I pay the commission for SaaS sales? All of our trial signups will get an automatic email from an account executive. How do we decide if the AE was responsible for the sale versus the sale just happened organically? Every company with a self-serve component and a sales-driven component frets a…
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Dear SaaStr: What’s The One Trait You Look for When Assessing an Inside Sales Candidate? I break it into two stages: In the early days, when you as founder/CEO are recruiting and managing the salesperson yourself, then the #1 most important criterion is that you would buy your product yourself, from them. In the beginning,…
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Dear SaaStr: Does It Make Sense to Have Post-Sales Functions Report into Sales? In many ways, this is the question of the day. So many SaaS companies, faced with slower growth, are moving CS in particular in to the sales department, trying to get more growth from the base. Is it a good idea though?…
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Dear SaaStr: What Are Your Top Tips to Building A First Sales Team? Here’s how I’d break it down: Hire Two Reps to Start. You have to A/B test it.: Always hire at least two sales reps initially. Classic SaaStr advice that is as true today as ever. This allows you to compare performance and…
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Dear SaaStr: How Do I Create Urgency in Sales. When There Really Isn’t Any? The hardest part of sales is creating urgency The rest is hard too, don't get me wrong But really, 95 times out of 100, no one really needs to buy your product right now. Especially if it involves business process change….
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Dear SaaStr: Is It Normal to Feel Like a Pest When Prospecting for Customers For a Startup? Yes. Most of us will feel like a pest when we start doing outbound. So … get better at it, get over it, and hire folks who know how to do it. Sales is hard. It’s being told…
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Dear SaaStr: How Do I Deal With Investors That are Unhappy With The Company? Be transparent. And show them an honest, data-driven path to a better future. First, investors get most upset when founders hide things. And founders tend to hide things more when times are tougher. So … share more: Make sure you send…
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Dear SaaStr: What is the best sales advice you can give to be a top sales rep? Sales execs can screw up so many things and still close a lot if they just get 1 thing right If they just are a true subject matter expert in the product they sell Yet so many aren't…
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Dear SaaStr: Should I Visit My Customers More? Yes. Absolutely. Of course you should. You should visit your customers more. I can’t stress this enough—getting in front of your customers is one of the most effective things you can do to drive growth, retention, and expansion. It’s not just about building relationships, it’s about understanding…
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Dear SaaStr: What Can We Do To Make Our Customers Truly Happier? Keeping your customers happy boils down to one thing: delivering value consistently. For real. And ideally, much more value than they are paying in. Let’s break it into actionable steps: 1. Define Success Together This is skipped or glossed over way, way too…
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The best VPs can recruit in ways I barely understand You need someone for a key role? They somehow have 2-3 strong candidates in a week or two This is so, so hard But the very best VPs make it somehow look almost effortless It's also the only way to scale — Jason ✨👾SaaStr.Ai✨ Lemkin…
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Dear SaaStr: What’s The #1 Mistake Founders Make When They Start to Do Marketing? In B2B, the biggest mistake most businesses make in marketing is underestimating how hard it is to get ROI. So they basically do … nothing paid. Or almost nothing. Too many founders look at the cost of customer acquisition (CAC) and…
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Dear SaaStr: My Top Sales Rep Made $600,000 a Year — And Just Quit! What Happened? Ok to some of you this will make no sense. But now I’ve seen this happen again and again, including just the other day at one of my top portfolio companies. The #1 or #2 rep in a start-up,…
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Dear SaaStr: I run revenue at a B2B company doing about $40M ARR. My playbook is basically the one I built in 2021 and 2022, and it’s working worse every quarter. What’s actually changed in go-to-market, and what should I be doing differently? The ICONIQ State of Go-to-Market 2026 report is some of the best…
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Dear SaaStr: What Quota Should I Give to my Enterprise Sales Reps? For enterprise sales reps, quotas typically range from 3x to 5x their fully burdened on-target earnings (OTE). This means if your rep’s OTE is $200K, their annual quota should be somewhere between $600K and $1M in bookings. The exact number depends on your deal…
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Dear SaaStr: What are the best 5 tips to improve poor sales performance? If you've never listened to your sales reps' calls, Especially the ones that are mediocre performers, You'll often be shocked what you hear. — Jason ✨👾SaaStr.Ai✨ Lemkin (@jasonlk) February 9, 2024 Here are my 5 simplest ideas to quickly improve sales performance. …
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Dear SaaStr: What’s the #1 Mistake New Sales Leaders Make? Let me just summarize my #1 observation here: the top mistake first-time sales managers make is recruiting. In that — they can’t do it. They can’t recruit great reps. They can recruit some mediocre ones, but that’s about it. It is incredibly hard to figure…
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Dear SaaStr: Can salespeople really get customers to buy a product they don’t need right now? Yes, at least up to a point. In many ways, getting folks to buy a product they don’t truly need today is the true art of sales. If they really, truly needed it right now … all you really…
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Dear SaaStr: How Do The Best Sales Leaders Retain Their High Performers? A few ways I’ve observed that the best sales leaders retain the best: They promote the best. You can’t promote everyone, but you can almost always promote your best. The fastest you grow, actually the harder this can be, but you need to…
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