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Browse: Home / Building a Sales Team

Building a Sales Team

One Tough (But Rewarding) Job:  Being the First Sales Rep at a SaaS Startup

One Tough (But Rewarding) Job: Being the First Sales Rep at a SaaS Startup

By Jason M. Lemkin on May 9, 2017

Ah, the first sales rep. Being the first salesperson into a start-up in a rewarding — but very tough job: Your Founder Boss likely will never have managed a salesperson before. She likely won’t know what you are supposed to do 40+ hours a week. Your Founder Boss may have strong views on what you […]

Posted in Business | Tagged 1 - Stage, 2 - Topic, Building a Sales Team, Early, Hiring & Operations

When the Player-Coach is Just That. And No More.

When the Player-Coach is Just That. And No More.

By Jason M. Lemkin on May 4, 2016

We’ve talked a lot on SaaStr about not screwing up that VP of Sales hire.  Done right, it will accelerate your company to the next level.  Done wrong — you can lose the better part of a year, and half of your last round of capital. And we’ve talked a lot about the trade-offs in […]

Posted in Business, Featured Posts | Tagged 1 - Stage, 2 - Topic, 5 - Feature, Building a Sales Team, Getting to Initial Scale, Hire VP Sales, Hiring & Operations, Hiring & Retention, sales, Sales & Customer Success, scale, Traction & Scale

When To Open Your First Int’l Office?  Maybe When You Have $1.5m in ARR There.

When To Open Your First Int’l Office? Maybe When You Have $1.5m in ARR There.

By Jason M. Lemkin on March 8, 2016

We’ve had a lot of discussions on SaaStr and at SaaStr events on founders from outside the U.S. and the Bay Area coming here. We haven’t done enough on the opposite.  When to go there.  When to open your first international offices.  We will do a couple of posts here from guest authors soon. But let […]

Posted in Business, Featured Posts | Tagged Building a Sales Team, Getting to Initial Scale, Metrics & Operations

“How We Increased Sales Nearly 100% In One Quarter”

“How We Increased Sales Nearly 100% In One Quarter”

By Jason M. Lemkin on January 15, 2016

I grabbed this post from Brendon Cassidy, VP of Sales at LinkedIn, EchoSign, and Talkdesk, because I thought it had a great checklist for all of us to take a look at. Brendon wrote this post about his learnings about how he doubled sales once again in one quarter (the story of how he did […]

Posted in Business, Featured Posts | Tagged Building a Sales Team, Getting to Initial Scale

If You Want to Hit The ’16 Plan, You’d Better Be Making the Hires Now

If You Want to Hit The ’16 Plan, You’d Better Be Making the Hires Now

By Jason M. Lemkin on September 21, 2015

Recurring revenue certainly has pros and cons.  The biggest pro is it recurs 🙂  The real magic from a Wall Street perspective isn’t that Salesforce is “SaaS” and most of say Oracle isn’t … it’s that Salesforce’s revenue, with net negative churn, completely recurs every year.  See, also, Adobe’s multiple as its still essentially desktop […]

Posted in Business, Featured Posts | Tagged Building a Sales Team, Getting to Initial Scale

How To (Successfully) Hire Your First 2 Sales Reps

How To (Successfully) Hire Your First 2 Sales Reps

By Jason M. Lemkin on August 31, 2015

We’ve talking a lot on SaaStr about how to hire a Great VP of Sales, and how you have to close the first 10 or so customers yourself, and how when you do go to hire your first sales rep — make sure you hire two. But how do you get those first few reps […]

Posted in Business, Featured Posts | Tagged Building a Sales Team, Hiring & Retention

The Beauty and ROI in The Zero-Voluntary Attrition Sales Team

The Beauty and ROI in The Zero-Voluntary Attrition Sales Team

By Jason M. Lemkin on August 28, 2015

There’s a common thinking that sales teams should be relatively high churn. That the bottom 15-20% of the sales team almost has to churn each year, because it’s survival of the fittest. Reps have to fight for the best leads, prove the highest close rates, exceed the mean of the bell curve, to not just […]

Posted in Business, Featured Posts | Tagged Building a Sales Team, Hiring & Retention

The Top 10 Mistakes Made in Hiring Your First Sales Team

The Top 10 Mistakes Made in Hiring Your First Sales Team

By Jason M. Lemkin on June 12, 2015

I know we’ve hit a number of these points individually before on SaaStr, but after getting the question again and again, I thought it would be worthwhile to assemble a Top 10 List on mistakes made in hiring your first sales team.  Because it seems like so many of us just make these mistakes again, […]

Posted in Business, Featured Posts | Tagged Building a Sales Team, sales, salesforce.com

How to Ensure Your First 2 Sales Reps Actually Work Out

How to Ensure Your First 2 Sales Reps Actually Work Out

By Jason M. Lemkin on January 29, 2015

A long-time reader, first time caller recently wrote in to ask a question that pretty much everyone asks some variant of: If you had to force rank these items in terms of what we should primarily be looking for in these first sales reps, how would you rank them? – has sold SaaS before (as […]

Posted in Entrepreneurship, Featured Posts | Tagged Building a Sales Team, Entrepreneurship, Hiring & Retention, saas, sales, startups

You’ll Know in One Sales Cycle If Your VP Sales Won’t Work Out: Four Case Studies.

You’ll Know in One Sales Cycle If Your VP Sales Won’t Work Out: Four Case Studies.

By Jason M. Lemkin on December 15, 2014

Just about a year ago, we did a post that proved, at the time, to be somewhat controversial.  That in Just 30 Days, or at least, just one full sales cycle — you’ll know if your VP Sales isn’t going to work out. This isn’t intuitive, and is something I had to learn the hard way. […]

Posted in Business, Featured Posts | Tagged Building a Sales Team, case studies, Entrepreneurship, saas, startups

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