Dear SaaStr: How Do I Build a Great SDR Team? Building a great SDR team is one of the most critical steps in scaling a SaaS company, especially when you’re selling to the C-suite or enterprise. SDRs are the engine of your pipeline, and if you get this right, it can transform your sales organization….
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Dear SaaStr: How Should I Structure the Comp Plan for a VP of Customer Success? For a VP of Customer Success, variable comp should be tied directly to measurable outcomes that align with your company’s growth goals. At $6M ARR, the key metrics to focus on are Net Revenue Retention (NRR), Gross Retention Rate (GRR)…
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Dear SaaStr: What Are Some Red Flags in a Founder? A few: Doesn’t know the market cold. Always pass. The best founders know the market cold, even in the earliest days. Doesn’t understand or respect the competition. The best always do. Even if they are beating the competition. Can’t recruit a strong management team. This…
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Dear SaaStr: Should I Visit My Customers More? Yes. Absolutely. 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 their needs, getting unfiltered…
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Dear SaaStr: What’s the Best Way to Follow Up With a Prospect That Says “I’ll Get Back to You” First, be honest. Those words probably mean either a No or Not Now. The best way to follow up with a prospect who says they’ll “get back to you” is to take control of the process…
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Dear SaaStr: What Can We Do To Make Our Customers Truly Happier? Keeping your clients happy boils down to one thing: delivering value consistently. For real. Let’s break it into actionable steps: 1. Define Success Together This is skipped or glossed over way, way too often. From the start, align on what success looks like…
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Dear SaaStr: Do I Have to Provide a Promotion Path from SDR to AE? Probably. In the end, about 70% of SDRs move into account executive roles. Usually, within a year. It’s very common for SDRs to move into sales roles, particularly Account Executive (AE) positions. In fact, this is often the natural career progression…
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Dear SaaStr: How Common Is It For a Seed Investor To Have The Right to Block a Sale? It’s not super common to have an explicit “veto”, but it’s not unheard of either. Usually it’s phrased as a consent by the investors rather than a veto. And usually you are going to need most investors’…
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Dear SaaStr: What Should I Look For In My Very First Sales Rep? The first thing to understand is that hiring your first sales rep is one of the most critical decisions you’ll make. It’s not just about finding someone who can sell—it’s about finding someone who can sell *your product* in the stage your…
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Dear SaaStr: I run a 30M arr software company — operating as both CEO and CRO. I feel like I failing at both – what is a better option? At $40M ARR, you’re at a stage where the demands of both the CEO and CRO roles are too significant for one person to handle effectively….
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Dear SaaStr: What Should Quota Be for a Commercial Sales Rep? Our Deal Size is $20k-$50k For commercial AEs, quotas typically range from $600K to $800K annually, depending on your ACV and sales cycle. At least, once you have a repeatable process. Before that, you may need to set lower targets. Sales reps have to…
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Dear SaaStr: As a startup founder, what’s the shadiest thing a VC asked you to do (to get their funding)? I don’t think anything is truly shady in venture. Deals are generally made at arm’s length, and founders don’t have to sell any shares if they don’t want to. But .. but like most founders,…
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Dear SaaStr: We Can Sell to a New Vertical. Should We? Getting ahead of expanding into new verticals can be a huge win. You really want to get there, and to a second product, before you exhaust your TAM in your existing markets and product. But of course it’s not without risk. The first key…
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Dear SaaStr: What is a great way to allow the partner to submit a referral and have my team verify it? I want it to be as frictionless as possible. The key to making a referral submission process frictionless is to keep it simple, scalable, and automated where possible. Here’s how I’d approach it: 1….
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Dear SaaStr: What’s a “Messy Cap Table?” And How Do I Fix It? A “messy cap table” refers to a capitalization table that’s overly complicated, disorganized, or structured in a way that creates problems for the company, especially when raising future rounds of funding. It’s one of those things that might not seem like a…
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Dear SaaStr: Should You Hire Sales Reps in Pairs To Test Them? Ideally, yes. Yes, you absolutely should hire sales reps in pairs, especially early on. Here’s why: When you hire just one sales rep, you won’t learn anything. Not for sure. If they fail, you won’t know if it’s because your product isn’t ready,…
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Dear Should: Should Sales Execs Do Implementation Themselves? Almost never — outside of the earliest days. Your first 1 or 2 reps may have literally no one else to help here, and they often have to do the onboarding and implementation themselves. But you can’t scale that way. Their job is to close deals, not…
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Dear SaaStr: How Important Is a Strong LinkedIn Presence Today? Look there are few folks out there more skeptical and critical than me on folks that waste their entire day on LinkedIn. Go do the real work, folks. 🙂 And way too many folks are selling snake oil on LinkedIn. Agencies that can magically generate…
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Dear SaaStr: How Do I Structure a Comp Package for Our First VP of Sales? He’ll have 7 folks under him, For a small SaaS company with a Head of Sales managing 7 FTEs, I’d recommend a compensation structure that aligns with both early-stage SaaS norms and your growth goals. Here’s how I’d approach it:…
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Dear SaaStr: What Incentives Are Given To Design Partners and Other Super Early Customers? Design partners are critical—they provide feedback, validate your product, and often become your first case studies. At least … if they are real customers, and not pretend customers. Here are some incentives: 1. Discounted Pricing with a Time Limit – Offer…
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Dear SaaStr: What Are Signs It’s Finally Time to Move on From An Employee? "When you make a bad VP hire, it's always your fault as CEO, not theirs. The candidate can never do enough research to understand if it's really the right fit." @kippbodnar @searchbrat @jasonlk pic.twitter.com/xkgJtznHDz — Jason ✨👾SaaStr.Ai✨ Lemkin (@jasonlk) April 21,…
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Dear SaaStr: What Are the Different Types of “Commits” Each Sales Rep Should Make? The forecasting stages for a rep typically break down into three key categories: **Commit**, **Most Likely**, and **Best Case**. Bigger companies sometimes use more categories, but it’s tough to have consistency in a start-up pipeline forecast if you use more than…
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Dear SaaStr: How Do I Do a Good QBR (Quarterly Business Review) With Customers? It’s a great question as QBRs have in many cases degenerated into upsell meetings, with zero value for the customer. That’s not what you want. More on that here” The Death of the QBR QBRs (Quarterly Business Reviews) can be incredibly…
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Dear SaaStr: We Have A 30 Day Sales Cycle. How Long Should We Give Reps to Scale Up? With a sales cycle of less than 30 days, you should expect a new sales rep to ramp up **within 1-2 sales cycles**—so about 30-60 days. Here’s why: 1. First Sales Cycle (30 Days): A good rep…
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Dear SaaStr: My Sales Rep is Grossly Underperforming but is Involved in a Key Deal. Should I Fire Him or Wait for The Deal to Close? This is pretty common and most founders make the same mistake. Move on from the rep now. There is almost no chance he is adding value to the prospect…
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