When you start to hire your first sales reps, you'll hire some >good< people that still just fail and don't work out

That's on you to spot -- before you hire them:

Here are 9 reasons good salespeople fail: 🔽🔽🔽
#1. You hire sales reps that need lots of training, systems, and process in the early days

Big Companies, at least some of them, are generally very good at this. Larger, fast-growing start-ups often become excellent at it. Small start-ups are almost always terrible at it
#2. You hire a rep that hasn't sold at your price point before

Sales reps that are great at $20k deals join a start-up with tons of leads but at a $2k price point and fail again and again.

And vice-versa

Each price point has its own playbook
#3. You hire a rep that hasn't sold with your sales process

Are you good at in-bound? Out-bound? Farming? Account management?

Reps are mostly good at one
#4. You hire a rep that can't do competitive sales -- but needs to be

Many sales professionals can win in an environment like Salesforce or Twilio where you have a dominant — not sole, but dominant — brand, but melt in an environment that is hyper-competitive
#5. You hire a rep that hasn't sold without a brand backing them

Related to the prior point. Selling a product without an established brand, at least a mini-brand in its niche, is different. It can be fun because you get to interact with early adopters — but it’s way different.
#6. You hire a rep that doesn't truly believe in the product

Later, again, brand can make up for this

But in the early days, an AE that doesn't truly believe will rarely make quota

There are just too many objections & feature gaps
#7. You hire a rep that can't understand the buyer

Not everyone is ready for technical or highly verticalized sales in the early days of a start-up’s life. Later, once a company has 30, 50, 100 reps … they get more help
#8. You hire a rep that can't self-organize

It can be very tough to excel in almost any smaller environment if you can’t self-organize. But larger sales organizations put sales operations processes in place that keep you more organized.
#9. You hire a rep that skipped too many steps

These days, so many sales pros go in 100 days from SDR to a quota-carrying AE. From good AE without ever having hired anyone, straight to VP Sales

When I see folks skip 2+ stages of development, I’ve almost never seen that work out
A deeper dive here:

saastr.com/9-reasons-good…

• • •

Missing some Tweet in this thread? You can try to force a refresh
 

Keep Current with Jason ✨BeKind✨ Lemkin ⚫️

Jason ✨BeKind✨ Lemkin ⚫️ Profile picture

Stay in touch and get notified when new unrolls are available from this author!

Read all threads

This Thread may be Removed Anytime!

PDF

Twitter may remove this content at anytime! Save it as PDF for later use!

Try unrolling a thread yourself!

how to unroll video
  1. Follow @ThreadReaderApp to mention us!

  2. From a Twitter thread mention us with a keyword "unroll"
@threadreaderapp unroll

Practice here first or read more on our help page!

More from @jasonlk

10 Sep
I had a chance to catch up with René Lacerte, CEO of $27B+ @billcom this week

Bill has managed to build a $27B business selling to 120k SMBs

With an epic 125% NRR

My 10 learnings and our convo here: 🔽🔽🔽
#1. You can’t rush a network

Bill.com had to develop a network that today has millions on vendors processing bills and payments on it. But they couldn’t rush it. So they let folks use the platform the way they wanted, from paper checks to fax and more.
#2. You can’t always rush a fintech product.

It took a decade to come together. Rene cautioned folks to understand the regulatory & fraud elements of doing payments are significant. But it paid off.

Since IPO, payments have grown to a stunning 50% of Bill’s revenues
Read 12 tweets
6 Sep
Freshworks has just filed to IPO at $400,000,000 in ARR, growing an incredible 49% (!)

It's one of the first of a wave of India-U.S. global hybrid SaaS companies to IPO

5 Interesting Learnings: ⬇️⬇️⬇️⬇️⬇️
#1. A steady march above $5k in ACV

25% pay >$5k a year, but they represent 84% of ARR. That has gone up from 78% in 2019. Even with SMBs, it's bigger ones that are driving growth at scale

Going a smidge upmarket is key to Freshworks’ putting up the big numbers
#2. NRR of 118%.

This is pretty impressive for a mid-to-high ACV SMB sale, although pretty consistent with where Zendesk is today as well at 120%.
Read 9 tweets
28 Aug
It seems like everyone just explodes these days

But it's not really true

UiPath is worth $35B today and went from $1m to $30m ARR in just 24 months. Woah.

But ...

It took UiPath 10 years to get to the first $1m ARR

#latebloomers
More on UiPath here:

saastr.com/5-interesting-…
Similarly, Procore is worth $16B today but had a slow start

A slow first 10 years in fact until mobile really exploded

More here:

saastr.com/5-interesting-…
Read 4 tweets
21 Aug
Coupa is a $16B SaaS success story anyone selling mid-market and enterprise should know more about

They dominated their Web 1.0 predecessor (SAP Ariba) and grew the TAM of their space, Spend Management, 20x

5 Interesting Learnings: ⬇️⬇️⬇️⬇️⬇️
#1. Network effects are real in many spaces in SaaS, like Spend Management

Coupa now manages $2.5T in spend management over 7 million suppliers. Could you switch to another vendor? Yes. Would you want to? No. Imagine how many vendor relationships that would be to switch over
#2. 80% of implementations led by partners, with 5,000 trained partner consultants

The really big deals & even smaller ones are deployed by partners. 80% of deals. The “biggies” are Accenture, KPMG, and Deloitte. But Coupa has implementation partners across all segments
Read 8 tweets
17 Aug
I’ve interviewed 100s of VP of marketing candidates over years and I can tell you one thing — it’s >easy< to spot the ones that won’t work out

And yet, CEOs hire them again and again

Here are my Top 10 Interview Questions to make sure you don't hire the wrong VPM: ⬇️⬇️⬇️⬇️⬇️
1. What are the top 3 things you think we should upgrade in marketing?

This question tells you everything they will actually do

If demand gen isn’t in top 2 things to upgrade= — you don’t have a demand-gen focused VPM
2. What “commit” did you hold in your last roles? How much of it did you meet?

Great catch-all to see if have someone that can do demand gen. If they didn’t hold a real commit — in Opportunities, in Pipeline, Leads — they didn’t own anything that matters in revenue cycle
Read 13 tweets
12 Aug
So first 3 venture investments (and 4 out of first 5) are now all decacorns or unicorns

Talkdesk $10B (first VC, $25 pre)
Algolia $2B (first U.S. VC, $12m pre)
Pipedrive $1B (first U.S. VC, $16m pre)

A few reflections and learnings:
1/ Partnership consensus -- who knows about that

Talkdesk: 100% partners: Yes
Algolia: 100% partners: No
Pipedrive: 100% partners Meh

They won't always see what you see, no matter how deeply you see it
2/ Just close the deal

The only times here I tried to negotiate any price or terms, the deal just got worse

Just shake hands on what the founders want if it's fair
Read 12 tweets

Did Thread Reader help you today?

Support us! We are indie developers!


This site is made by just two indie developers on a laptop doing marketing, support and development! Read more about the story.

Become a Premium Member ($3/month or $30/year) and get exclusive features!

Become Premium

Too expensive? Make a small donation by buying us coffee ($5) or help with server cost ($10)

Donate via Paypal Become our Patreon

Thank you for your support!

Follow Us on Twitter!

:(