13. Team structure
• What are you hiring for?
• Web sales → can you sell with no-touch?
• Telesales → can you contract a telesales agency to do your sales?
• Inside sales → can you product be sold with phone calls, emails, and online demos?
• Field sales → does the sale of your product require in-person meetings?
Web sales Telesales Inside sales Field sales
Product complexity
Sunday, August 11, 13
14. Commission plans
Compensation
• Base salary
• 50-100% commission / quota
• Equity
Onboarding / Ramp
• Management by objective (MBO)
• Recoverable & guaranteed draws
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16. Define the role
• Spend the time to create a job description
• What are the goals for the role? 1st month, first 3 months, full year
• What exactly are you hiring for?
• define the optimal skills
• define the optimal experience
• define the optimal domain knowledge
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17. Hiring models
Philosophies
• Hire really smart, amazingly talented people and they’ll figure it out
• Hire people based on experience, previous success, domain expertise
Hiring strategies
• Do-it-yourself
• In-house recruiter
• Outsourced recruiter
• Retainer
• Fee for placement
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20. Important SaaS metrics
1. Monthly recurring revenue (MRR)
2. Churn rate
3. Lifetime Value of a Customer (LTV)
4. Cost to acquire a customer (CAC)
5. Months to recover CAC
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21. Rule of thumb
CAC =
sales/mktg expenses
# of customers acquired
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22. CAC =
sales/mktg expenses
# of customers acquired
LTV =
ARPU
cost to serve
1
x
churn
Rule of thumb
Sunday, August 11, 13
23. CAC =
sales/mktg expenses
# of customers acquired
LTV =
ARPU
cost to serve
1
x
churn
Rule of thumb
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24. Rule of thumb
→ LTV should be 3x greater than CAC
→ Salesforce / Constant Contact are at 5 x greater than CAC
→ recover CAC in under 12 months
David Skok, Matrix Partners
1.
1.
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25. But, I’m just getting started...
→ don’t waste time with fantasy spreadsheets
→ use as a guiding principle
→ get a sense of your annual contract value
→ set up a quick scenario analysis around potential churn rates and cost to serve
Sunday, August 11, 13