You're Hired!
Everything you need to know about building, scaling, recruiting and hiring from the experts who've done it before.
Building, scaling, recruiting and hiring
It might be the last thing on everyone’s mind right now. But as we learned last week - what we do NOW will set us up to succeed in the future. Jason Lemkin believes leaders should be spending at least 20% of their time recruiting, regardless of the current situation. I still think that applies now - maybe even more so.
In this week’s edition of Stretch Weekly -
Lianne Gong of Pluralsight with a Stretch VP guest post on top things she looks for in a first time sales leader
Amy Volas gives us the blue print to build a world-class enterprise sales team
Robby Allen talks 3 stages of scaling a sales team
Jessica Klek teaches how to retain high performers
These pros have walked the walk. They’ve built sales teams, recruited and scaled successfully.
Give it a read and let me know what you think. Serious. I love reading any comments or replies on how I can improve your weekly feed.
And lastly - as always, if you find this newsletter valuable- consider sharing it with someone who might as well 👊.
STRETCH SHARES
My 3-Part Proven Process For Building a World-Class Enterprise Sales Team
With more than $100MM in revenue sold and named one of Sales Hacker's Most Dynamic Women In Sales, Amy Volas is a sales fanatic turned entrepreneur. She was bitten by the startup bug many moons ago and couldn't imagine spending her time anywhere else. She created Avenue Talent Partners to help with the tremendous task of growing startups through some of their most valuable assets—sales leaders and experienced, enterprise salespeople.
In this post - Amy walks us through her 3 part process to build a World Class Sales Team. You definitely want to give the full post a read HERE.
How To Scale a Sales Team
Had this podcast from Predictable Revenue earmarked for a while just waiting for the right time to share. Robby Allen, Founder at Buena Vista Ventures and Collin Stewart discuss 3 stages of growth and how he scaled from 0-250 Sales reps with Zenefits. Robby discusses how to effectively nail each stage of sales growth.
Stages:
Product Market Fit
Repeatability
Hyper-growth
Retaining and Growing High Performers
Jessica Klek (VP Enterprise Sales at Sales Loft) outlines her game plan to retain and grow high performance in your sales org. Quick post with insights on:
Building your A team (pity the fool? 😉)
Protecting your team
Motivating your team
Promoting personal and professional growth
Mentorship
STRETCH VP POST 👇
Top 5 Traits I Look For in a First Time Sales Leader
(Guest Post by Lianne Gong)
Thrilled to have Lianne Gong as a guest contributor to Stretch VP.
Lianne is a Sr. Sales Recruiter for Pluralsight, a publicly traded enterprise technology skills platform. She’s been part of many sales leadership hires and gives us her top 5 things she looks for in a sales professional looking to make the jump into a leadership role.
Great insight for yourself as you prepare for that next move- or as you bring on future leaders into your ecosystem.
Read the Full post HERE.
STRETCH SNIPPETS
🚀 Check out this SaaStr session on Building a Sales Team That Can Go From $0- $50M with Gaetan Gachet - SVP of Sales, Algolia.
💡 Don’t hire experienced sales pros. Hire talented people who understand business. Says Aaron Ross.
🔮 When it comes to hiring, how much does experience matter? Amy Volas gives us her thoughts…
🎓 If you need sales enablement/sales ops help this summer- Mark Roberge tell us that Harvard Business Schools is subsidizing internships this year. Up to $625 per week for 12 weeks!!
🤔 Top traits to look for in a new sales rep? JR Butler of Pillir shares his insights.
✅ How do you build a SaaS Sales team from scratch? Hear Kyle Racki, Co-founder of Proposify cover this at Own Your Growth virtual summit May 20th.
*Do you like this snippet format better? One reader suggested a more condensed version here*🧠 Mindset Matters
Dr. Carol Dweck wrote a wonderful book called Mindset. I love the power of the word “yet.” You aren’t fast enough...yet. You just don’t get it...yet. You aren’t good enough...yet. Keep working. Keep growing. Keep trying. There are good days ahead. It’s a marathon, don’t stop. - Riley Jensen -MS
Thanks for reading!
My hope is if you find this valuable, consider sharing it with friends (or signing up if you haven’t already).
— Grant 👋
About stretch vp: confessions, learnings and insights from sales leaders in SaaS
Compiled and aggregated from a network of sales leaders in SaaS, Stretch VP showcases learnings, insights and experiences as well as best practices to overcome common hurdles, obstacles and setbacks in your quest for excellence as a sales leader in SaaS.
Are you a VP, Director, thought leader or content producer in the SaaS space? We’d love to have you contribute. Contact Me HERE.
Also… check out the blog or follow on twitter