Scale With Strive

Author: John Hitchen

  • How Do You Know When Founder-Led Sales Is Ready to Hand Over?

    How Do You Know When Founder-Led Sales Is Ready to Hand Over?

    Could someone else close your next deal? Not someone brilliant, not someone who has sold for twenty years. Just a good seller, given what you have already got.

    If the honest answer is “not yet”, the plan to hire five sellers next quarter may be a few steps ahead of where the company actually is.

    Founder-led sales is the right way to start. The founder knows the product, the buyer and the awkward questions, and every call teaches the company something. The hard part is knowing when to hand it over, and what you need to have in place first.

    Let’s Dive In!

     

    The test is not revenue, it is repeatability

    A founder who has closed a lot of deals has proved that the product sells. What they have not necessarily proved is that anyone else can sell it.

    The clearest sign that you are ready is that you can describe the sale. Who the buyer is, what problem gets them to take a meeting, what the three or four stages look like, what usually kills a deal and how you answer it. Not in a slide, in plain words a new seller could act on.

    If you cannot do that yet, the answer is not to hire faster. It is to spend a few weeks writing down what you already do.

     

    Five questions to ask before the first hire

    Ask yourself these, and try to answer with examples rather than feelings.

    Has anyone other than the founder closed a deal, even a small one? A CS lead, a solutions person or an early employee who ran a deal end to end is worth a lot of evidence.

    Do your best customers look alike? If they do, a new seller has somewhere to aim. If every customer is a one-off, they will spend a year finding out.

    Can you say why you win, and why you lose? Not “our product is better”, but the specific reasons you have heard from buyers.

    Is there enough pipeline to keep another person busy? A new AE with no leads is an expensive way to find out that the founder was generating all of them.

    Are you ready to let someone else run a deal differently from how you would? This is the one founders skip. If you will step in the moment a call goes off script, the new hire will never learn to run it.

    Three or four honest yeses and you are probably ready. Mostly “not really” means the next job is the process, not the hire.

     

    Who to hire first

    A common instinct is to hire a VP of Sales, on the theory that a leader will build the machine. It can work, but it is usually the wrong first move. A leader with no team and no defined process spends their first months building both, while the founder waits and the number stays where it was.

    More often, the first hire is one or two experienced Account Executives who have sold in a similar environment and can run a process once it exists. They do not need to be famous. They do need to have done the early version of the job and be comfortable without much structure.

    A leader tends to make sense a little later, when there are a few sellers who need managing and the founder wants to step away from the day-to-day. 

     

    What to write down before they start

    Before the first seller arrives, put together a short pack. It does not need to be polished.

    The ideal customer and the three questions that tell you whether a prospect is one. The stages of a deal and what has to be true to move between them. The objections you hear most and how you answer them. Two or three recorded calls that show what good looks like, including one that went badly.

    That is the material a new seller uses in their first fortnight. Without it, they invent their own version, and you end up with a process that changes with every hire.

     

    The mistakes we see most often

    Hiring for the sales team the company hopes to have in two years rather than the one it has today.

    Hiring someone from a large, well-known company and expecting them to build their own pipeline, their own materials and their own process at the same time.

    Handing over the deals the founder finds hardest and reading the slow start as a performance problem.

    Stepping back completely on day one. A better pattern is to stay close for the first few deals, then move from running the call to reviewing it.

    Measuring the new seller against the founder’s numbers. The founder was selling to friends of friends with the product half-built in their head. The second seller is doing something different, and the target should say so.

     

     

    So, is it time?

    If you can describe how a deal is won, point to a customer profile you trust and see enough pipeline for another person, then yes, it is probably time to start. Begin with a scorecard for the first role: what the person needs to achieve in twelve months, and what they need to be like to do it.

    If you are somewhere between “not yet” and “definitely”, book a call and we will go through it with you.

     

  • How to Hire Your First Sales Team in a SaaS Startup

    How to Hire Your First Sales Team in a SaaS Startup

    Are you still the person closing every deal?

    Do you know exactly why customers buy, but struggle to explain it to anyone else?

    If so, you’re probably at the point where your SaaS startup needs its first sales team. It’s one of the most important moves an early founder makes, and one of the easiest to get wrong.

    This blog walks through when to build the team, who to hire first, how to assess them and how to set them up to succeed, so your first sales hires add momentum rather than burning runway.

    Let’s Dive In!

     

    Know when you’re actually ready

    Hiring salespeople before you understand your own sale is expensive. Before building a team, you want a few signals in place:

    Repeatable wins. You’ve closed a handful of customers who look similar and bought for similar reasons.

    A rough playbook. You know who the buyer is, what pain they feel, what objections come up and roughly how long deals take.

    Demand you can’t keep up with. Founder time is now the bottleneck, not product-market fit.

    If those signals aren’t there yet, a sales hire won’t create them. They’ll inherit the same uncertainty and you’ll both struggle. Spend a bit longer in founder-led sales and document what’s working.

     

    Who to hire first

    Your first sales hires set the tone for everything that follows, so the profile matters more than the title.

    Start with builders, not passengers. Your first AE won’t have a polished playbook, a full marketing engine or a team of SDRs. You need someone who’s comfortable creating their own pipeline, testing messages and feeding back on product and pricing. People who’ve thrived at a similar stage are usually a safer bet than stars from large, well-oiled sales organisations.

    Hire two, not one, where you can. A single rep makes it hard to tell whether results are down to the person or the market. Two early AEs give you a comparison point, shared learning and a bit of healthy competition.

    Hold off on the VP Sales. It’s tempting to hire a senior leader to “own sales” straight away. But a VP who’s used to scaling an existing motion may struggle when there isn’t one yet. Many startups do better with hands-on AEs first, then a first-line leader or Head of Sales once the team reaches four to six reps.

    Bring in SDRs once you know what converts. Pipeline generation is crucial, but SDRs need clear messaging and target accounts to work from. Add them when your AEs have proved which segments and messages land.

     

    Design an assessment process that predicts performance

    A great interview is not the same as a great salesperson. Your process should test the things that actually matter in the role.

    Define the profile up front. Agree on the deal size, sales cycle, buyer persona and stage experience you need. Write it down and score every candidate against it.

    Dig into the numbers. Ask about quota, attainment, average deal size and how they built pipeline. Strong candidates will be specific and consistent.

    Use a realistic exercise. A discovery call or short pitch based on your product shows how someone thinks, listens and handles pushback. Keep it fair and relevant, not a hoop-jumping exercise.

    Probe for startup fit. Ask about times they’ve worked without structure, built something from scratch or changed approach when something wasn’t working.

    Move quickly. The best early-stage sales people often have several options. A clear process of three or four stages over a couple of weeks keeps them engaged.

     

    Get the compensation right

    Your comp plan tells people what you value. For a first sales team, keep it simple and fair.

    A typical structure combines a competitive base salary with variable pay tied to new revenue, often close to a 50/50 split for AEs. Early on, it’s worth being realistic about ramp, with a reduced or guaranteed quota in the first few months while pipeline builds. Equity can be a strong draw for people who want to be part of the early story, but it rarely replaces a fair cash package for sales hires.

    Avoid overcomplicating plans with lots of accelerators and SPIFs at this stage. Clarity matters more than cleverness.

     

    Set them up to succeed

    Onboarding is where many first sales hires quietly fail. Some practical steps make a big difference:

    Share everything you know. Call recordings, win and loss notes, objection handling, competitor intel. Your head is the playbook, so get it on paper.

    Sit in on calls together. Let new hires shadow you, then reverse it. It’s the fastest way to transfer judgement, not just information.

    Agree leading indicators. Revenue takes time. Track meetings booked, pipeline created and deal progression in the early months so you can spot problems early.

    Give them a voice. Your first sales hires are close to the market. Their feedback on product, pricing and positioning is valuable, so build in a way to hear it.

     

    Avoid the most common traps

    A few patterns come up again and again with first sales teams:

    Hiring for big-brand logos rather than stage fit. Hiring a senior leader before there’s anything to lead. Expecting a new AE to hit full quota in their first quarter. Leaving a weak hire in seat too long because replacing them feels painful.

    Each one is avoidable with a clear profile, a disciplined process and honest expectations.

     

     

    Building the foundation

    Your first sales team is the foundation for every hire that comes after it. Get the profile, process and onboarding right, and you create a team that can grow with the business rather than one you have to rebuild in eighteen months.

    So, are you ready to hand over the deals you’ve been closing yourself, and who’s the right person to take them?

    Invest in a SaaS Sales Recruitment agency and accelerate your path to success.

    Reach out to a member of the team here about Building the foundation, or see more about how we can support your growth here about Building the foundation.

  • When should you hire your first VP of Sales?

    When should you hire your first VP of Sales?

    Have you started sentences with “once we’ve got a VP Sales in” more than twice this quarter?

    Is the founder still on every deal that matters?

    And when somebody asks what the VP would actually do in their first ninety days, does the room go a bit quiet?

    That last one is the useful question. Most businesses know roughly when they want a sales leader. Far fewer can say what the leader is meant to fix, and that gap is where most of these hires go wrong.

     

    The Honest Test: Do you have a motion, or do you have a Founder?

    There’s a version of this hire that works, and it starts from something specific. You have two or three Reps carrying quota. At least two of them are hitting it. And you can explain, without hand-waving, why the deals that close, close.

    That’s a motion. A motion can be scaled, and scaling it is a real job for a real Leader.

    The other version is the one where the Founder is the best salesperson in the business by a distance, nobody has written down why, and the plan is to hire someone who will “work it out”. That person exists, but they’re rare, they’re expensive, and they are almost never the person on the shortlist you’re about to look at. Far more often you hire a good scaler into a builder’s job. They spend six months looking for the playbook that doesn’t exist, then they leave, and everyone concludes the market is thin.

    The market isn’t thin. The brief was.

     

    Builder or Scaler – pick one out loud

    This is the single most useful conversation to have before you speak to a Candidate.

    A Builder writes the playbook. They’ll sell personally for a year, work out the ICP by getting it wrong a few times, and hire the first proper team off the back of what they’ve learnt. They tend to be comfortable with mess and less interested in a big org chart.

    A Scaler takes something that already works and adds people, process and predictability to it. They’re brilliant when there’s a machine to tune. They’re miserable when there isn’t one, because their whole toolkit assumes a baseline that isn’t there yet.

    Very few people are genuinely strong at both. The ones who are usually don’t want the job you’re offering.

    Say which one you need, out loud, in the first meeting with your board. If the Founder says Builder and the Board says Scaler, you’ve just saved yourself four months.

     

    Don’t skip the layer underneath

    The pattern we see most often is an expensive one.

    A Business goes from three reps to eight, decides it now needs Leadership, and hires a VP. The VP arrives and discovers they’re running eight one-to-ones a week, doing all the deal coaching themselves, and rebuilding the forecast from scratch every Monday. They’re not leading. They’re first-line managing with a VP title.

    Sometimes what you actually need is a strong Head of Sales or a first-line manager, and a Founder who stays close for another two quarters. That’s a cheaper hire, it’s a faster hire, and it buys you the time to build the motion properly before you ask someone senior to scale it.

    We’ve told people this and lost the fee. We’d rather do that than place a VP into a job that was never going to work.

     

    VP Sales or CRO? The Titles aren’t interchangeable

    A VP Sales owns the sales team and its number.

    A CRO owns the revenue line – which usually means Sales, Customer Success, Revenue Operations, and often Marketing, all reporting in.

    The titles get swapped around a lot, sometimes for fundraising optics, and that causes real problems in a search. Advertise a CRO role that’s really a VP Sales scope and you attract people who’ll be frustrated inside six months. Advertise a VP Sales title for genuine CRO scope and you lose the people who could have done it, because they read the title and assume the remit is smaller than it is.

    Candidates ask about scope early. A vague answer reads as a warning sign to the good ones, not as flexibility.

     

    Should you promote your best AE?

    Sometimes. Just be clear about what you’re rewarding.

    Closing brilliantly and leading well are different skills. Building a forecast you’d bet on, coaching a rep through a bad quarter, saying no to a deal that would land this month and unravel next – none of that shows up in a personal quota attainment number.

    Some of the best sales leaders we’ve placed were solid rather than spectacular reps who happened to be unusually good at making other people better. And some of the strongest closers we’ve met were quietly relieved when someone gave them permission to stay in the seat.

    If you do promote internally, treat it as a genuine change of job. Give them the support that deserves.

     

    What to write down before you start

    Four things, on one page, agreed by whoever has a vote:

    • The number, and what it’s made of. New logo, expansion, or both.
    • Builder or Scaler.
    • Scope – does CS report in, does Marketing, does the Founder still own the top ten accounts.
    • What they’re allowed to change in the first six months. If the honest answer is “not much”, you want a manager, not a leader.

    That page is worth more to the search than any long list of candidates. It’s also the thing that stops a board and a founder discovering they disagree at offer stage, which is the most expensive place to find out.

     

    So – When?

    When there’s a motion to scale, a layer underneath to lead, and a written answer to what the job actually is.

    Not when the deck says you should have one by now.

     

     

    If you’re somewhere between “we probably need a VP Sales” and “we’re not sure what we need”, that’s a good time to talk.

    We recruit VP Sales and CRO roles for B2B software companies across the UK, the US and Europe, and we’ll happily tell you if the answer is not yet.

     

     

     

  • What Makes a Great SaaS Account Executive?

    What Makes a Great SaaS Account Executive?

    Ask ten revenue leaders what makes a great SaaS account executive and you will get ten versions of the same vague answer: hungry, coachable, consultative, resilient.

    All true, none useful.

    The traits that actually separate the top decile of AEs from the competent middle are observable, testable and surprisingly consistent across company stage and deal size – and almost none of them are the things a CV shows.

    This blog breaks down what genuinely great SaaS account executives do differently, why those behaviours drive revenue, and how founders, revenue leaders and talent teams can identify them in a hiring process rather than discovering them nine months into a ramp.

    Let’s Dive In!

     

    They generate their own pipeline – and can prove it

    The single most reliable differentiator in SaaS sales is self-sourced pipeline. Great AEs do not wait for marketing. They build a target list, work it methodically, and can tell you what percentage of their closed-won revenue originated from their own outbound activity. In strong performers that figure is typically 30–50%; in the middle of the pack it is close to zero.

    This matters beyond the pipeline itself. Reps who self-source understand their market, because they have been rejected by it repeatedly and adjusted. They are also insulated from the quarter where inbound dries up – which, in most SaaS businesses, arrives eventually.

     

    Their discovery is genuinely diagnostic

    Average AEs run discovery as a checklist: budget, authority, need, timeline, tick, tick, demo booked. Great AEs run it as a diagnosis. They are trying to establish whether a real problem exists, what it costs the business today, who feels that cost, and what happens if nothing changes. They are comfortable concluding that there is no deal, and they say so early.

    The tell in an interview is the shape of their questions. Strong candidates ask about consequence and quantification – “what does that cost you a quarter?”, “who has tried to fix this before and what happened?” Weaker candidates ask about process and confirmation – “is this a priority for you?”, “does that sound like something we could help with?”

     

    They multi-thread by default

    In SaaS, single-threaded deals are the leading cause of slipped forecasts. A great AE builds relationships across the buying committee as a matter of routine, not as a rescue tactic when the champion goes quiet. That means an economic buyer, a technical evaluator, a user-level champion and, in enterprise, someone in security or procurement engaged well before contracting.

    Ask a candidate to walk you through their largest closed deal and count the named people. If the story features one hero champion, you are looking at a rep whose forecast will be volatile.

     

    They are commercially honest about their pipeline

    Forecast accuracy is a character trait as much as a skill. Great AEs downgrade their own deals without being asked, tell their manager when a deal is dead, and would rather report a smaller, real number than a larger, hopeful one. This is the quality that makes a rep valuable to a revenue leader running a board process, and it is testable: ask a candidate about a deal they were confident in that they lost, and listen for whether they diagnose their own mistakes or blame the buyer, the product or the pricing.

     

    They can sell the business case, not just the product

    Product knowledge is table stakes. What distinguishes strong SaaS AEs is the ability to translate features into a financial argument the buyer can defend internally when the AE is not in the room. In practice this means building the business case with the champion rather than for them, using the customer’s own numbers, and anticipating the objection finance will raise.

    This is increasingly decisive. Budget scrutiny across B2B software has stayed tight, and deals now routinely require sign-off a level or two above where they did three years ago. Reps who cannot articulate payback in months rather than benefits in adjectives lose to those who can.

     

    They are coachable in a specific way

    Coachability is the most overused word in sales hiring, and usually means “agrees with me”. The useful definition is narrower: does this person change their behaviour after feedback, and can they give an example? Great AEs can describe a concrete piece of feedback they received, what they did differently as a result, and what changed in their numbers. Candidates who cannot produce that example, no matter how enthusiastically they endorse feedback in principle, tend not to change.

     

    They match the motion they are being hired into

    A brilliant AE in the wrong motion looks like an average one. Someone who has spent five years running 25-day transactional cycles at high volume will struggle with a nine-month enterprise deal requiring patience, orchestration and stakeholder mapping – and the reverse is equally true. When assessing candidates, compare like for like: average deal size, cycle length, number of stakeholders, whether they sold into a mature category or created one, and whether the product had brand recognition or none.

    The last of these is underrated. Selling a category leader is a different job from selling an unknown Series A product against an incumbent, and founders regularly hire the former expecting the latter.

     

    How to test for this in a hiring process

    Build the process around evidence. Use structured competency questions that demand specifics – numbers, names, dates – rather than hypotheticals. Include a live discovery exercise with a realistic buyer persona and score it against agreed criteria: quality of questioning, willingness to disqualify, ability to quantify. Take references that probe quota context rather than personality. And be sceptical of the candidate who interviews as a polished pitch; the job is asking good questions, so the interview should reward that.

     

     

    Hiring great account executives is not about finding a rare personality type. It is about knowing which behaviours actually correlate with revenue in your motion, and building a process disciplined enough to see them.

    Invest in a SaaS Sales Recruitment agency and accelerate your path to success.

    Reach out to a member of the team here about How to test for this in a hiring process, or see more about how we can support your growth here about How to test for this in a hiring process.

     

     

  • Taking your SaaS to the US? Your first Sales Hire matters more than the Office

    Taking your SaaS to the US? Your first Sales Hire matters more than the Office

    You’ve got product-market fit in the UK. The board’s started asking about America. And somewhere in a deck there’s a line about “North American expansion” with a date attached to it.

    So what’s the actual first move?

    Most Founders reach for the obvious stuff: An Office, a US Entity, a Lawyer, a logo on a door in New York or Austin.

    The ones who get it right tend to start somewhere far less glamorous.

    They start with a single sales hire, and they take that decision more seriously than almost anything else on the expansion plan.

    Here’s why that hire carries so much weight, and how to get it right.

    Let’s Dive In!

     

    The US isn’t just a bigger version of the UK

    It’s tempting to treat America as the same motion with more zeros on the end. It isn’t.

    The buyers behave differently. Deal cycles can be faster and more aggressive, expectations of a Rep are higher, and the competition for attention is fierce.

    A prospect in San Francisco has probably seen four tools like yours this quarter. Your UK talk track, the one that lands so well in London and Manchester, can fall flat when the reference points, the pace and the buying committee all shift.

    So the first person you put in front of American buyers isn’t just carrying quota. They’re carrying your read on the entire market. Get that person right and you learn what actually works in the US. Get them wrong and you spend a year mistaking a hiring mistake for a market problem.

     

    Hire the Person, not the Postcode

    The instinct to sign an office lease first is understandable. It feels like progress. But an office doesn’t sell anything, and it locks you into a city before you know where your customers really are.

    Your first US hire is a market-entry decision dressed up as a job spec. Whoever takes it needs to do three things at once: Close early deals themselves, tell you the truth about what’s landing and what isn’t, and lay the foundations for the team that comes after them. That’s a player-coach, not a pure individual contributor and not a hands-off leader who wants a team to inherit on day one.

    The Founders who move too slowly here usually do so because they’re waiting for the “full” hire, the seasoned VP with a perfect logo history. Sometimes that’s right. Often, at the first-hire stage, it’s overkill, and it’s expensive.

     

    What Good actually looks like

    The strongest first US hires we place tend to share a few things.

    They’ve carried a bag in the US, not just managed people who did.

    They know the patch you’re targeting, whether that’s mid-market SaaS on the East Coast or enterprise security on the West.

    They’re realistic about ramp, because they’ve lived it.

    And they walk in with a clear-eyed view of Comp: US on-target earnings usually sit well above UK equivalents, the base-to-variable split is different, and pretending otherwise just means losing your top candidate at offer stage.

    One example that sticks with me. A Series B UK FinTech we worked with was ready to plant a flag in the US and instinctively wanted to relocate one of their best London Reps to run it. On paper it made sense. In practice, that Rep had never sold into American buyers, didn’t know the ecosystem, and would have been learning the market and building a team at the same time. Instead they hired a VP Sales in New York who’d scaled a US revenue team from scratch before. She closed the first handful of logos herself, fed back hard truths about pricing and positioning within weeks, and hired the two AEs who became the core of the team. The London Rep, freed up, went on to smash their own number at home.

    A different one: A London-based Developer-Tools company held off on the office entirely and hired a single senior AE, remote, in the right time zone. That one hire generated enough US pipeline in two quarters to justify the entity, the office and the next three roles, in that order. The hire came first, and everything else followed the evidence.

     

    The Mistakes we see UK Founders make

    A few patterns come up again and again.

    Sending a UK top performer to “go build it.” Being brilliant in one market doesn’t automatically transfer to another. Sometimes it works. Often you’ve just taken your best UK Rep off your best UK patch and set them up to struggle.

    Underpaying against the US market. Benchmarking American comp against your UK bands is the fastest way to lose the person you actually want. The good ones have options.

    Hiring the wrong shape. A closer when you needed a builder, or a big-team leader when you needed someone who’ll still pick up the phone. Be honest about which stage you’re at.

    Waiting too long. Every quarter you delay the first hire is a quarter your competitors are talking to your future customers.

     

    Start with the Hire, let the rest follow

    The office can wait. The entity can wait. The launch party can definitely wait.

    The one thing that shouldn’t wait is the person who’s going to tell you whether America wants what you’ve built, and then go and prove it. Get that hire right and the rest of the expansion plan writes itself off the back of real evidence rather than a slide.

    If you’re a UK SaaS business eyeing the US and weighing up that first hire, it’s exactly the kind of brief we spend our days on. It’s worth a conversation before you commit to a postcode.

     

     

    For the full picture on building a US revenue team, read our guide on recruitment for SaaS companies expanding to the US.

    Invest in a SaaS Sales Recruitment agency and accelerate your path to success.

    Reach out to a member of the team here about Start with the Hire, let the rest follow, or see more about how we can support your growth here about Start with the Hire, let the rest follow.

     

  • Hiring Account Executives in San Francisco: A SaaS Employer’s Guide

    Hiring Account Executives in San Francisco: A SaaS Employer’s Guide

    San Francisco remains the epicentre of SaaS talent – and the most demanding place in the world to hire an Account Executive.

    The same density of venture-backed startups, hyperscale platforms and AI companies that makes the Bay Area so attractive also makes it brutally competitive for commercial talent.

    Compensation runs higher than almost anywhere, candidates field constant approaches, and the bar for technical selling is steep.

    For SaaS employers, success in San Francisco comes down to differentiation, decisiveness and a realistic view of what the market costs. Here is what to plan for.

     

    The most competitive AE market in the world

    In San Francisco you are not just competing with other SaaS Vendors – you are competing with the best-funded, best-known technology companies on the planet, all targeting the same high-performing sellers. That means a strong candidate almost always has options.

    To win, you need to clearly articulate why your opportunity is worth more than the alternatives: the market you are attacking, the trajectory you are on and the outsized upside of joining now rather than later.

     

    Compensation expectations keep climbing

    The concentration of well-funded SaaS and AI businesses has pushed Bay Area compensation to the top of the global range.

    Candidates evaluate base, commission upside, equity and growth trajectory in parallel, and they know their worth. Employers who anchor to out-of-market numbers simply do not get to the offer stage.

    Benchmark against current San Francisco conditions, and be prepared to compete on genuine earning potential and equity story, not just headline base salary.

     

    Technical selling ability is prized

    San Francisco companies increasingly want AEs who can sell technical or infrastructure-focused products – Developer Tools, AI platforms, complex Enterprise systems.

    Sellers who can hold their own in a technical conversation, navigate longer and more sophisticated sales cycles, and earn credibility with technical buyers are in especially high demand.

    Balance that ideal against hiring speed: an insistence on a perfect technical-plus-commercial profile can slow a search to the point where you lose the candidates you do find.

     

    Brand and Market position matter as much as pay

    In a market this saturated, candidates look well beyond compensation.

    Company vision, leadership credibility, product differentiation and the scale of the long-term opportunity all shape their decision.

    SaaS vendors with a strong employer brand and a compelling growth narrative attract ambitious talent more easily – and often win candidates against better-funded competitors purely on the strength of the story and the people.

     

    Speed and Efficiency win Talent

    Top Bay Area AEs rarely stay available for long and typically run several processes at once.

    Lengthy interview loops or slow internal alignment are the fastest way to lose them.

    The companies that hire well here are decisive and well-organised: they align stakeholders up front, keep the process tight, communicate clearly and move the moment they find the right person. In San Francisco, hesitation is expensive.

     

    What Good looks like

    The strongest San Francisco AEs pair genuine commercial firepower with the technical fluency to sell sophisticated products to sophisticated buyers.

    Look for consistent quota attainment in competitive, fast-moving environments, comfort with complex multi-threaded deals, and the resilience to perform in a market where everyone is chasing the same accounts.

    Raw ambition matters, but so does the discipline to execute a rigorous sales process at pace.

     

    Learn more about hiring AEs in San Francisco here. 

     

    How Strive helps

    The Bay Area rewards employers who understand the market cold and can move fast.

    With a US team on the ground and deep networks across SaaS and AI, we help companies benchmark San Francisco compensation accurately, position their opportunity to stand out against the best-funded competitors, and secure top AEs before someone else does.

    Invest in a SaaS Sales Recruitment agency and accelerate your path to success.

    Reach out to a member of the team here about How Strive helps, or see more about how we can support your growth here about How Strive helps.

     

     

  • Hiring Solutions Engineers in Europe: A Guide for SaaS Companies

    Hiring Solutions Engineers in Europe: A Guide for SaaS Companies

    As SaaS and AI companies expand across Europe, the Solutions Engineer has become one of the hardest roles to fill in the entire go-to-market org.

    The reason is simple: a great SE has to be both genuinely technical and genuinely commercial, and that combination is rare in any single market – let alone across the many distinct hiring landscapes that make up Europe.

    For SaaS businesses scaling their pre-sales function across EMEA, demand consistently outpaces supply.

    Here is what makes European SE hiring difficult and how to approach it.

     

    Demand for Solutions Engineers outpaces supply

    The growth of SaaS and AI across Europe has driven a sharp rise in demand for experienced Solutions Engineers, while the supply of people who combine deep technical expertise with strong customer-facing skills has not kept up.

    That imbalance makes hiring highly competitive across every major European hub.

    Assume the strong SEs you find are being actively courted elsewhere, and build a process that reflects a candidate-short market rather than an employer-led one.

     

    Technical depth and Communication skills are equally important

    A Solutions Engineer has to run credible product demonstrations, handle technical objections and translate business problems into technical solutions – while communicating clearly with both customers and internal teams.

    Candidates who are strong on the technology but weak in front of a customer, or polished commercially but technically shallow, will not succeed in the role.

    Finding people who are genuinely strong in both dimensions is what extends SE hiring timelines, and why a rigorous but efficient technical assessment matters so much.

     

    International and Multilingual Experience adds real value

    SaaS vendors operating across Europe frequently need SEs who can support customers in multiple regions and languages.

    Multilingual candidates with EMEA-wide experience are especially valuable, and become more so as you scale into new territories.

    Be clear about which language and regional requirements are genuinely essential; in an already-scarce talent pool, over-specifying can leave you with almost no viable candidates.

     

    Competition from AI and Infrastructure Companies is intensifying

    AI infrastructure and enterprise technology companies are aggressively hiring technical pre-sales talent across Europe, often with strong compensation, meaningful equity and the draw of working on cutting-edge technology.

    That raises the bar for everyone else competing for SEs. To win, SaaS vendors need to articulate their technical vision, product differentiation and the genuinely interesting problems an SE will get to work on – not just the package.

     

    Candidate Experience and hiring speed are Critical

    Top Solutions Engineers are usually in several processes at once and rarely stay available long.

    Slow cycles or an unclear technical assessment process are the quickest ways to lose them. The businesses that succeed are decisive and technically aligned internally, with an assessment that is rigorous but respectful of the candidate’s time, and a clear story about career growth and product innovation throughout.

     

    What good looks like across Europe

    The strongest European SEs pair real technical credibility with the commercial instinct to advance a deal and the communication skills to build trust with technical and business buyers alike.

    Look for evidence of owning technical wins in complex sales cycles, comfort with enterprise implementations, and – for multi-market roles – the fluency to operate across languages and regions. Curiosity and the ability to learn a new product deeply and quickly matter as much as any specific tech stack.

     

    Learn more about hiring SEs in Europe here.

     

     

    How Strive helps

    Hiring pre-sales talent across Europe rewards specialist knowledge of a scarce, in-demand market.

    With networks spanning the UK, Germany, France and the Netherlands, we help SaaS companies define the right technical-plus-commercial profile, benchmark compensation market by market, and run fast, well-structured searches that secure strong Solutions Engineers before better-funded competitors do.

    Invest in a SaaS Sales Recruitment agency and accelerate your path to success.

    Reach out to a member of the team here about How Strive helps, or see more about how we can support your growth here about How Strive helps.

     

  • Hiring Solutions Engineers in San Francisco: A Guide for SaaS Companies

    Hiring Solutions Engineers in San Francisco: A Guide for SaaS Companies

    San Francisco sets the global benchmark for technical selling – and hiring a Solutions Engineer here is as competitive as it gets.

    The Bay Area’s concentration of infrastructure, developer-tools and AI companies means the bar for technical depth is exceptionally high, compensation runs at the top of the market, and the best SEs are approached constantly.

    For SaaS employers, winning means competing hard on technical vision, benchmarking pay realistically and moving decisively.

    Here is what to plan for when hiring Solutions Engineers in San Francisco.

     

    The most demanding SE Market anywhere

    Nowhere concentrates technical pre-sales talent – or competition for it – like the Bay Area.

    SaaS vendors are up against the best-funded infrastructure and AI companies in the world, all targeting SEs who can sell complex, technical products to demanding technical buyers.

    A strong candidate almost always has options, so a clear, compelling technical opportunity is essential to stand out.

     

    Exceptional technical depth is expected

    San Francisco buyers are often engineers themselves, which raises the technical bar for the SEs selling to them.

    Candidates need real credibility with developer tools, AI platforms, cloud infrastructure or complex enterprise systems – alongside the communication skills to run demos, handle objections and translate business problems into technical solutions.

    Finding people genuinely strong in both dimensions is the central challenge, so design a technical assessment that reflects the real, sophisticated job.

     

    Infrastructure and AI experience is highly prized

    Bay Area companies increasingly want SEs who understand technical, infrastructure-focused or AI products and can navigate long, complex sales cycles.

    That experience is in short supply and heavily contested.

    Balance the ideal profile against hiring speed: an insistence on a perfect technical-plus-commercial-plus-domain match can slow a search to the point where you lose the strong candidates you do find. A high-slope engineer who can ramp fast is often the better bet.

     

    Competition and Compensation are at the top of the range

    The density of well-funded AI and infrastructure companies has pushed Bay Area SE compensation to the highest levels globally, with strong equity packages and cutting-edge technology adding to the pull.

    To compete, SaaS vendors must articulate their technical vision and differentiation clearly, and benchmark compensation against current San Francisco conditions – Candidates here compare multiple strong offers and know their worth.

     

    Speed and Candidate experience win Talent

    Top Bay Area SEs rarely stay available for long and typically run several processes at once.

    Lengthy cycles, slow feedback or an unclear technical assessment are the quickest ways to lose them.

    The companies that win are decisive and technically aligned internally, with an assessment that is rigorous but respectful of the candidate’s time, and a clear story about career growth and product innovation throughout.

     

    What Good looks like in San Francisco

    The strongest Bay Area SEs pair exceptional technical credibility with the commercial instinct to advance a deal and the ability to earn trust from highly technical buyers.

    Look for evidence of owning technical wins in complex, sophisticated sales cycles, comfort with cutting-edge products, and the intellectual horsepower to learn fast.

    In a market this demanding, genuine technical depth combined with commercial polish is the profile that wins.

     

    Learn more about hiring SEs in San Francisco here. 

     

     

    How Strive helps

    The Bay Area rewards employers who understand a scarce, high-bar market and can move fast.

    With a US team and deep networks across SaaS, AI and infrastructure, we help companies define the right technical-plus-commercial profile, benchmark San Francisco compensation accurately, and secure strong Solutions Engineers before the best-funded competitors do.

    Invest in a SaaS Sales Recruitment agency and accelerate your path to success.

    Reach out to a member of the team here about How Strive helps, or see more about how we can support your growth here about How Strive helps.

     

  • Why Sales Hiring Is a Revenue Strategy, Not a Talent Problem

    Why Sales Hiring Is a Revenue Strategy, Not a Talent Problem

    Most SaaS companies treat sales hiring as a talent problem: a seat is open, so find a good person to fill it.

    That framing is where the trouble begins. In a subscription business, the people you hire into your go-to-market engine are not a staffing line to be managed – they are the primary mechanism by which strategy becomes revenue.

    When you reframe hiring as a revenue strategy rather than a recruitment task, almost every decision, from role design to interview rigour, changes for the better.

     

    Your GTM team is your growth model made real

    A SaaS financial model is, at its heart, a set of assumptions about how efficiently you can acquire and retain revenue. Those assumptions only come true if the right people execute them. The number of reps, their ramp curve, their productivity per head and their retention are not HR details – they are the load-bearing variables in your growth plan. Hire the wrong profile, or hire too slowly, and the model quietly breaks regardless of how good the product or the market is. Sales hiring, in other words, is where your strategy either compounds or stalls.

     

    The cost of the “fill the seat” mindset

    When hiring is seen as a talent problem, the goal becomes closing the vacancy. Speed and convenience win, rigour loses, and the definition of the role is inherited from the last person who held it. The result is a team assembled reactively, one seat at a time, with no coherent view of the motion it is meant to run. Territories overlap or leave gaps, comp plans reward the wrong behaviours, and nobody has asked whether the profile that worked at the last stage of growth is the profile that will work at the next one. Each individual hire may look reasonable; the aggregate is a revenue engine that does not fire evenly.

     

    Start with the revenue outcome, then work backwards

    A strategic approach inverts the sequence. Begin with the number you need to hit and the motion that will deliver it – deal size, sales cycle, buyer, channel mix – and let that define the roles, the profiles, the sequencing and the timing of hires. If enterprise is the growth lever, you need sellers who can navigate procurement and multi-threaded committees, hired far enough ahead to ramp before the number is due. If land-and-expand is the model, you need to weigh new-business hunters against account managers who grow existing logos. The hiring plan becomes a direct expression of the revenue plan, not a series of disconnected reactions to resignations.

     

    Timing is a strategic variable, not an afterthought

    Because SaaS reps ramp over months, when you hire is as important as who you hire. A team hired the quarter before you need the revenue will still be ramping when the target lands. Strategic hiring builds the ramp lag into the plan, hiring ahead of the curve so productivity arrives on schedule. Treating hiring as a reactive talent exercise almost guarantees you are perpetually a quarter or two behind your own growth targets, forever hiring to catch up rather than to get ahead.

     

    Retention is part of the revenue equation

    Every departure resets a ramp and reopens a gap, so retention belongs in the revenue conversation from the outset. That means hiring for fit with the actual motion and culture, designing compensation that keeps top performers engaged, and setting realistic quotas backed by genuine pipeline coverage. A strategy that lands great people but churns them is not a strategy; it is an expensive treadmill. The most efficient revenue engines are built by hiring people who ramp and stay, which is a design choice made at the point of hire.

     

    Quality of hire is a compounding advantage

    In a subscription business, the effects of a great hire compound. A strong seller does not just close more this quarter; they build durable pipeline, win reference customers, raise the bar for peers and stay long enough to become a force multiplier. A weak hire does the reverse, and the gap between the two widens every month. Because those effects accumulate, the return on getting hiring right is far larger than the marginal cost of doing it rigorously. This is precisely why sales hiring deserves the same scrutiny you would give any major investment in growth.

     

    What treating hiring as strategy looks like in practice

    In practice, it means the revenue leader owns the hiring plan as tightly as the forecast; roles are defined by the motion, not inherited from the past; interviews test the competencies the job actually requires; and hiring is sequenced and timed against the number. It also means recognising that world-class GTM recruitment is a specialist discipline – and that partnering with people who do it every day is often the fastest route to a team that delivers. Hiring is not a box to tick on the way to growth. It is the growth.

    Invest in a SaaS Sales Recruitment agency and accelerate your path to success.

    Reach out to a member of the team here about What treating hiring as strategy looks like in practice, or see more about how we can support your growth here about What treating hiring as strategy looks like in practice.

  • How to Scale Your Sales Team in a High-Growth SaaS Business

    How to Scale Your Sales Team in a High-Growth SaaS Business

    Scaling a sales team in a high-growth SaaS business is one of the most exciting challenges a company can face.

    It is also one of the easiest to get wrong.

    When demand is increasing, funding has been raised, and revenue targets are climbing, the natural response is often to hire quickly.

    More Account Executives.

    More SDRs.

    More sales leaders.

    More capacity.

    But headcount alone does not create scalable growth.

    Without the right structure, processes, leadership, and hiring strategy, rapid sales expansion can lead to inconsistent performance, missed targets, cultural dilution, and rising customer acquisition costs.

    The best SaaS companies do not simply grow their sales teams. They build sales engines that can scale.

    Let’s Dive In!

     

    Start With the Revenue Model

    Before hiring, leadership teams need to understand exactly what type of sales motion they are scaling.

    A transactional SMB sales model requires a very different team structure from an enterprise sales motion. A product-led growth business will need different sales capabilities than a company relying on outbound-led acquisition.

    Key questions to answer include:

    • Who is the ideal customer?
    • What is the average contract value?
    • How long is the sales cycle?
    • How complex is the buying committee?
    • What level of technical knowledge is required?
    • How much pipeline should be self-generated?
    • Where does expansion revenue come from?

    These answers should shape every hiring decision.

    Scaling without this clarity often results in misaligned roles, unrealistic targets, and poor ramp times.

     

    Hire for Stage, Not Just Experience

    One of the most common mistakes high-growth SaaS companies make is hiring people who have worked at successful companies without considering whether they have experience at the right stage.

    A sales leader from a 2,000-person global software company may not be the right fit for a 70-person scale-up still building its operating rhythm.

    Similarly, a top-performing AE from a mature sales organisation may struggle in an environment where processes, enablement, and brand recognition are still developing.

    When scaling, look for people who understand your current stage and can help build what comes next.

    The best hires are often those who have operated in similar levels of ambiguity and growth before.

     

    Build Leadership Before You Over-Hire

    Every fast-growing sales organisation needs management capacity.

    If you add too many individual contributors before building the right leadership layer, performance often becomes inconsistent.

    Sales managers play a critical role in:

    • Coaching reps
    • Improving forecast accuracy
    • Reinforcing process
    • Supporting deal strategy
    • Protecting team culture
    • Identifying performance issues early

    A strong manager can increase the productivity of an entire team. A weak or overstretched manager can slow growth dramatically.

    As a rule, do not wait until your team is already stretched before investing in leadership.

     

    Define What Good Looks Like

    As sales teams grow, informal standards stop working.

    In the early days, success may depend heavily on founder involvement, individual talent, or a small group of high performers. But as the team expands, companies need a clear definition of excellence.

    This includes:

    • What a qualified opportunity looks like
    • How discovery should be run
    • What a strong demo includes
    • How deals should be forecasted
    • When legal, finance, or technical teams should be involved
    • What information must be captured in the CRM

    Consistency does not mean removing individuality. It means creating a repeatable foundation that allows new hires to ramp faster and perform more predictably.

     

    Invest in Enablement Early

    Enablement is often treated as something to add once the team is already large.

    That is a mistake.

    In high-growth SaaS businesses, enablement should begin before sales performance becomes inconsistent.

    Effective enablement helps new and existing reps understand:

    • The product
    • The market
    • The buyer
    • The sales process
    • Competitive positioning
    • Common objections
    • Customer success stories

    Without enablement, each new hire learns through trial and error. That slows ramp time and creates uneven customer experiences.

    A scalable sales team needs a structured onboarding programme, ongoing coaching, accessible resources, and clear messaging.

     

    Balance Speed With Hiring Quality

    Hiring quickly is sometimes necessary in a high-growth environment.

    Hiring carelessly is not.

    The cost of a bad sales hire is significant. It affects revenue, team morale, management time, customer experience, and culture.

    To maintain quality while scaling, companies should create a consistent hiring process that evaluates:

    • Sales capability
    • Coachability
    • Motivation
    • Market understanding
    • Communication style
    • Resilience
    • Cultural contribution

    Scorecards, structured interviews, role plays, and clear feedback loops can help reduce bias and improve hiring decisions.

    The goal is not to slow hiring down. It is to make fast decisions with better information.

     

    Align Sales With Marketing and Customer Success

    Sales cannot scale in isolation.

    In a high-growth SaaS business, sales performance depends heavily on alignment with marketing, customer success, product, and revenue operations.

    Marketing needs to understand which leads convert and why. Sales needs visibility into campaign performance and messaging. Customer Success needs context on what was promised during the sales process. Product needs feedback from buyers and lost deals.

    When these teams are disconnected, growth becomes inefficient.

    Strong GTM alignment improves conversion rates, customer retention, expansion opportunities, and forecasting accuracy.

     

    Use Data to Guide Scaling Decisions

    As sales teams grow, leaders need to move beyond gut feel.

    Data should inform decisions around hiring, territory planning, compensation, pipeline coverage, ramp time, conversion rates, and quota capacity.

    Important metrics include:

    • Pipeline generation by source
    • Win rate
    • Sales cycle length
    • Average contract value
    • Ramp time
    • Quota attainment
    • Forecast accuracy
    • Customer acquisition cost
    • Net revenue retention

    These metrics help leaders identify whether the team needs more headcount, better enablement, stronger management, improved positioning, or a different sales motion.

    Scaling is not just about adding more people. It is about understanding what is working and increasing investment in the right areas.

     

    Protect the Culture as You Grow

    Culture changes quickly during periods of rapid hiring.

    When a sales team doubles or triples in size, the behaviours that once defined the organisation can become diluted.

    Leaders need to be intentional about the standards they want to preserve.

    This includes how people collaborate, handle pressure, celebrate success, respond to feedback, and interact with customers.

    High-performance sales cultures are not built on energy alone. They are built on accountability, trust, coaching, clarity, and shared ambition.

    Hiring people who strengthen the culture is just as important as hiring people who can hit a number.

     

    Know When to Specialise

    Early-stage sales teams often need generalists. Reps may prospect, run demos, manage deals, support onboarding, and handle renewals.

    As the company scales, specialisation becomes more important.

    This may include separating:

    • SDRs and AEs
    • New business and account management
    • Commercial and enterprise sales
    • Sales engineering and technical consulting
    • Customer success and account expansion
    • Revenue operations and sales operations

    Specialisation can improve efficiency, but only when the business has enough volume and process maturity to support it.

    Adding specialised roles too early can create unnecessary complexity. Adding them too late can limit growth.

     

    Final Thoughts

    Scaling a sales team in a high-growth SaaS business requires more than ambition and headcount.

    It requires clarity, structure, leadership, enablement, data, and disciplined hiring.

    The companies that scale most effectively are those that build deliberately. They understand their sales motion, hire for the right stage, invest in managers, align the wider GTM function, and protect the culture that made them successful in the first place.

    Growth creates opportunity, but it also exposes weaknesses.

    The right sales team does not just help a SaaS business grow faster. It helps it grow stronger.

     

     

    Choosing the right SaaS Sales recruitment agency is about fit, expertise, and trust.

    By asking the right questions and digging into their processes, you can find a partner who not only fills roles – but helps you build a sales team that fuels long-term SaaS growth.

    Invest in a SaaS Sales Recruitment agency and accelerate your path to success.

    Reach out to a member of the team here, or see more about how we can support your growth here about Solutions.