Hiring the right Go-To-Market (GTM) team is one of the most important - and most misunderstood - challenges SaaS companies face. You can have a world-class product, strong funding, and clear demand, but without the right GTM talent, growth stalls quickly.
At Strive, we work with SaaS companies at every stage, and one thing is consistent: GTM hiring decisions compound. Get them right early and scale becomes predictable.
Get them wrong and you spend months - sometimes years - recovering.
Let's Dive In!
What is a GTM team in a SaaS company?
A GTM team is responsible for taking a product to market, driving revenue, and turning product value into customer outcomes.
In SaaS, this typically includes Sales, Marketing, Customer Success, RevOps, and sometimes Partnerships. The exact shape of the team depends heavily on stage, ICP, and business model, but the common goal is the same: predictable, scalable growth.
The mistake many SaaS companies make is hiring GTM roles in isolation rather than as part of a system. A great salesperson without the right messaging, enablement, or customer handoff will struggle. GTM hiring only works when roles are designed to work together.
When should SaaS companies start hiring GTM talent?
Timing matters more than most founders realise.
Hiring GTM too early leads to churn and frustration. Hiring too late slows growth and creates founder bottlenecks.
Early-stage SaaS companies should consider GTM hiring once there is clear problem-solution fit and early customer validation. This doesn’t mean perfect product-market fit, but it does mean customers are buying for repeatable reasons. At this stage, the focus should be on learning, not scaling.
As the company moves toward Series A and beyond, GTM hiring shifts from experimentation to execution. This is where process, specialisation, and leadership become critical.
The first GTM hires every SaaS company should get right
The first GTM hire is often the most expensive mistake.
Early SaaS companies frequently hire a salesperson too early or hire someone who only knows how to operate inside a mature organisation. The ideal early GTM hire is comfortable with ambiguity, can sell while shaping the narrative, and feeds insights back into product and marketing. In many cases, this looks like a senior individual contributor rather than a manager.
Marketing hires at this stage should focus on positioning, demand validation, and pipeline support rather than scale tactics.
Customer Success early on is less about expansion and more about retention, onboarding, and feedback loops.
Scaling GTM teams as your SaaS company grows
As revenue becomes repeatable, GTM hiring must become more structured. This is where SaaS companies begin adding specialised roles such as SDRs, Account Executives, Product Marketing, and RevOps.
Hiring at this stage should be driven by clear metrics: ACV, sales cycle length, inbound vs outbound mix, and customer lifetime value. One of the biggest pitfalls we see at Strive is hiring managers too early or too late.
Leaders who haven’t scaled before may struggle to build teams, while leaders who only know scale may struggle with evolving products and markets. Matching leadership experience to company stage is critical.
What great GTM candidates look like in SaaS
Strong GTM candidates in SaaS understand more than just their function.
Sales candidates should understand how marketing, product, and customer success impact revenue.
Marketers should understand how pipeline converts and where friction appears.
Customer Success leaders should understand expansion economics, not just relationships.
For early and mid-stage SaaS, adaptability and learning speed often outperform years of brand-name experience. Domain knowledge can be learned. Pattern recognition, curiosity, and commercial judgment are harder to teach.
Common GTM hiring mistakes SaaS companies make
One of the most common mistakes is over-indexing on logos instead of outcomes. Where someone worked matters far less than what they actually built or scaled.
Another frequent issue is misaligned incentives - hiring people used to very different deal sizes, sales motions, or ICPs.
SaaS companies also underestimate the cost of mis-hires in GTM. A poor engineering hire slows delivery. A poor GTM hire can distort strategy, damage customer relationships, and burn pipeline.
Finally, many companies try to solve GTM hiring with generic recruitment processes that don’t reflect the reality of SaaS growth.
How a specialist SaaS GTM recruitment partner adds value
GTM hiring is not about filling roles quickly - it’s about building revenue engines that last.
A specialist SaaS GTM recruitment firm like Strive understands how stage, product complexity, pricing, and ICP shape the type of GTM talent you need. This means better role definition, stronger candidate calibration, and fewer costly mis-hires.
The right partner doesn’t just deliver candidates; they help founders and leaders pressure-test assumptions about who they really need to hire next.
Final thoughts
There is no single perfect GTM team structure for SaaS companies. What matters is intentionality.
The best-performing SaaS companies treat GTM hiring as a strategic function, not an operational afterthought. They hire for stage, optimise for learning early, and scale with discipline.
If you get your GTM hires right, growth becomes a lot less mysterious - and a lot more predictable.
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 software 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.
Adam Richardson
Co-Founder and Director
