Prime Team Partners’ Post

Some solid insights here. Many of the early stage CEOs and CROs I speak with have become as lean as they can to survive this challenging period. What comes next? Get to break even, then scale appropriately to grow. To achieve this you need the best quality sales talent you can find.

#VerticalSaaS people: Do you hire industry veterans or proven SaaS experts? Although not impossible, as a leader in a vertical SaaS business it can be difficult to find someone that has both SaaS and industry-specific experience -- leaving hiring managers with some big decisions. I've gone from General SaaS, to the Retail / CPG vertical (non-technical software), to now business aviation (highly regulated and very technical software) and have come across this choice many times while scaling teams. After interviewing and hiring hundreds of professionals that fall across this spectrum, of course the answer is going to be "it depends." Here's some things that it actually depends on: 1. The role If it's customer-facing or a strategic product position, having team members that deeply understand the industry you're in is a potential superpower. (Shoutout to just a few SMEs like Adrian Casillas, Caroline "Ceci" Hayssen Fornell, and Jaimie Girndt who are CSMs with industry-specific experience at Avinode Group.) Customers love working with vendors that speak the industry lingo and tend to come away feeling like we "get them" because of it. But does a CSR or marketing ops hire need the same industry experience as your AE? Maybe not. 2. The complexity of the product / industry The alternative form of this question is: Would it be faster to train someone on the basics of their role or the details of the industry? At a previous company, it would take us 6-12 months to train a new sales team member because it was a complex product and we were only hiring team members with SaaS sales experience. So even with a solid new hire onboarding process you'll eventually be faced with acknowledging the urgency of your... 3. Timeline Not the best thing to admit, but sometimes startups really do need someone in the seat ASAP. I'm not saying to make any sacrifices on talent, but sometimes timing is your biggest pressure point. From my experience, going with specialized, industry-specific hires shrinks the talent pool and could potentially increase your time to hire (#remotework helps with this a bit). And when you're in a time crunch, it's ok to trust that smart, motivated individuals joining a supportive team will get the job done one way or another. 4. Team dynamic Assuming you can't hire an entire team of your ideal candidates, ultimately you'll want to have a team with diverse backgrounds and experiences to be able to learn and grow together. So while hiring at vertical SaaS businesses really is an "it depends" situation, in the long run, the makeup and dynamic of your team and organization really is the most important thing. #AI generated hashtags for visibility: #VerticalSaaS #HiringTips #IndustryExperience #SaaSExpertise #businessaviation #saas

So far in 2024 as with 2023, the big hiring theme for growth tech firms overall is that nasty, filthy little word that people feel uncomfortable saying, spend a lot of time trying to repackage, but in reality, it makes the world go round and is/should be part of every single person's job in one way or another… Sales. Once again the demand for proven, sophisticated, self-sufficient, and technically astute salespeople is sky-high. The need to cut through and build brand trust early has never been greater. Software Engineering is consistent. Teams are leaner, and churn means hiring is always happening. It’s not straightforward, but it’s calmer than it was (largely without the obscene offers). Product Management has had a recent bump from low levels last year. No surprise, as risk was largely off. That is changing. Marketing is far lower on the hiring agenda for most firms (makes sense given budget cuts), with smaller teams doing more, and some firms even cutting VP/CMO levels. Product Marketing appears to be creeping back also. Finance and Ops teams are of high value and need, but volume is down favoring smaller, high-output teams, using newer automation tools to do more. Talent and People Ops is still way down and probably won't return in a hurry. Comp is drastically down, in some cases by 30%-50% for VP-level hires in TA. This is the part of the market where the insanity truly showed itself. Recruiters at Google/Meta with 2-3 years out of college were getting paid $100K-$150K base. Some folks with 5+ years of experience getting $200K+. Base. I'm sorry what? If companies don’t have salespeople, they are thinking about it. Founder-led sales will get you so far, and if companies already have a sales team, they can find room for more if the deal/cash flow is solid. Comp plans are looking very decent with max upside, as companies are trying to build lean, elite teams (as it should be – sales is hard enough without carrying people). It sounds brutal, but companies are making very binary choices between hiring absolute A-players/high-performers and ruthlessly cutting anyone else. We’re seeing this in nearly all well-run sales orgs. People are paying out generous ramp periods for top-tier sales folks, and CROs seem to have a balanced view between ambition (otherwise why bother?) and pragmatism (think months 7-12 rather than 1-6 for true deal flow). “Sales Fluency” is a phrase we’re hearing a lot. It means people who can understand their target accounts, prospect (without SDRs in most cases), manage larger pipelines with high degrees of accuracy, and close alone, often owning the entire deal with minimal hand-holding. Of course, deal desks, sales ops, training, demand gen, enablement, and customer onboarding all look leaner than before, and companies are looking for absolute confidence in hiring end-to-end “deal makers” rather than previous forms of order takers. It's a great time to be a great salesperson. 

Are you looking for a way to measure business success? Look no further than SaaS! Here are 5 reasons why SaaS can be a great indicator of a company's potential for growth and expansion: 1. Employee headcount: 📈 An increasing employee headcount, especially in sales and development teams, suggests that the company is scaling up its operations, indicating confidence in its growth trajectory. 2. Employee wages: 💰 The average wage level within the company can indicate its financial health and its ability to attract and retain top talent, crucial for innovation and competitiveness in the SaaS industry. 3. Taking on debt: 💳 Strategic use of debt to invest in growth areas like marketing, product development, or global expansion can be a positive indicator of a company's growth. 4. Increase in cash flow: 💸 An increase in cash flow, especially from operations, signifies that the company is generating more revenue, which is a key indicator of healthy growth. 5. Research and Development expenditure: 🧪 High R&D spending indicates a commitment to innovation and future growth, a sign that the company is not just maintaining its current offerings, but is actively seeking to develop new products and solutions. At Wundertalent, we specialise in helping SaaS companies with their growth plans and business expansion. Our tailored recruitment solutions can assist in finding top talent to drive innovation, sales, and development, ensuring that your company has the right team to achieve its growth objectives. Let's work together to grow your SaaS business! #Wundertalent #SaaSRecruitment #BusinessGrowth #SaaS #hiring #jobs #startup #saasgrowth #saasbusiness #saasindustry

Introducing our latest B2B product: 𝐑𝐞𝐜𝐫𝐮𝐢𝐭𝐞𝐫-𝐚𝐬-𝐚-𝐒𝐞𝐫𝐯𝐢𝐜𝐞 🚀🌟 We all agree that hiring top talent is among the most important requirements for any business to thrive. Yet, for years, companies have had only 2 alternatives to recruit the best talent: 1) 𝐌𝐚𝐧𝐚𝐠𝐞 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐩𝐫𝐨𝐜𝐞𝐬𝐬 𝐢𝐧𝐭𝐞𝐫𝐧𝐚𝐥𝐥𝐲 ✅ Cost efficient ✅ Aligned with your goals (your recruiters want the best talent for the company as they get a salary no matter what) ❌ Hard to source top quality (not the core business) ❌ Not flexible (hard to manage capacity and demand, particularly if you are small) 2) 𝐄𝐱𝐭𝐞𝐫𝐧𝐚𝐥𝐢𝐳𝐞 𝐰𝐢𝐭𝐡 𝐡𝐞𝐚𝐝𝐡𝐮𝐧𝐭𝐞𝐫𝐬: ✅ High quality (if you have the right partner) ✅ Flexible ❌ Expensive ❌ Missaligned incentives: the headhunter wants you to hire the most expensive candidate that they have presented, not necessarily the best candidate for the company. Even RPOs, as an intermediary solution, fall into the same problem of incentive missalignment. For almost 1 year now, we have been working on a brand new way to help clients in hiring top talent efficiently. We call it 𝐑𝐞𝐜𝐫𝐮𝐢𝐭𝐞𝐫-𝐚𝐬-𝐚-𝐒𝐞𝐫𝐯𝐢𝐜𝐞 (𝐑𝐚𝐚𝐒), and it combines the best of both worlds: ✅ Cost efficient (each hire is ~3k€) ✅ High quality (the best recruiters in town with the best technology) ✅ Flexible (you cancel anytime) ✅ Aligned with your goals (no incentive to push one candidate or another thanks to a fixed payment) 👉🏼 Check what our partner Dcycle thinks about this service. Thank you Juanjo Mestre & team for helping us build the product together! 👉🏼 Do you know a startup which might be interested in RaaS? Tag them in the comments! (RaaS is particularly suited for high growth startups from 10 to 50 employees where there is no or a small HR team)

Companies like to hire PMMs and consultants with industry expertise. If it’s not a hard requirement, it will be “a nice to have,” which, if absent from your resume or portfolio, will disqualify you from consideration. So is it a good idea, or one of those myths that’s got to be busted on LinkedIn? Last year, in the space of 9 months, I worked on messaging and GTM for auto repair, insurance, torrenting, securities trading, banking call center tech, and HR tech. I had extensive expertise in Fintech and HR tech, but everything else was new to me. The results were pretty similar across all of them, with the HR tech deliverable being slightly worse than the others. What happened? Folks with industry expertise come with answers ready to go. They skim the strategy decks, product data, and customer data — if they read it at all — and try to apply what they learned at company X, because they saw it work. But it doesn’t. Why? *No two businesses are the same. You may have learned about your HR tech industry at Indeed (like me), a market leader. That knowledge is going to be pretty useless in the context of a small startup with very different challenges and goals. *The market is moving on. The velocity of change in 2023 was crazy and likely will only increase this year and after. The competition blew up, people learned messaging frameworks, SEO, outbound and inbound marketing, etc. To succeed, you had to go niche, find insights overlooked by others, and test new marketing channels. None of the sh..t that worked during the pandemic worked in 2023. *Stop seeing the forest for the trees. Industry expertise is dangerous in the sense that it can make you complacent, blindside you, and prevent you from seeing the forest for the trees. Things that matter when hiring a PMM: *Size of the organization - have they worked in a similar-sized organization and were able to succeed? *Goals of organization - were they able to help with similar goals such as user acquisition, sales enablement, retention, etc.? *Candidate's ability to solve problems - Are they problem solvers, or have they simply learned industry best practices that can’t carry them when a new challenge arises? *Functional expertise - Do they know how to get customer information, analyze product data, and write a powerful story? The pace of change makes specialized industry knowledge less useful. Diverse experience allows you to draw insights from across domains. Ultimately, understanding the fundamentals of marketing, product, etc., matters more than the industry itself. What do you think? #positioning #pmm #industry

recruiters after HOURS of sourcing for niche talent (shoulder pain) here is your reminder you should have TONS of keywords on your profile (about me and skills) so you generate on more reports (increasing your inbound leads by just existing!) 🔍 hard skill key words - prospecting - cold calling - discovery - product demonstration - new logo sales - expansion sales - customer onboarding - sequence writing - case study building - product led sales - sales led growth - project management - sales methodologies 🔍 tools - outreach.io - salesforce - orum - clay - usergems 🔍 product key words - cloud saas - cloud security - aws cloud spend - infrastructure saas - martech - hr tech - hr software - human resources saas - privacy software - compliance saas - logistics software - insurance tech 🔍 stage of org key words - seed stage startups - startups - series a startups - gtm startups - fortune 500 - $100M ARR more examples of how to build your receipts in the comments :) #sales #linkedinprofile #linkedin #linkedinoptimization #bestfootforward #recruiterlife #salesrecruiter #itsdestinyrecruiting #pipelinebuilding

So far this year we have recruited Account Executives for 5 different early stage (A or B round) European SaaS businesses, here is what we have learnt; 1) Average salaries in Europe are still strong in SaaS 2) Lots of Account executives have really struggled to hit quota in the last 24 months, the pool of top talent smashing quota has shrunk. 3) The requirement for significant customer facing business travel is back. 4) Lots of candidates are seeking experience in working for a genuine AI player, making traditional (non AI) B2B Saas, 2nd choice. 5) Candidates in general are appearing more risk averse, looking for more assurances in business stability and growth potential before committing, even to an interview. 6) Despite a tough couple of years, SaaS is still alive and well and in pockets flourishing. It has been a really positive Q1 and we are excited by the trajectory of the SaaS market. If you are seeking top talent from within Saas anywhere across Europe or North America, please reach out and we can discuss our services. https://lnkd.in/e4dFXSdW  +44 0121 269 6547 #recruitment #saas #ai #executivesearch #accountexecutive

HEAD OF BUSINESS DEV: #staffing #accountingandfinance my long term client, is looking to restart this vertical @ his one office #staffingandconsulting org if you are a tenured #staffingseller with experience in this niche I want to hear from you high-level: ✅ $33M/year company valuation in 2023 -contracts IT projects ✅ REMOTE - ideal PNW ✅ Top reps take home $700-$1M/yr ✅Team of 40 people - 5 sales people, 35 recruiters (onshore, offshore, tenured, green- ++ deliverables, recruiters sometimes dont work m/f because they make so much $- founder HAPPY to scale recruiting teams ✅ Current clients include; Amazon, Microsoft, T-Mobile, Meta, Facebook, IT consulting space innovation tech companies ✅ Once you close accounts, you become the AM for good - goal is to always bring in new accounts ✅ YOU WILL BE LEFT ALONE IF YOU PREFORM. No micro management! work directly w/ founder, no middle leaders- NO ACTIVITY TRACKERS ✅ work mostly in the #seattle market for 15 years, this will be one of the first times they are scaling nationally - have little in office competition ✅ NOT WORRIED ABOUT NON COMPETE ✅ REAL FOUNDER LED SALES - founder still manages amazon and Microsoft accounts himself (brought them in 15 years ago) he has been attending #ai events with my other candidates who work there - you will feel really supported but work with full autonomy ✅ POTENTIAL to manage current accounts but you will focus on NEW LOGO - with no territory, or icp limit$ ✅ IC role, potential to manage if you want where you get a % of your teams profit margin spread ✅ CREATIVE SELLING IS APPRECIATED!! one of my candidates started a #artificialintelligence podcast interviewing some BIG names in AI, and travels across the country to events (meeting clients in person is a nice to have not a requirement) and has been really loving the consultative nature of the sale and the flexibility by leadership to build value and credibility ✅ LOTS of info to work with internally, full time contract people, legal & financial experts, "messy" to go through at first (one of my candidates made their own CRM vs using bullhorn (not against SF been using 5ever) my candidates have said you have access to EVERYTHING, enterprise contracts and presentations but you have to go through it, build your own process & templates- lots of autonomy ✅client of 5 years - the founder is CHILL He will give a bunch objections, as long as you can show him grit, hunger, and TEACH HIM SOMETHING you will like him-placed 5 people - 4 went internal to Amazon after 3 years, 1 took AM job @ Kfoce, 4 year tenure ✅ "I know base is important" HE WILL PAY- up to $100k bonus on profit margin spread of $40k+ ✅ gr8 benefits, QUICK process (treat him like a prospect) ✅ sold first biz to Harvey Nash wont sell this ✅ Deep ties w/ #slalom Gig: 💰 Director/head of of Business Development & Account Manager $150-$300k base start leadership when you are ready- get a % of their MPs