Sam Blond is Chief Sales Officer @ Brex, the startup that provides corporate cards for startups. To date they have raised over $57m in funding from the likes of Y Combinator, Peter Thiel, Max Levchin, Yuri Milner, Elad Gil and many more incredible names. Prior to Brex, Sam Was Chief Revenue Officer at Rainforest QA. Before Rainforest, Sam saw firsthand the hypergrowth scaling of Zenefits as VP of Sales where he saw the company grow from 18 employees and $1m in ARR to over 1,800 employees and over $70m in ARR. Sam got his start in the SaaS industry with Jason Lemkin @ Echosign as Director of Sales.
In Today’s Episode You Will Learn:
How Sam made his way into the world of sales and came to join Jason Lemkin with his first role in sales at Echosign? Why does Sam believe that more sales reps does not always equal more revenue? What are the benchmarks that suggest founders really need to add to their sales team? Does Sam agree Founders should be selling up to $1m in ARR? How does Sam assess who is the best person to hire for the role? What have been Sam’s lessons on what it fundamentally takes to attract the best talent? In the early days how does Sam think about both role allocation and whether to hire the young jack of all trades vs the more senior executive? Why does Sam believe that founders need to spend more time on top of funnel? Why does Sam believe that not all opportunities are created equal? How does Sam think about the right structure and time it should take to pass from lead to MQL to SAL to opportunity to deal? Where does this most commonly breakdown? Why does Sam believe the key to success in SaaS sales teams is “urgency”? Literally, how can reps instil a sense of urgency in their current pipeline? Why does Sam disagree with the conventional wisdom and say discounting is a great tool? How does Sam determine the right level of discount to give? How does Sam assess pilots as an alternative approach to getting leads over the line?Sam’s 60 Second SaaStr
What does Sam know now that he wishes he had known at the beginning? Quality or quantity of logos in the early days? Sales rep productivity, what does Sam believe is good?If you would like to find out more about the show and the guests presented, you can follow us on Twitter here:
Jason Lemkin
Harry Stebbings
SaaStr
Sam Blond
SaaStr 659: The 9 Types Of CEOs VCs Struggle To Work With — With Founder and CEO of SaaStr, Jason Lemkin
SaaStr 658: SaaStr CRO Confidential: Omni Founder Colin Zima on the Power of Leveraging Your Network for Sales and Recruiting
SaaStr 657: Gainsight CEO Nick Mehta Shares His Top 10 Mistakes in 10 Years of Running Gainsight: Part 2
SaaStr 656: Gainsight CEO Nick Mehta Shares His Top 10 Mistakes in 10 Years of Running Gainsight: Part 1
SaaStr 655: SaaStr CRO Confidential: Howard Lerman, Founder & CEO @ Roam On Roam's Unconventional Approach for Acquiring Their Early Customers
SaaStr 654: Customer Marketing Strategies Guaranteed to Grow Your Business with Bitly CMO Tara Robertson
SaaStr 653: 10 Things That Always Work in Marketing with SaaStr Founder and CEO Jason Lemkin: Part 2
SaaStr 652: 10 Things That Always Work in Marketing with SaaStr Founder and CEO Jason Lemkin: Part 1
SaaStr 651: Top Mistakes Founders Make with Series A with Black Mangroves, Square Peg, Vertex, and GGV
SaaStr 650: The Impact of Generative AI on Software With Theory Ventures Founder & General Partner Tomasz Tunguz
SaaStr 649: Being a Rebel and Building a Movement: Non-Traditional Approaches to Scale with DoNotPay CEO Joshua Browder
SaaStr 648: CRO Confidential: Cherishma Shah, Senior Vice President; Go To Market Strategy, Operations & Enablement at Guild Education
SaaStr 647: Scaling The Top SMB SaaS Companies: What It Takes with GGV Capital Managing Director Jeff Richards and GGV Capital Partner Tiffany Luck
SaaStr 646: The Secrets to Building a Global Platform and Ecosystem with Xero Global Chief Strategy Officer Damien Tampling
SaaStr 645: Why GUIDEcx is Betting Big on In-Person Events with SaaStr Head of Partnerships Poya Osgouei and GUIDEcx Co-Founder and VP of Sales Todd White
SaaStr 644: Lessons Learned in Scaling Early-Stage to Hyper-Growth Companies: From VMware, AWS and Databricks with Databricks SVP and GM Ed Lenta
SaaStr 643: What's Holding Up Buyers?: Top Obstacles to Making Software Decisions with G2's VP - Asia Pacific, Chris Perrine
SaaStr 642: Founder-Led Enterprise Sales: Failure Points on the Path to $100m ARR with TigerEye and PlanGrid Co-Founder and CEO Tracy Young
SaaStr 641: The Playbook to Blending Product-Led Growth with Sales-Led Growth: Teams, Tools, Processes with Amplitude VP of APJ Mark Velthuis
SaaStr 640: CRO Confidential: How The Biggest Product-Led Enterprise Company In The World Found Success with Atlassian CRO Cameron Deatsch
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