Early roles that drive SaaS revenue

Early roles that drive SaaS revenue

By Lars Nilsson , special advisor at True

As part of my role as True’s special advisor focused on SaaS sales, I help guide founders of very early stage software companies on how to lay the groundwork for their revenue operations.?

At the earliest stage of a SaaS company, a #founder has often made a dozen or so hires, many of which are engineers building out a product offering. But I’m always surprised to learn that there aren’t yet many, if any, customer-facing roles by the time a company has reached that headcount of a dozen.

By the time someone questions a #SaaS company’s early?hiring, inbound sales leads have often already fallen to the floor. Or, too many directors have been hired and the founder is scratching their head as to how they have so much talent on their team but nothing is happening with their sales pipeline.

If you’re a founder of a B2B SaaS startup and you’re beginning to build out your team, consider hiring these revenue-driving contributors in the order outlined below so you can empower your sales team and get cash positive sooner.

A Digital Marketer or Content Creator

Once a founder has built something they’re proud of, they need a partner in crime to help shout it from the rooftops. Ideally, this is a mid-level digital marketer or content creator who can help develop a library of assets that can inspire and educate potential customers.

Look for someone with experience writing newsletters, articles, scripts for explainer videos, and copy for marketing materials or case studies –?and?who has experience interpreting a vision into succinct stories catered to various audiences. Consider how you can broadcast these assets in all directions so prospects “trip” over your stories, take notice, and want to learn more.

A Pair of Sales Development Representatives

Your next pipeline hire should be a mid-level sales development representative (SDR) or two. They’ll have the sole task of setting up qualified meetings, or discovery calls, with prospects to generate pipeline. Once they do, the founder can attend meetings and sell the product or service.

I recommend hiring two SDRs at once if you can so you have two individuals generating pipeline alongside one another. Hiring in pairs can save a lot of time if one of the hires doesn’t work out. It also gives you something to compare in terms of productivity.

The digital marketer will be creating content and collateral that can inspire and teach prospects what they have to gain. The SDRs will use those materials to line up meetings. And the founder will be the passionate brand champion closing those initial deals.

A Quota-Carrying Sales Representative

Next, you’ll need a mid-level, quota-carrying sales rep’ who can quickly fold into operations and take over the deals in your pipeline. This mid-level sales rep’ should have experience successfully closing deals for other companies and shouldn’t be so experienced that they’re hesitant to roll up their sleeves.

At this point in team growth, founders should only attend sales meetings with the biggest and most important prospects. Otherwise, they can hand over the reins to the sales rep’ who is going to want to shine in as many meetings as possible to meet their quota. One sign of a great sales rep’ is if they join you and immediately ask: “Okay, so where’s the content? What do you have for me?”

A Revenue Operations Lead

Once your digital marketer is cranking out sales materials and content, your SDRs are using those materials to set up discovery calls, and your sales rep’ is closing deals, it’s time to hire a revenue operations lead who can set up what’s needed to programmatically scale operations and forecast.

This senior manager-level generalist should be responsible for implementing your CRM and stitching together?your technology stack . Other platforms to consider when pulling together your revenue operation include a marketing automation platform, data provider, and sales engagement platform, among other key systems to help with both outbound and inbound demand generation.

A Customer Success Representative?

As you begin to onboard your first few customers, it’s critical that they begin to receive value from your product or service immediately. In the B2B world of more complex software solutions, customer success provides this function.?

Once your sales rep’ closes a deal, they then hand the relationship to customer success to keep customers happy and using the product so renewing is an easy “yes.”

While different #B2B SaaS teams will benefit from various combinations of the roles above, these five or so roles hired in the distinct ordering above can set a strong foundation for anyone looking to build scalable revenue operations.

Tweet from our Blog or learn more about our teammate Lars .

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