You’ll Need Everyone Great You Can Find

For many of us, these are challenging times.

This may be of the simplest SaaS posts of all times, with some of the most basic advice, but it’s worth talking about anyway.

If things are challenging now, when things get better — you will need everyone great you have now. So hire them now if you possibly can:

• You will need every scaled sales rep that hits quota. The leads will keep coming, and growing. Yes, sales cycles may lengthen a lot, and deals slow way down. But when they shorten, you’ll need every trained, scaled rep you have to service the leads you have now and then.
• You’ll need every great engineer. You know this. The best product doesn’t always win, but the most agile teams often do. As time goes on, they produce exponentially more good features and software than less agile teams.
• You’ll need every good customer success manager. Your revenue will grow, and you’re learning now that existing customers are even more important than everyone thought. Those customers-for-life need support. Now more than ever.
• You’ll need to keep filling the pipeline and demand gen. Maybe deals are a lot slower to move down the pipe today. But you still need a full pipeline. Today, and in the future. Fill your pipeline today, in fact. It’s OK if the deals don’t close until December. You’ll want bookings then, too 

You need everyone great, and probably everyone good. Everyone great ends up being accretive in SaaS over time. And it takes so long to find good people, to interview, to test, to train, to scale.

The bottom 10%-20%, even in the best organizations, usually don’t add much value. If you have to, start there. Ask every leader who is the worst performer on their team. Everyone knows this.

But try to find a way to keep everyone good and great. And find more of them. Even if you don't think you have budget.

Soon enough, and sure enough, you will need them.