#sales-ops

ElevenLabs grew from $0 to $100M ARR in 20 months, from $100M to $200M in the next 10 months, from $200M to $330M in the following 5 months, and from $330M to $600M+ in another 6 months, according to SaaStr.

Carles Reina joined as employee number four and the first go-to-market hire.

A Heinz Marketing article maintains that sales should report into marketing when companies execute go-to-market correctly. The post responds to a livestream comment from Sangram Vajre disagreeing with the author's earlier statement on marketing ownership of GTM.

According to Heinz Marketing, marketing functions as a verb defined as activating a market rather than solely producing materials.

SaaStr states that at least 9 times out of 10, if everyone on the team loves a VP of Sales, it is the wrong hire. The post notes that CEOs often choose between two final CRO or VP of Sales candidates and that the more opinionated candidate or the one with less unanimous support usually loses out, which the article identifies as a mistake.

The article explains that the existing sales team should not love a strong CRO or VP of Sales candidate.

The distinction between RevOps and Sales Ops matters more than most organizations realize because the two functions are related yet not the same job. Sales Ops makes the sales team more efficient. RevOps aligns sales, marketing, and customer success to grow revenue across the customer lifecycle, according to [HubSpot Sales Blog](https://blog.hubspot.com/sales/revops-vs-sales-ops).

Revenue operations governs revenue processes across the entire go-to-market organization.

Sales leaders continue adding conversation intelligence, content libraries, coaching platforms, and LMS modules yet cannot determine whether reps are ready to sell, according to HubSpot Sales Blog. HubSpot’s 2025 State of Sales Report shows only 34% of sales teams expect to meet or exceed quota this year.

A sales readiness platform prepares sellers for customer conversations through training, coaching, assessments, and analytics.

Sales reps spend 10–15 minutes after each call logging notes, updating deal stages, and setting follow-up tasks. Sales reps spend roughly 25% of their workweek on manual CRM data entry alone, according to [HubSpot Sales Blog](https://blog.hubspot.com/sales/ai-reduce-manual-crm-tasks-hubspot).

ValueSelling Associates research released Sept. 1 finds that sellers rate every human-led prospecting tactic above every automated one, with cold calling trailing only client referrals according to [Demand Gen Report](https://www.demandgenreport.com/industry-news/news-brief/valueselling-report-finds-cold-calling-beats-ai-written-emails-6-to-1/54360/).

Human-to-human cold calling ranks as the most effective method for reaching new prospects behind only client referrals.

Companies invest in market research, third-party intent data and prospect intelligence tools to refine messaging and improve targeting. Many overlook the customers they already have as a source of insight, according to [Demand Gen Report](https://www.demandgenreport.com/demanding-views/your-best-prospect-data-comes-from-customers-you-already-have/54062/).

Over 70% of customer revenue leaders say their revenue comes primarily from existing customers.

Seismic completed its merger with Highspot last week and now operates under the Seismic name as the leading company in go-to-market performance. The combined entity serves 2,500 customers and 3.5 million users worldwide, including Allianz Trade, Expedia Group, IBM, Invesco, Oracle, Royal London Asset Management, Thomson Reuters, and Uber.

Seismic CEO Rob Tarkoff stated that AI has catalyzed the industry by shifting enablement from preparing sellers to sitting side by side with them through...

SaaStr published guidance on mistakes new VPs of Sales and CROs make in their first week. The article focuses on errors that lead to mis-hires and outlines steps candidates and CEOs can take to avoid them.

According to SaaStr, many new leaders fail to know the product cold before starting. Others do not begin work the week prior by reviewing email, Slack, calls, and recordings.

Eighty-nine percent of teams report that breakdowns in collaboration impact revenue, yet most sales processes continue to rely on standard one-way presentations, according to [Demand Gen Report](https://www.demandgenreport.com/demanding-views/moving-beyond-pitch-decks-to-more-collaborative-conversations/54068/).

Most prospects encounter one-way lectures and static decks that function more as chores than conversations.

Sales teams running lean stacks close deals faster than teams drowning in disconnected tools, according to [HubSpot Sales Blog](https://blog.hubspot.com/sales/sales-collaboration-tools). High-performing teams have built environments where reps collaborate and hit targets together.

Enterprises apply complex AI systems to tasks that do not need them, according to [MarTech](https://martech.org/how-to-stop-overpaying-for-ai-complexity/). The initial promises of what an AI system can do often do not account for long-term costs, the human oversight required, and the total cost of ownership.

Gamma crossed $100M ARR with 50 employees while operating profitably, according to SaaStr. The company reached 50 million users and 600,000 paying subscribers. For most of that period it had no sales team. This produced $2M in ARR per employee at an average paying customer value of about $167 a year.

Gamma rebuilt its product after an initial launch failed to generate word of mouth. The company took two years to reach public beta.

Zylo’s 2026 SaaS Management Index report found that the average organization runs 305 applications across the business, with many going unmanaged or underused. When these tools do not connect, leads go cold, reps pursue already-closed accounts, and reports fail to align, according to [HubSpot Sales Blog](https://blog.hubspot.com/sales/revops-software).

[Revenue Operations software](/blog/revenue-operations-software/) is a centralized platform that integrates data, processes, and tools across...

A survey of 101 product marketers at mid-market and enterprise companies found that 21% now cite ChatGPT, Claude or Gemini as a source of competitive intelligence while only 14% name a dedicated CI tool, according to MarTech.

Reddit was cited by 23% of respondents. One product marketer stated they had not seen any CI tools worth the investment and could replicate most of what Crayon and Klue deliver with an agent in Claude.

Founders at B2B AI startups report hiring executives who worked at good companies once or twice yet never performed the core work of the roles. According to [SaaStr](https://www.saastr.com/beware-the-mediocre-recycled-the-zombie-executives-of-b2b-ai/), these hires possess the right LinkedIn logos and speak fluently about PLG, enterprise motions and AI-native go-to-market but have not built AI workflows themselves.

James McArthur, VP of Product Advocacy at Nue.io, conducted a live demo of an AI agent at SaaStr AI Day this week on conference Wi-Fi. The session showed the agent building a guided selling playbook from plain English instructions and validating it against real SKUs and tier limits, according to SaaStr.

The demo covered a typical B2B revenue setup where reps spend days on quotes and deal desk teams rebuild closed deals by hand.

Procore reported Q2 FY26 revenue of $375M, up 16% from the prior year. The result exceeded the company's guide of $364M to $366M by 3%. Growth outpaced the 12.9% rate modeled by the street. The company operates construction software used on 3 million projects across 150+ countries and holds roughly $1.5B in ARR.

GAAP operating margin reached 1%, marking the first positive GAAP operating income in company history and an improvement of 1,080 basis points.

TrustRadius’s 2026 B2B Buying Disconnect Report found that 63% of buyers used AI during their purchase journey. The survey of nearly 2,500 technology buyers and vendors showed that 94% of those buyers fact-check AI responses at least some of the time.

AI tools or tools with AI features made up 59% of the purchases buyers made in the past year.

Conga opened a Boston office that serves as its first U.S. hub outside the Houston headquarters. The office opened following the February 2026 acquisition of the PROS B2B business. It holds nearly 15% of Conga’s U.S. workforce.

The Boston location brings Conga closer to customers including Staples, Boston Scientific, and Charles River Laboratories. It also provides access to one of the country’s dynamic technology talent markets.

B2B sales prospecting software automates lead research and outreach to help revenue teams identify and engage potential customers before a formal sales cycle begins. The software integrates with CRM systems and pulls from contact databases, company firmographic data, and behavioral signals to surface leads that match a defined ideal customer profile.

Revenue teams today run multiple tools just to fill the top of the funnel: one for contact data, another for sequencing, a third for intent...

A startup lost an enormous RFP because it was viewed as too small. According to SaaStr, the outcome creates an opportunity to prepare for future evaluations that often occur in one to three years for new initiatives. The publication recommends moving the prospect into a dedicated Lost Now (But Not Forever) Marketing Program and treating the account as a medium-warm, long-sales-cycle contact that already knows the vendor and category.

Invitations to customer conferences and webinars are advised...

A sales content management platform centralizes sales-approved content in a single source of truth. It makes it easier for revenue teams to find, share, and track materials that move deals forward. More than half of sales leaders report using sales enablement content, and 79% say those materials are essential for closing, according to [HubSpot Sales Blog](https://blog.hubspot.com/sales/sales-content-management-platform).

A sales content management platform organizes, distributes, governs, and...

Zoom has expanded Revenue Accelerator with AI-powered capabilities that support sellers before, during and after customer interactions through roleplay, live guidance and post-call intelligence. The updates include the general availability of Sales Assist, Ask ZRA, Sales Roleplay and its MCP Server.

The new Essentials and Premium offerings reflect growing demand for connected revenue intelligence that unifies conversation data, CRM context and coaching workflows.

Public software companies including Dropbox, PagerDuty, Zoom and DocuSign now report growth rates at or below 5% in their most recent quarters, according to [SaaStr](https://www.saastr.com/the-sub-5-club-the-terminal-state-of-software/).

Dropbox posted 0.8% revenue growth last quarter. Stripping out a winding-down product, growth reached 2%. Total ARR increased 0.3%. Management guidance projects revenue decline between 0.4% and 0.9%.

commercetools partnered with Mirion Technologies to release the B2B Intake Agent, an AI capability that ingests order requests from emails, PDFs, spreadsheets, and CSV files and converts them into ready-to-action quotes and carts.

The commercetools B2B Intake Agent extracts order details from incoming requests, automatically matches SKUs, quantities, and product information to catalog data, and routes requests to the correct business unit, customer account, and pricing structure.

ICONIQ released its 2026 GTM benchmark report covering quota levels at more than 150 B2B and AI software companies.

Top-quartile enterprise AEs carry $2.25M annual quotas. Mid-market AEs carry $1.35M. SMB AEs carry $750K. The survey sample ranged from 143 to 149 respondents depending on the question, according to [SaaStr](https://www.saastr.com/sales-rep-annual-quotas-what-high-performers-are-actually-carrying/).

Sixty-five percent of high performers assign cross-sell ownership to sales...

Theorem research shows that manual errors and disconnected workflows in the pre-sales phase are slowing deal execution and introducing risk into advertising revenue operations, according to [Demand Gen Report](https://www.demandgenreport.com/industry-news/news-brief/pre-sales-phase-is-advertising-sales-most-overlooked-revenue-risk-theorem/53548/).

New research from Theorem found that 77% of organizations experience manual errors in pre-sales that disrupt advertising revenue execution.

Omnichannel sales unifies customer data and coordinates outreach across all channels to create a continuous buyer experience. Most sales teams still operate in silos where email, phone, chat, and in-person conversations produce fragmented data and inconsistent follow-up. Recent data from Capital One Shopping shows the share of omnichannel shoppers has climbed to 91%.

In Salesforce’s 2026 State of Sales report, 87% of sales organizations said they now use some form of AI for prospecting, forecasting, lead scoring, or drafting emails, with more than half using it specifically to prospect. Fifty-five percent of sales pros already use AI to prospect, and another 38% plan to.

[Customer acquisition cost](/tools/cac-calculator/) is rising across virtually every B2B category while deal volume, deal velocity and deal size show no corresponding improvement, according to MarTech. The source material states that spending more to acquire customers without gains in those outcomes points to a proof problem rather than market conditions.

The B2B go-to-market profession operates from the thesis that awareness plus information equals purchase intent.

SaaStr AI operates a portion of its go-to-market motion through custom agents rather than replacing its CRM. The company maintains Salesforce as the system of record for deals, contacts, sponsorships, registrations, and support tickets while agents handle most interactions.

SaaStr AI runs an AI SDR, a custom AI VP of Marketing named 10K, and QBee, an AI VP of Customer Success. The 10K agent consists of more than 14,000 lines of code across 74 files.

SaaStr discussed outbound sales on an episode of The Agents with Sam Blond, founder and CEO of Monaco. According to [SaaStr](https://www.saastr.com/outbound-isnt-dead-ai-just-radically-changed-how-it-works/), the conversation concluded that outbound remains effective but has shifted from 2021 practices.

The source states that “Outbound is dead” claims are inaccurate. Spray-and-pray cadences no longer succeed.

Vercel launched a lead qualification agent in August 2025 that reduced a 10-person SDR function to one full-time employee in the US plus 20 percent of one person covering Europe and APAC. The agent costs $5,000 per year in infrastructure and tokens and requires 20 percent of one engineer to maintain. According to SaaStr, the change delivered a reported 32x ROI by replacing 10 salaries with compute while running 24/7.

The lead agent began as 20 percent of a single engineer’s time.

HubSpot Sales Blog published a primer on the sales prospecting funnel, a structured set of stages that convert leads into qualified opportunities.

Many sales teams invest heavily in pipeline management while leaving prospecting inconsistent or overly dependent on rep intuition.

On April 1, 2026, a new line item labeled inride – Trade Agent AI appeared in the Tier III co-op claim dropdown inside the Ford dealer portal. The entry treats an autonomous AI agent as a reimbursable marketing expense alongside billboard and radio placements.

Ford’s co-op program, older than the interstate highway system, had previously approved newspaper, television, internet, and digital retail expenses.

Sales reps spend an average of only 30% of their time actually selling according to [HubSpot Sales Blog](https://blog.hubspot.com/sales/sales-operations-platform). The remainder goes to administrative tasks and chasing information. Fragmented systems undermine pipeline velocity and forecast accuracy.

A sales operations platform centralizes workflows for revenue teams. It unifies tasks under one interface for automation, process consistency, and analytics.

Seismic expanded its Aura Agents portfolio to support more revenue-team workflows across enablement, customer conversations and connected execution. The release includes nine new and enhanced agents that embed AI into daily work to address disconnected systems, manual reporting and inconsistent execution.

According to [Demand Gen Report](https://www.demandgenreport.com/industry-news/news-brief/seismic-extends-aura-agents-across-gtm-workflows/53482/), Seismic has released the agents after a...

A vendor pitch centered on a migration roadmap that replaces an existing marketing automation platform with a new one and projects an 18-month timeline remains the dominant sales motion in martech. The 2025 MarTech Replacement Survey shows this approach diverging from buyer behavior.

Marketing automation held the most-replaced category for five straight years before falling from 31.1% to 19.4%. CRM replacements dropped to 9.7% from 22.1%, the lowest level recorded in the survey.

Legora reached $100M ARR in roughly 18 months selling to global law firms. Sierra hit a $100M ARR run rate in 21 months and works with 40% of the Fortune 50. Decagon tripled revenue year over year to roughly $35M by October 2025 and added more than 100 enterprise logos.

Enterprise sales prospecting is the process of identifying and engaging decision-makers at large organizations to close deals. Enterprise sales teams typically look for potential buyers at organizations that employ 1,000 or more people. Buying committees span multiple departments, and a single missed stakeholder can stall a deal.

Enterprise prospecting requires a different approach than traditional prospecting.

Sales teams face difficulty identifying which leads matter amid disconnected tools, manual qualification, and subjective scoring that slows cycles. According to [HubSpot Sales Blog](https://blog.hubspot.com/sales/lead-scoring-automation-tools), 28% of sales professionals cite lengthy sales processes as the primary reason good prospects back out of deals.

Lead scoring automation tools assign numerical values to leads based on predefined criteria, behavioral patterns, and predictive signals.

HubSpot Sales Blog published a guide titled "Sales acceleration platforms: Our top picks for 2026" that defines sales acceleration platforms as tools providing automation for prospecting, email drafting, timely prospect engagement, and pipeline analysis according to [HubSpot Sales Blog](https://blog.hubspot.com/sales/sales-acceleration-platform).

The platforms address deals that lose steam when leads wait too long for responses and follow-ups turn inconsistent.

Siva Rajamani, CEO of Everstage, has reviewed 300+ enterprise compensation plans and states that 90% contain the same mistakes.

Sales compensation functions as the primary lever in go-to-market strategy rather than a back-office cost center. It serves as the connection between stated company intent and actual rep actions.

insightsoftware adopted Lusha to address insufficient EMEA contact coverage from its existing global sales intelligence platform. The company, which connects CFOs across finance, accounting and operations, saw its EMEA BDR teams double pipeline ROI within two weeks according to [Demand Gen Report](https://www.demandgenreport.com/case-studies/from-limited-contact-coverage-to-closed-deals-insightsoftwares-lusha-success/53107/).

When Andrew Knox joined as Director of Business Development for...

B2B revenue teams now deploy CRMs, marketing automation platforms, ABM tools, sales enablement software, and AI-powered forecasting engines, yet many organizations report that results lag behind the level of investment. The CRM remains half-populated, automation sequences run without monitoring, and AI features stay toggled off since implementation, according to Demand Gen Report.

Research from Netguru found that companies lose 20 to 30% of annual revenue due to disconnected data across CRM,...

According to two new surveys released by Gartner at the Gartner CSO & Sales Leader Conference, B2B buyers now use an average of seven information sources during purchases, with 45% employing GenAI primarily to gather vendor and product information. Buyers reported a strong preference for low-friction experiences, as 67% favor a sales-rep-free process and 70% prefer a completely digital, self-service buying experience.

The Gartner survey of B2B buyers found that 69% prefer to validate...

Fermenta used Popcorn.co to publish more than 40 videos across three YouTube channels in a six-week period. The company maintained a cadence of two to three posts per week per brand while adding zero staff, according to [Demand Gen Report](https://www.demandgenreport.com/case-studies/fermenta-scales-its-youtube-presence-across-three-brands-with-popcorn-co-dgr-case-study/52952/).

The health and nutrition company operates multiple brands that each require distinct positioning and compliance...

Revenue teams have added AI copilots, summaries, prompts, and workflow add-ons that accelerate pockets of the sales process. Gartner research found that 39% of chief sales officers say AI-focused sales initiatives have increased the percentage of sellers who meet or exceed quotas.

B2B sales teams lose deals when meetings get stuck in email threads, routed to the wrong rep, missed due to time zone issues, or dropped during handoffs. According to [HubSpot Sales Blog](https://blog.hubspot.com/sales/b2b-meeting-scheduling-tools), these friction points cause high-intent prospects to lose interest while reps spend time on coordination instead of selling.

A meeting scheduler tool for B2B sales connects calendars, availability rules, and prospect data.

Today's buyers expect instant responses, personalized conversations, and frictionless experiences. Companies meeting these criteria record 41% faster revenue growth and 51% higher customer retention rates, according to [HubSpot Sales Blog](https://blog.hubspot.com/sales/sales-workflow-automation).

SaaStr observed about 10 CROs leave or get fired in the past 12 months across startups connected to SaaStr Fund. AI contributed to some departures by creating tough times and slowdowns for many B2B companies. Some transitions occurred because the company outgrew the executive or the fit was not right from the start.

Shakeel Khan joined Forrester as principal analyst for revenue operations in October. The appointment follows seven years in sales roles selling car rentals, telecom voice and data solutions, and cybersecurity services.

Khan previously worked in sales operations and revenue operations at Neustar, Verisign, and several private equity-backed firms. He holds an M.S.

A SaaStr post provides stage-by-stage hiring guidance for B2B SaaS companies growing from zero to $10 million in annual recurring revenue. The guidance states that every hire has outsized impact with little redundancy in this range.

Founders should lead sales and close the first 10-20 customers to refine the pitch. Companies may hire 1-2 scrappy AEs or SDRs for lead gen support.

SaaStr states that most founders and VPs of Sales and CROs later wish they had specialized their sales teams earlier instead of using round-robin assignment across all leads. The publication advises splitting account executive teams by factors that drive efficiency for the specific business, such as geography, industry, company size, or deal size, and to begin specialization as early as possible.

SaaStr notes that splitting by company size works once a team has two or three sales reps hitting...

Companies with four account executives may assign their Head of Sales a small quota on a short-term basis.

According to SaaStr, a Head of Sales can carry a small quota for one sales cycle or so when the team has four AEs. The arrangement remains reasonable only while the leader acts as a player-coach. The source states the quota should end once the initial period passes.

The Head of Sales must prioritize hiring, onboarding, and enabling the existing AEs rather than closing deals.

According to SaaStr, the timeframe to assess a new sales rep is 1.0 to 1.5 sales cycles. The publication states that leaders will often know the outcome sooner.

SaaStr reports that the best reps get on the board by closing 1 or 2 deals early, even if they do not hit quota immediately. If no progress appears in 0.5 to 1 sales cycles, the outcome rarely improves. The source notes that sales reps begin to lose confidence when early wins do not materialize.

SaaStr published guidance stating that when growth has slowed, a VP of Sales pushing to hire more reps is not the right approach 9.8 times out of 10. The post frames the request as a desperation move.

According to [SaaStr](https://www.saastr.com/dear-saastr-growth-has-slowed-and-my-vp-of-sales-is-pushing-me-to-hire-more-reps-is-that-the-right-way-to-go/), the request signals that the CRO or VP of Sales does not know what else to do and seeks to brute force results with more humans.

Consistency remains one of the biggest challenges in enterprise sales. This challenge has not changed in the Age of AI and may be worse because the best B2B and B2B+AI companies scale faster than ever. Faster scaling means more reps hired faster, which produces more B sales reps. In SMB sales the variance in rep performance appears in less than 30 days.

A SaaStr article states that companies can determine whether a new VP Sales hire will work out within 30 days by applying two specific tests focused on recruiting and team management.

The article explains that the majority of first VP Sales hires in SaaS companies do not remain in the role for 12 months. It asserts that the determination can be made in 30 days rather than waiting for revenue outcomes.

SaaStr published guidance for B2B SaaS founders stating that companies between $1m and $20m ARR need great VPs across roles to move the needle, noting that many founders have not yet worked with one.

Founders at $1m-$1.5m ARR typically conclude they must hire a VP of Sales to scale from a handful of reps to ten or more to reach $5m-$10m ARR.

After reaching $2m in ARR, B2B SaaS companies should begin specializing their sales teams rather than having all reps handle the same tasks, according to SaaStr.

SaaStr states that qualifiers should qualify as BDRs. Openers should open as SDRs. Closers should close as AEs. Retainers should retain as CS. Renewers should renew as CS or Accounting. Upsellers should upsell as AM or sometimes AEs. Managers should manage teams of 6-8 AEs and 8-10 SDRs.