How GetAccept Reached $15M ARR with 200 Employees: Sales Leadership and Hiring Lessons (Interview with CEO Samir Smajic)

Samir's Introduction and GetAccept Snapshot

Samir Smajic

00:00Oh, hey, everyone. My name is Samir, CEO and co founder of getaccept. First time entrepreneur, so don't take everything that I say as a truth. It's my first time going through this. Although, went through y combinator back in the days, got from zero to 200 k in two months, scale getaccept now to almost 200 employees at 15,000,000 of ARR. I actually closed a quite big deal, I say 20,000,000 and how doesn't that match with the 15

Series B Fundraise Context

Samir Smajic

00:29then? Yeah. It was the Series B fundraise which we closed, which I didn't count as a deal. Anyways, love sales but also love product. So if you don't want to talk sales, can also talk product with me. Family, two kids, wife, so yes, you can run a business without getting gray hair and have two kids and family. And if I don't work or spend time with my family, this is me jumping out on airplane, love to

00:55get adrenaline rushes. My HR boss said to me like, when we get 100 employees, you jump out of the airplane with the 100 employee as a part of the contract. I was super happy, the other one wasn't as happy as I. So that said, my purpose today is to really give you concrete takeaways. Anything that you can start using today to improve your sales. So let's take it off. I've divided up into two different tracks. One

01:24is more of the strategic management. Do we have any founders here, C level? Some. Hopefully you'll get some there. Do we have any sales leaders? Perfect. So we'll talk first about aligning the sales leadership with the different growth phases. We'll talk about measuring the right things. Then we'll head over to the sales part and the high growth sales organizations and how you should secure a hiring process. So first of all, the sales leadership. I've thought some

Sales Leadership in the Hustle Phase: Zero to $2M ARR

Samir Smajic

01:51things through this journey and one of them is like in the early early phase, the hustle phase as I call it, the zero to 2,000,000 ARR, you as a founder must go and do sales. That's like how hard it can feel being maybe a developer and not doing sales then. This is what you need to do. But maybe you sometimes need some help, and what is important then is to not hire too high in the hierarchy.

02:16So you should hire some sales manager. If you are recruiting and someone comes in and say that they want some kind of C level position, CRO or whatever, that's not the person that should get on board. Really important, we have done that mistake. You will get the person who's not ready to get their hands dirty. So please don't hire anyone on a c level position there in the early days. Although do not hire anyone who's too

02:42junior. Sometimes that happens out. What will happen then is you need to hold their hand every single deal and teach them. I mean, what I was thinking back in the days was I want someone who has that full sales cycle experience. They should be able to do the calls, pick up the phone, get that meeting in, run the meeting, and also close it. Perfect person to hustle with you in the early days. Next one is don't

03:07hire any that's too far from your business. Meaning, you can find a sales manager maybe who've been in selling phone subscriptions, let's say. But if that doesn't go hand in hand what you do, you will teach them all about what ARR is, you will teach them about how you go to market, all those things that you don't have time to teach them because they need to be out selling your product, right? So think of these in

Scaling from $2M to $10M: Hiring the Right Sales Leader

Samir Smajic

03:31the hustle period. Next one is a really tricky, 2 to 10,000,000. If you want to go from 2 to 10,000,000 really quick, here's where you can really hire someone who can help you. First of all, don't hire anyone who has hired a couple of sales reps in his or her life. I didn't do that error myself, but I've seen some do that. What you need is, you need someone who's really kick ass at hiring. What I

04:01learned from Silicon Valley is that if you get that person in, they will also bring their team with them. So they're up and running directly. And yeah, here you can save a lot of time. Next one is, you don't want someone who's been in a small slow growing environment. Because that is not what it what will happen when you go from two to twin to 10,000,000 in maybe one, two, or maybe even three years. Things will

04:25break, things will go wrong. You need one who has experience from building different kind of sales team that needs to be able to adapt when things don't don't go your way. Right? And last but not least, don't go out and hire kick ass sales reps. That's really tempting sometimes. He or she has been selling really well, let's take that person in. Now you're building teams. So you need a leader. You need someone who can align with

04:50you and your sales culture or your company culture overall. So think through this. Question?

05:08I would always go for the one who knows my market as Looking for a sales leader in your market as a sales team as well? Yep. That's the best. But they don't have to be exactly in your market. Like they don't have to be selling what you are providing right now. Yeah. So for example, we sell sales tech. So if they've been selling sales tech, they've been talking to the same kind of

Ten to $15M ARR: What Changes at Scale

Samir Smajic

05:33Okay. Yeah. That's more more hustling. Okay. So next one, ten to 15. As I said, we are at 15. So this is where I'm still learning, been recruiting a little bit here. So I don't have the truth here, but what I've been seeing so far is when I've been interviewing, and I interview persons are c level, but they've been on the same company for very long, and been growing there in a very nice way, I've seen

05:57that they come with the same stories the whole time. Oh, we should do that we did in this company, but it's always the same company that they refer to. Meaning, they will most likely not have the experience to change and do new things. So this is something that also comes down to has been successful in one market or with one business. If you want to go from 10,000,000 to $50,000,000 maybe you need to add new revenue

06:18streams. Most likely you need to go out to a new market, right?

06:43Yeah. I've done that error also. Not spending and you think you're gonna get it. We don't think we're getting a deal. Yeah. Sales person that has all this all this personal. Right? Because it's the same amount. So if you're not willing to spend, you're not on the right side. Perfect. Yeah. Totally agree. Done that error. Last but not least, when you are above 10,000,000, 15,000,000 of ARR, people don't recognize it. The guy was talking about brand.

07:07People have started to recognize you and people would admire you and your company most likely. And that's something that I at least now experience like I don't want anyone who has admired my company. I want someone coming to me as a CEO, challenge me saying, hey, Samir, this is how we should do it and this is why we should do it. If I go say no, he will still talk to me and try to pursue that

07:30that motion that he knows works or whatever it is. So super important things. Going to the next one, ensure your direction and know your speed. And this is something that we did error or a big error in the early days. We always watched the lagging indicator versus the leading indicators. Maybe everyone understands this, but we were doing this wrong too long. We looked at the photo album that tells us where we have been, what photos we

Ensuring Direction with Leading Indicators

Samir Smajic

07:55have been taking, etcetera, etcetera. You need to get that compass up. You need to know where you're heading, where your goal is. Are you pointing towards the right direction? So this is super important. And you need to figure out your own metrics, but MKLs, in our way, we track relevant web visitors. Meaning, someone that comes from a certain campaign that we know is working that is converting to MKLs. ARR, pipeline generation, gross churn, activation and product

Characteristics of High Growth Sales Organizations

Samir Smajic

08:21engagement, etcetera, etcetera. So find your leading metrics and do it quick if you don't have them so that you know if you're moving towards the right direction, right? So now we'll head over on the second track. We'll talk a little bit about characteristics of a high growth company. So when I talk about high growth companies, it's the ones that are growing the quickest. So in the early stage there, they're growing with 2x, 3x and then yes,

08:48of course it declines. But that said, one thing that really stood out to me was I thought that every high growth company had everything coming from inbound, right? So actually it is not true at all. 50 of the pipe sourced from marketing and it dropping with deal size. So you need to do something else than just rely on marketing, right? And what that is, is actually that you need to have this SDR team. No big news,

09:13but it is actually 2x likely that SDRs are in a company that when it's a higher growth company. And they're focusing as you can see on outbound. So they're not mixing them up. The next one on this, which we missed quite a lot was how to put the ratio. That of course depends now how high is your ACV, what can you then cover if you are adding up too many SDRs. But the most common setup is

09:39one to one or two to one on AEs and SDRs. Next one is where we missed out a lot. We took in a lot of SDRs. We had them get going, but we didn't really focus if they were super successful. Like it's a entry position, let them go like as long as they do their calls. But what's actually true is like if their quota attainments are dropping, and as you can see you want to be on

AE to Manager Ratios and the Seven AE Rule

Samir Smajic

10:03the 82% there, if they're dropping it's a significant decrease in what the AE then can cover. So make sure that your SDRs are successful and are set up for success. It's maybe your most important team. Next one is this is a really tough one. Because when you are trying to cut costs you are just adding the AEs. And I think it in tops we had 18 AEs on one manager. That was tricky. Someone is laughing. But

10:33this is where the magic happens. Everyone talks about that one eighty over 80. Right? So as soon as you hit seven AEs on one manager, it drops significantly. So this is where we try to be at the moment. We have one that is up on 10. So we're trying to get seven AEs on one manager. So super important. And that was around the part with higher growth and how to set up the organization. Last but not

Building an Internal Recruiting Team

Samir Smajic

11:00least, and we'll talk about a little bit about hiring. And this is a tip I got from a smart sales leader. I was in San Francisco and I was like, what's the magic here about getting sales done in a good way? He said like, yeah, but hire good sales reps. Was quite young and I was like, yeah, that's true, that's true. I went and I was like, what the hell does that mean? How do I do

11:23that?

11:24He was gone. But that said, we have actually managed to do this in a quite well way. We are hiring quite many and have generated our own process. First of all, what we have seen working really well is that you have your own internal recruiting team. We have tried external, it doesn't work, at least not for me. Because when we have it internal, they know your culture, they know your business, they know your product, your offering,

11:48what's happening around the corner. But they can also adapt because when you are running a startup, a growth startup, everything will change more or less weekly, monthly at least. So they need to be able to adapt. So get an internal recruitment team and get it fast. Next one is to have a data approach. I love gut feeling. My stomach has a really good feeling. No, but in the early days we more or less hired only on

Data-Driven Hiring and the AssessU Profile

Samir Smajic

12:13gut feeling. But when we got that internal recruitment team and a good team up and running, we also combine that with data. So we have set up for example profiles, we use a tool called AssessU. So a profile on good reps for example. And we can then say when someone doing a test before getting into an interview, we know if they are matching towards that good profile. It actually works very very well. I was not that

Case Interviews as a Hiring Weapon

Samir Smajic

12:41positive to this setup at the early stage. But it works fantastically, it's a lethal weapon when hiring. Next case, next one is having a case interview. How many do case interviews in their sales? No? Some? This is like super important. This is the most important thing that we do. We have crafted the case for every role. It even differs dependent on where they are in the world. But a case that is thirty minutes, they come in

13:08and they do a certain thing that is in the case, it's super good because not only do you see their skill sets strengths and weaknesses, so that you know if they're matching your team, they also understand if they want to work at your place selling this product for example. Because that is what they maybe will be doing in that case. So that some people jump off on that case, say hey, it wasn't really what I thought

13:32it was selling this kind of tool that you're selling. And one thing, when you do that, don't only use the manager in that case interview, put in a couple of your team members from the team, help them get into the recruiting model. They will also feel very much more engaged at getting people a little bit more responsible getting them onboarded. And next is having a very quick contract process. These were some when we got new managers

Fast Contract Process and Structured Onboarding

Samir Smajic

14:00in, some were really like, oh, we had this case, super good, perfect candidate, we'll get them up and kicking. But yeah, they just wanted to think during the next week and then they get back back to us. I was like, no no no. You need to get them signed now. Like if they are perfect, like why should you wait the week? What what are they waiting a week for? I don't know. They just wanted to think

14:20about it. What are they thinking about? Get them in and be aligned on this. So this is super important also. Or you will miss the best reps out there. And last but not least, onboarding. We have a very rigid onboarding, two full weeks including evenings, they come to our office, our HQ. Everyone gets the same onboarding and they get clear plan for the first period, clear expectations where you should be when it comes to all the

14:48different assignments that you have. And also of course then we continue the training across the next three to six months. So that is a part of that onboarding process. Last but not least then, I said it before but now this is the last trip, is building a sales bible. That was something that we did in the early early days. So first sales call I had, I summarized a little bit what it was, took out the good

Building the Sales Bible

Samir Smajic

15:12hidden gems in there, put it into our sales bible, which was more or less just an excel sheet or a Google Docs sheet, then that became a Google page. And just filled it up, filled it up. Repeatedly, repeatedly filled it up. When someone was doing a good case, we filled it up. We added the sales process, how to do the outbound, everything. And when we start then recruiting and got our first five, ten reps in, we

15:34could just post them in here. They got a lot of headway there or room to just start selling very much more quickly and ramping more quickly. And last but not least, what we have been doing in the latest is that we try to understand what we need to train on the different reps. Because not everyone needs to train exactly the same thing. I think that's the original error that you do. You have these boost sessions where

16:01you get everyone in and you're training negotiation. But maybe 50% of your team already know how to negotiate. Why spend two hours on that, right? So you need, everyone has been this guy, training only the upper body. Maybe need to train a little bit of legs here. So what we have done, and this is not exactly our process, this is a very simple one that everyone can understand. If you need to get to those 600 ks

Individualized Rep Training and Funnel Conversion Mapping

Samir Smajic

16:24a year, it's 50 per month, just do it backwards. Figure out what are your conversion points at the moment when it is as best. And then you'll figure out how many appointments, books you need, etcetera etcetera. And what is then really interesting is to see, match this on every rep that you have. You can do it for AE, but you can also do it for an SDR etcetera. But match it up, and then when you see

16:48that someone drops on the demo performed to to identify stakeholders, that's when you also see that that person will not hit targets, and that's where that person needs training, right? So figure that out and don't do any boost sessions for everyone on the same topic. If it isn't like a new feature or something that you're releasing that you know that everyone needs to train, right? And yeah, that was about it. Any questions?

Q&A: SDR and AE Ratios, Case Interview Examples

Nathan Latka

17:31Yeah. It's an SDR team manager. Okay. So completely separate. Yeah.

Samir Smajic

17:38At our place is two to one. So two Relationship or the touch point? They it's like, I think the most standard way like they book the deal, they get in, in the bigger ones depending on the the possibility on ACV, they're on the first meeting or not. Then yeah. And then what's your AE and CS relationship touch points? Do they have a big relationship or not? AE and CS? Yeah. They have a big relationship because they

18:05need to hand over what has been sold etcetera. So I think they're always like a handover meeting that is at least thirty minutes.

18:17Yeah, that's how we set up. But 101 or two twenty one is the most common. Yeah,

18:24two AEs, one SDR. Yeah.

18:28But depends on ACV, what you can cover.

Nathan Latka

18:32Any more questions? Can you give an example of a case interview? A case interview, like the most simple one is that they come in and sell your product. And you state different like challenges on top of that, so that they for example need to meet a certain decision maker or whatever you want to figure out from that person. Then combined, sometimes you need to tweak the case interview because you have a team of four at the

18:57moment and you need maybe more expertise on negotiation in the team. And then maybe put the case interview to be more leaning towards a negotiation process than maybe demo and pain and solution selling. Yeah. Thank you.