SaaStr 403: Loom's VP Sales, Sam Taylor on Sales' Role in a Product-Led-Growth Organisation, How Sales Can Most Effectively Work With Marketing & When To Hire Your First Reps When Selling Bottoms Up

Sam Taylor is the VP of Sales and Success @ Loom, the startup that helps you get your message across by making it easy to record instantly shareable videos. To date, they have raised over $73M from some of the best in the business including Sequoia, Kleiner Perkins, General Catalyst and Point Nine to name a few. As for Sam, prior to Loom, Sam spent over 4 years at Salesforce following their acquisition of Quip, a startup Salesforce acquired for $750M where Sam was also the 1st sales leader. Before Quip, Sam spent an incredible 3 years at Dropbox where he was the first enterprise sales rep in the entire company. 

 In Today’s Episode We Discuss:

• How Sam made his way into the world of SaaS with Dropbox and how that led to his leading the sales and success team today @ Loom?
• What was Sam’s biggest lesson from scaling the sales team at Dropbox? How did his 4 years at Salesforce change his operating mentality? Thinking of Dropbox, how does Sam justify the role of sales in a world of product-led growth? How do product and sales work together most efficiently? What can one do to structure that relationship?       
• Does Sam agree that the founder is the one who has to create the sales playbook? When is the right time to hire the first sales rep? Should you hire 2 at a time? What does one look for in their first sales hire? What measurements should be used to determine their success? How does this change when selling to SMBs vs enterprise?      
• How does Sam think about the relationship between sales and marketing? Are marketing becoming the new sales team with their content being used more and more in the sales funnel? How should the success of marketing be measured? Does it have to be tied to a number related to revenue?

Sam’s 60 Second SaaStr:

1. Biggest challenge of Sam’s role with Loom today?
2. What would Sam most like to change in the world of SaaS?
3. What is Sam’s biggest weakness as a sales leader? 

Read the full transcript on our blog: https://www.saastr.com/saastr-podcast-403-with-loom-vp-of-sales-sam-taylor/

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