To help understand the size of sales team you need, Christoph Janz of Point Nine Capital has created a spreadsheet-based model¹. This uses your Annual Recurring Revenues (ARR), monthly growth, and churn rates to outline the numbers and roles you require to hit your overall growth targets. A sales team cannot function effectively in isolation. Don’t forget supporting roles—as shown in the Supporting Roles graphic. You need to be generat- ing inbound leads and keeping customers happy. This is particularly vital in a software as a service (SaaS) business with annual renewals, making the customer success team crucial to growth. Some companies even have a VP of customer success, rather than a VP of sales. The average cost to bring in a dollar of annual contract value revenue is $1.18²—you must therefore retain and upsell to grow. “Sales always wants more than marketing delivers – more than anyone could deliver theoretically.” — Ian Collins, Wysdom ¹ Source: Christoph Janz, Point Nine Capital via The Angel VC http://christophjanz.blogspot.com/2015/06/by-time-youre-at-2-3m-in-arr-you-need.html ² Source: Pacific Crest Securities/Matrix Partners SaaS Survey https://www.forentrepreneurs.com/2015-saas-survey-part-1/ 23