“Hire the best in sales. The cost might seem impossible but it needs to be done. It’s not even an 80/20 rule, it is more a 90/10 —10 percent of salespeople are the best at what they do, and you need to pay for them.” — Ian Collins, Wysdom Rules of thumb: sales costs vs. revenue When calculating sales costs, make sure you include every relevant expense involved in attracting, acquiring, and retaining customers. This means using not just sales and marketing costs, but also the costs of your customer suc- cess team. Here are some useful tips on sales costs from industry experts. “The sum of all marketing and distribution costs in one year should be lower than the corresponding revenue.” — Gero Decker, Co-founder and CEO at Signavio in “The Art of Sales” podcast by “Digital Kompakt" “For every dollar you spend you should get a dollar back in terms of Net New ARR.” — Kristina Shen, Partner, Bessemer Venture Partners in SaaStr podcast interview “It’s important to determine where cuts in sales costs will hurt customer perceptions and negatively affect their buying behavior.” — McKinsey See appendix for detailed source references. 75