Are you struggling to find the perfect fit for your SaaS sales team? You’re not alone and hiring a SaaS sales recruitment agency could be the answer – if you know what to look for. Both can feel like trying to find that perfect needle in a very big and messy haystack. In this guide, Machiel Kunst, founder of Bluebird, shares expert insights to help you choose the best SaaS sales recruitment agency.
From deeply understanding your hiring needs to effective collaboration with recruiters, I’ll share insights gained from my experience, both as a hiring manager and now as a recruiter. This blog acts as a guide and offers actionable tips to elevate your recruitment efforts and build a high-performing sales team, whether you’re a startup or a seasoned scale-up. Allow me to quickly introduce myself first.
Machiel Kunst: From SaaS sales to recruitment breakthrough
My name is Machiel, I’m the Founder of Bluebird. The first 10 years of my career I worked for SaaS scale ups. My first employer was N-able. During the 9 years I worked at N-able, we were acquired by SolarWinds, we acquired our biggest competitor, raised millions and we IPO’d TWICE!
During my tenure at SolarWinds I was responsible for building out the sales team for Continental Europe. By the time I left I had hired over 40 salespeople into my teams. SolarWinds at that point was a public company with $1B in revenue and 5K+ FTE. After SolarWinds I joined FastSpring, another scale up with approximately 100 FTE and 30M in ARR. They had no real presence in Europe yet and I built a team of 15 FTE and grew the European market from $0 to $3M in ARR within a year.
Working with recruitment firms was overall a poor experience
During those 4 years I have worked with a dozen recruitment agencies specialised in SaaS, but unfortunately none of these experiences were tremendous. I found myself in a situation where I was receiving enough CVs, but not the right ones. The recruitment agencies I worked with didn’t seem capable of qualifying the candidates and spotting real talent.
I realised my only option was to qualify these people myself or to put my top sales rep in front of them – but who would take their best sales person out of the field? I decided to tackle this problem.