Ex-CRO at HubSpot, author of The Sales Acceleration Formula
Mark Roberge consulted for HubSpot when it was one or two people and joined as its fourth employee. At Stage 2 Capital, he likes to come in when a company moves from founder-led sales to a sales team. He wants reps to sell healthy customers, so he pays half the commission when the customer hits a leading indicator of retention. As he puts it, you can't outsell net revenue retention below 100%.
Sales
Sales
Hire, train and coach sales as a measurable system. Coachability predicts success; aggression predicts the opposite.
So I have you self assess, and if you're like, that? I was awesome, I have no feedback for myself, then that's a red flag.
The Sales Hiring Formula
A data-driven approach to identifying the specific traits that correlate with sales success at your company, then systematically hiring for those traits rather than…
The Sales Training Formula
A training methodology built around three pillars - the buyer journey, the sales process, and the qualifying matrix - that creates deep buyer empathy rather than script…
Metrics-Driven Sales Coaching
A coaching methodology that uses funnel metrics to diagnose specific skill deficiencies, then focuses intensely on one improvement area at a time rather than providing…
Scaling
Promote salespeople based on success metrics, never on tenure
Create a meritocratic culture where advancement is tied to performance data, not time served
Match demand generation strategy to sales hiring - keep inbound and outbound capacity aligned
When scaling, ensure your lead generation approach matches your sales team composition to avoid waste on either side
Establish quantifiable Service Level Agreements between marketing and sales
Create clear, measurable expectations for what marketing owes sales (leads, quality) and what sales owes marketing (follow-up, feedback)
Focus
Three Stages of Growth Framework
A three-stage model for understanding where a company is in its growth journey and what to focus on at each stage: product-market fit, go-to-market fit, and growth and…
The Sales Acceleration Formula / SaaStr Talks
Focus sales coaching on one skill per month, not a laundry list of improvements
When coaching salespeople, identify the single biggest lever for improvement and focus intensely on that rather than spreading attention thin
Churn
Ensure 80% or more of new customers are in the green zone on customer success metrics within 60-90 days
Early-stage founders must focus on customer success, not just acquisition - track and optimize for customer health in the first 90 days
If 80%+ of new customers aren't healthy within 90 days, fix customer success before scaling sales
Early-stage companies must prioritize customer retention and success over acquisition growth
Distribution
The Demand Generation Formula
A modern demand generation approach that shifts from interruptive outbound to inbound marketing, requiring salespeople to become thought leaders while maintaining…
Inbound marketing has replaced cold calling as the foundation of effective demand generation
Modern buyers research independently before engaging sales; companies must be discovered as helpful resources rather than interrupting prospects
Mark Roberge
built sales at HubSpot as a measurable system: hire against traits the data actually predicts, coachability over aggression, train one repeatable process, and manage the funnel by numbers instead of instinct.
Carles Reina
scaled ElevenLabs past 350 million in ARR and argues the systematised version is exactly what broke outbound. The tools treat every prospect as a transaction and buyers can smell it, which is why reply rates cratered. Personal beats scalable.
