How to Build a High-Performing SaaS Sales Team From Scratch

If you are working out how to build a sales team from scratch, hire in the order your revenue needs it: the founder sells first, then a closer joins, then pipeline support, then a manager once there are enough reps to lead. Each hire should remove one specific bottleneck in your pipeline or forecast. Hire in the wrong order and you end up paying senior salaries for work nobody has defined yet. 

Key Takeaways

• Founder-led sales should produce a repeatable pitch before the first sales hire joins.

• Hire a closer first, then add SDR or BDR capacity once Account Executives run out of pipeline.

• Budget for on-target earnings rather than base salary, since variable pay can account for half the total package.

• Put a strong first-line manager in place before leadership gaps start costing you reps.

When Should a Founder Stop Selling Alone?

Timing is the first decision when you work out how to build a sales team. Make your first sales hire once you can explain who buys, why they buy and how long a deal takes, with closed deals to prove it. Without that, a new rep inherits guesswork. Greenfield roles with no defined ideal customer profile or sales motion are among the most common reasons Account Executives leave early, a pattern we break down in three reasons why your AE will churn.

Before you hire, write down what you already know: the ideal customer profile, your discovery questions, the objections you hear most and how you price. That document becomes the first version of your sales playbook and the brief you need before working through how to hire salespeople.

How to Build a Sales Team: Which Roles Come First?

Building a SaaS sales team usually follows this sequence, although your model can change it:

1. Founding Account Executive, who closes deals and turns founder knowledge into a process

2. Second Account Executive, who proves the process works for more than one person

3. SDR or BDR, who adds pipeline once AEs spend too much time prospecting

4. Customer Success Manager, who protects revenue as the customer base grows

5. Sales manager or Head of Sales, who coaches the team and owns the forecast

The order bends to your business model. Liquid, a Haarlem fintech with five employees, hired a Head of Customer Success right after its Seed round because its customer base was growing from tens to hundreds. Auum took a different route into the Benelux and hired a VP Sales and a founding Account Executive together to build a local sales motion.

How Should You Structure Pay and Targets?

Budget for on-target earnings (OTE), because that is the number candidates compare. Katapult's SaaS salary benchmarks 2026 give these Dutch medians:

Set quotas your team can hit. The same benchmark notes that enterprise AEs usually carry annual quotas of 4.5 to 5.5 times their OTE. Early-stage companies often add equity to close the gap on cash: over 80% of start-ups below €1M ARR offer it to strategic hires, dropping to about 65% between €1M and €5M ARR.

What Makes a Sales Team High-Performing?

High-performing teams keep their best people. In our analysis of AE churn, around 34% of SaaS salespeople left their jobs in 2024, and 80% of the sellers who left named leadership as a key factor. As soon as reps stop reporting directly to the founder, the quality of the first-line manager decides whether they stay.

Plan for the way AI is reshaping team design, too. Some SaaS companies now run pods of Account Executives supported by AI-driven outreach and a small human team for qualification. Our article on how AI will change how your sales team is structured shows one such setup.

Working out how to build a sales team for your stage? Book a call with Katapult to map the hiring order, salary budget and first roles to fill.

FAQ - Frequently asked questions about building high-performing SaaS Sales Team

How much does it cost to build a sales team from scratch?

Start with OTE, then add employer costs and any hiring fees. An SMB Account Executive and a first-year BDR in the Netherlands come to about €139k combined OTE at median rates, before the mandatory holiday allowance of at least 8% and employer social charges (1).

Should I hire experienced salespeople or train juniors?

Hire experienced salespeople for the first closing roles, since nobody inside the company can coach them yet. Juniors work well as SDRs or BDRs once an Account Executive or manager has time to review their calls and pipeline every week. SDR vs BDR explains which of the two to add first.

When does a start-up need a sales manager?

When the founder can no longer run weekly one-to-ones, deal reviews and forecasting for every rep. Leadership gaps drive attrition, so hire or promote a manager before the team grows past that point, since every early departure adds to the true cost of a bad SaaS sales hire.

Sources

1. Business.gov.nl (Ministry of Social Affairs and Employment), "Paying holiday allowance to your staff"