Does your SaaS company have enough sales and marketing employees to compete? That’s the question I wanted to answer earlier this month. Using a list of SaaS companies produced by Nathan Latka’s Get Latka database, here is what I found. I compiled a list of 154 companies across three size categories and made sure each group had at least 50 companies.
SaaS Marketing Employee Benchmarks: Data From 154 Companies
The number of marketing employees you should have to compete depends on your size. Based on a review of 154 companies, here is what I found as a median count per category.
- Companies with 10-50 employees: 3 marketing employees (i.e., 11% of total employee count)
- Companies with 11-100 employees: 5 marketing employees (i.e., 7% of total employee count)
- Companies with 100-500 employees: 15 marketing employees (i.e., 18% of total employee count)
SaaS Sales Employee Benchmarks: Data From 154 Companies
Demand generation and lead generation will only take you so far. That’s where sales plays a central role. As the old saying goes, nothing happens in business until something is sold. To stay competitive, check out these statistics. Based on a review of 154 companies, here is what I found as a median count per category.
- Companies with 10-50 employees: 3 sales employees (i.e., 13% of total employee count)
- Companies with 11-100 employees: 11 sales employees (i.e., 16% of total employee count)
- Companies with 100-500 employees: 41 employees (i.e., 18% of total employee count)
Marketing Vs. Sales Employees: Which Department Is Larger?
When you look at marketing and sales, both functions need to be balanced. That set, marketing can scale and deliver results using marketing automation, digital marketing, and media. That’s why you find that marketing is usually smaller than sales in terms of employees. Here is a quick ratio analysis to prove it.
- Companies with 10-50 employees: 1:1 ratio (i.e., 3 sales and 3 marketing)
- Companies with 11-100 employees: 2:1 ratio in favor of sales (i.e., 5 marketing and 11 sales)
- Companies with 100-500 employees: 2.7:1 ratio in favor of employees (i.e., 41 sales and 15 marketing)
Which SaaS Companies Stood Out?
In each category, there were a few companies that stood out because they had the highest proportion of sales and marketing employees relative to their peers.
For Sales
- Companies with 10-50 employees: Scalex.ai (i.e., 77% of employees in sales). The company is growing at 120% per year! Find out more about Scalex revenue.
- Companies with 11-100 employees: Alleyoop (i.e., 81% of employees in sales). The company spends about $4,000 in customer acquisition cost to acquire customers that generate over $100,000 in revenue. Get more details about Alleyoop’s funding and revenue.
- Companies with 100-500 employees: Vainu (i.e., 41% of employees in sales). The company has achieved a monthly ARPU of $400 and it takes them just 8 months to achieve payback on the customer acquisition cost. For more insight, read the Vainu company profile.
For Marketing:
- Companies with 10-50 employees: ActiveDEMAND (i.e., 50% of employees in marketing). With that marketing team, the company has achieved a 50% year over year growth rate, well done! Get more Activedemand revenue and business metrics.
- Companies with 11-100 employees: AirDNA (i.e., 19% of employees in marketing). There are some challenges ahead for the company because they have a churn rate over 50%. Get more AirDNA revenue metrics.
- Companies with 100-500 employees: Owler (i.e., 51% of employees in marketing). Customers must really love the company because their average life time value in months is 240 months! Find out more about the company’s funding, revenue, customer acquisition costs and the CEO’s favorite business book on the Owler company profile.
What’s The Data Behind This Infographic?
The data behind this post and infographic came from a few sources. First, I started with a list of SaaS companies that are hiring and laying off that Nathan Latka produced. Then, I found that I needed to add a few more companies to the list, so I used the SaaS directory from Built In NYC. Why New York? It’s my favorite American city.
Finally, I looked up each company on LinkedIn to obtain total employee counts, sales employee numbers, and marketing employee numbers. For simplicity, I excluded “business development” from this research because that term is used in different ways. As a result, the sales employee figures cited in this research are likely undercounted to a degree.
