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Building a SaaS company's commercial team is one of the decisions that most determines whether the business grows or stalls. And yet, it's often handled as if it were just another hire: a “salesperson” job posting goes up, a hundred résumés come in, and the one who “seems likeable” in the interview gets picked.
The problem shows up a few months later, when that person fails to take off. Not because they're a bad person or a bad professional, but because they were never the right profile for that moment, that product and that way of selling.
That's what GTM recruiting is about. In this guide we explain what it is, how it differs from a traditional search, and how we approach it. It's our starting point: we go deeper into each topic in separate articles that you'll find linked throughout the piece.
GTM stands for Go-To-Market: the strategy a company uses to bring its product to market and generate revenue. GTM recruiting is the specialized practice of hiring the people who make that strategy work: the roles in direct contact with revenue generation.
We're talking about sales, marketing, Customer Success and Revenue Operations (RevOps). Profiles that don't “support” the business: they are the engine of the business.
The difference from a traditional search is the focus. A generic process evaluates experience and attitude. A GTM process also evaluates much more specific things: whether the person met their commercial targets, what deal size they worked with, what company stage they grew in, and whether their way of selling fits your product.
It sounds logical to think “a good salesperson can sell anything,” but in the SaaS world that almost never holds true. The same profile can shine at one company and underperform at another because of context: the sales motion, the company's stage, the ideal customer profile (ICP) and the product's complexity. When those factors aren't taken into account, the result is a slow, resultless hire that's expensive to fix.
We cover this in depth in: How to hire the right salesperson for your SaaS.
When a SaaS company asks us for help building its commercial team, these profiles almost always come up: Account Executive (AE), Sales Development Representative (SDR), Customer Success (CS) and RevOps. Each one plays a different role within the revenue engine and is evaluated by its own criteria. Squeezing them all into the same “salesperson” mold is exactly what you need to avoid.
We look at them one by one in: AE vs SDR: which profile you need first and Customer Success and RevOps: the roles that sustain revenue.
Our way of working starts from a simple idea: before looking for the person, we understand the business. We don't start with the résumé; we start by understanding your way of selling, your stage, your ideal customer and what “a great profile” means for your company at this specific moment.
That method translates into concrete timelines: in our GTM searches we achieve a time to shortlist of 8 days (the first list of pre-selected candidates) and an average time to hire of 35 days (through to hiring). Fast, but without giving up rigor: every profile we present has already been through a serious evaluation.
We tell you the full method in: How we evaluate GTM talent.
There's an opportunity many companies still don't take advantage of: the quality of commercial talent in Latin America and Europe. Both regions have sales, Customer Success and RevOps professionals with excellent training, experience in demanding markets and great ability to adapt to global teams. For a SaaS company that wants to scale efficiently, looking toward these regions is a strategic decision —not just a cost question—: it adds time-zone coverage and access to new markets.
We explain it here: GTM talent nearshoring: LATAM and Europe for SaaS.
Building a commercial team that drives your SaaS revenue isn't a matter of luck or intuition: it's a specialized selection, done with rigor and knowledge of the context.
If you're building or strengthening your GTM team and want to do it right from the first profile, let's talk. We'll help you find the right talent for the right moment.