In this episode of the Noble Podcast, we welcome Koen Stam, one of the most energetic and inspiring sales leaders in the SaaS industry. From growing up in an entrepreneurial family business, to founding his own SaaS startup in 2015, to taking on leadership roles at Teamleader, 24sessions (later acquired by MessageBird), and now Personio, Koen has built an outstanding track record in scaling SaaS companies, driving revenue growth, and leading high-performing teams.
Today, Koen is Head of Benelux at Personio, an ambassador for Winning by Design and Trumpet, chapter lead at Pavilion, and the founder of GTMOS, where he helps SaaS companies scale to 50M ARR. He is also a proud father of two, balancing personal and professional life while continuing to inspire the next generation of sales leaders.
Vladan: Welcome everyone to the Nobel Podcast. Today in the studio we have Koen Stam. Koen comes from an entrepreneurial family and worked in his family business before attempting his own SaaS company — I believe back in 2015. After that he started his professional sales career at Teamleader, where he also landed his first management role, before moving to 24sessions. 24sessions was acquired by MessageBird, and in 2022 Koen moved to Personio. He is Head of Benelux at Personio, ambassador of Winning by Design, chapter lead of Pavilion in Amsterdam, ambassador of a company called trumpet, he recently founded his own company GTMos — where he helps SaaS companies scale to 50 million in ARR — and he’s a father of two. That’s the most important. So my first obvious question, Koen: how are you balancing all of this while still staying sane?
Koen: And I even have time to jump on the podcast! AI is the answer… no — I think it’s in my genes. I just have too much energy and I don’t need much sleep. My foundation indeed comes from our family business. I’m used to working 70–80 hours; even when I was young, we woke up at 3:30 to get to the business at 4:30, because that’s when all the orders came in. I did that next to my studies, six days a week. So it’s kind of ingrained into your brain that you don’t need much sleep.
And let’s be honest: you do these kinds of things because you like them. If it’s a passion — even though my girlfriend doesn’t like it when I call work my hobby and passion — then it doesn’t cost much energy. That’s also why I like to be a leader, not an IC. I moved quite quickly from IC to leadership. I don’t like being an individual contributor — I like to spread my energy and knowledge to others. If I can help one other person, or a team, and I see they benefit from it, that gives me a lot of satisfaction.
Vladan: It’s really inspiring — you can see that what you do gives you energy. Whenever I speak to you, you’re always full of energy. Cool — you work as Head of Benelux at Personio. What does this role exactly entail? What do you do every day?
Koen: In SaaS you come across all kinds of roles and titles — and first of all, the title is not important. It’s about what you’re doing, and what the responsibility is. What I really like at a company like Personio — and it was actually similar in my role at Teamleader — is what you’d define as a country manager or general manager role, where you’re responsible for all net added revenue. Not only new business, not only AEs — it’s everything.
For context: Personio is an HRIS platform out of Munich. We’re solving HR — automating all the HR processes for our customers, SMB and mid-market. But HR is very local: complex, with local challenges, requirements, legislation — obviously HR moves towards payroll. So for us as a company, with our international strategy, it’s very important to be there locally. That’s why we strongly believe in this country manager role. For me it’s “Head of,” and it’s really focused on the Benelux — Netherlands, Belgium and Luxembourg, where 80% of our customers come from the Netherlands, but more and more from Belgium too, which is great. And it’s about harmonizing those teams: cross-functional leadership.
I think that’s really interesting and really important, because nowadays — with AI and teams needing to be more efficient — we need more of those cross-functional leaders. We shouldn’t fight for our internal department; we need to fight for our customer. And our customer doesn’t care which department you’re in, what title you have or what your responsibilities are. We need to help them, solve problems for them, and keep doing that — because if we don’t, any startup with AI will, and then you lose your revenue and you don’t have recurring impact.
Vladan: Interesting. So basically you’re responsible not only for new revenue but also for the existing client portfolio and partnerships in the region — pretty much a GM of the region, so to speak. How big is your team, and how is it distributed across marketing, sales, partnerships?
Koen: It depends per region. For us in the Benelux, we have a regional marketing manager, Rick, who I used to work with at 24sessions — we’ve been working together for about five and a half years now — and he has a team of currently two: a content marketeer and an event manager (she does way more than events, but for now that’s the title). Then we have an SDR team of five or six SDRs, a sales team of six or seven AEs — with an SDR manager and an AE manager — an implementation team of three, and an account management and customer success team with one manager and three and three. So between 25 and almost 30 people, including myself, in the Benelux operation. It’s quite significant — but in the five years we’ve been operational, we also drive quite some revenue. Oh — and a partner manager! I fought for one and a half years to get a partner manager. If you really want to build inside countries or regions that are not your home country — and that’s my passion, I’ve been country manager or run satellite offices at previous companies too — I strongly believe in partnerships, because partners have the credibility and the access. So we also have a partner manager who makes a lot of impact.
Restructuring the team — and the first-time leader lesson
Vladan: And when you started in the Netherlands at Personio, how big was the team back then versus now?
Koen: When I entered, we had two SDR managers, two AE managers, significantly more SDRs, significantly more AEs, significantly more everything — budget too. One of my key actions over the course of the years — and it’s never fun if you come in as a leader — was that we had to reduce the team significantly. That was about three years ago, and those were different times: now, with AI, post-COVID, all companies need to move much more towards profitability and efficient growth.
But it’s also very important to ask: are the people you have able to succeed? It’s not only Excel math — do we have enough coverage to get to quota — eventually they need to have a feeling of winning. I truly believe you should rely on people, but you should rely on processes first. If you have the right processes for executing efficiently, you also know the max capacity one person can execute. And then I’d rather have someone with one and a half or two times more demos or pipeline to work with. So we reduced the team slightly, and we directly saw an uptick in overall attainment — and a boost of confidence, which is the most important thing. They can make mistakes and still hit their quota; they’re hitting quota and making extra money. It gives everyone a boost — and that’s contagious. We’ve seen multiple times, also at my previous companies, that this works. So back to your question: it was significantly larger, and we needed to make some cuts in ICs and team leads. Never fun — but as a leader it’s very important to make those calls.
Vladan: A hundred percent. And it also builds your experience as a leader.
Koen: There’s one key lesson for a lot of first-line or first-time leaders. When you get promoted from IC to team lead, or manager, or “head of” — whatever your title is — if I ask you the question: who do you think is your most important stakeholder?
Vladan: For this new manager, who just leads a team of eight people? Well, that person will probably say his or her boss.
Koen: They’ll say that — but then in practice, having always been an IC, where do they put the most emphasis?
Vladan: On themselves? No — on their team.
Koen: On their team. And obviously they’ll work on themselves too, but they’re a manager — they work for the team. That’s the point I wanted to make: it’s so logical that you’re defending everything in your team, because you want to build that relationship — I hope you don’t want to become buddies, but you want to build the relationship, of course. But what’s very important: you’ve been put in that position not to be one-on-one. You used to add value to the company on your own; now you have a team of seven or eight, and you need to make it — let’s be honest — profitable, because we are commercial companies. So your upward stakeholders, your boss, the people you’re working for — they’re often more important than we remember. Being empathetic and taking care of your team — of course. But eventually we also need to understand, and this comes back when you need to make difficult decisions: we need to build a scalable, impactful revenue engine that eventually becomes profitable.
“We shouldn’t fight for our internal department — we need to fight for our customer.”
Running a satellite office
Vladan: You also mentioned being a satellite office, working in a different region than headquarters. I can imagine that’s a difficult situation to be in, especially the first time. Any advice or learnings to share?
Koen: For a lot of leaders who eventually become country manager or manager of a new region: the one mistake you should not make is “let’s copy everything from the home country — what works there, we’ll do here, and we’ll expect the same output, the same metrics and the same targets.” It’s not going to fly. What’s really important, regardless of your role and responsibility: you really need to understand that region. That means you need to talk to customers, talk to partners, talk to competitors — really understand what is driving the needle, and build from there.
One of the key things — and I won’t claim this is the universal top-three list, but this is what works for us: when I came in, we didn’t have any major integration with payroll, and we didn’t have the HR-consultancy type of partners strongly attached to us. I can learn everything myself, being in that new satellite office — or I can leverage the partners who are already there, and the knowledge of the customers who are already there. Maybe they can refer me. So it was always my thing: go out and have those conversations. You learn a lot. And yes, it takes time, and yes, I also have the pressure of this month’s and this quarter’s target — so you need to make sure your agenda has time for execution, which is important for the short term. Because if you don’t make impact in the short term as a new revenue leader, you have a problem — but if you only close this quarter and have no pipeline for the next, you also have a problem. You need to build towards sustainability, and that requires balancing short and long term. For me the key things are always: partners, and understanding the truth from the customers — that’s the external side.
On the internal side: when I came in, I was country manager, but I didn’t have direct responsibility over SDRs, or over everything post-sales. But my mindset was: I only want cross-functional alignment. I don’t really care whether you report to me directly or dotted-line — I’m country manager, and I need to make sure that we’re aligned and working for the same customer. This is our ICP customer; we align together, we work together. If we don’t have that mindset, we’ll never build a strong, scalable foundation in a satellite office.
Vladan: Makes total sense — thanks for sharing those insights. Okay, next I want to look at a concept we’ve been thinking about over the past months. In our eight years of existence we’ve interviewed and recruited many sales leaders, and we’ve been thinking: what actually makes a good sales leader? We’ve broken it down to six pillars. A few are things you focus on individually as a leader: strategic vision — understanding where the market is heading, the competition, how to position; operational excellence — tools, execution, systems, processes; and internal collaboration and alignment — with the stakeholders above and next to you. And then there are three that are really about managing and building a team: hiring, retention and rewards; inspiring and motivating; and training, coaching and performance management. Let’s dive into those three. Looking at hiring, retention and rewards — what is your number one takeaway for a sales leader?
Hiring: trust your gut, look beyond the role, and role-play seriously
Koen: First of all: if you’ve been a sales leader for quite some time, you’ve made a lot of hiring mistakes — and I can only guess Nobel knows this too; not everything can be 100% right. You learn a lot from those hires. Especially when you’re building orgs and need to hire a bunch of SDRs, AEs, CSMs or even leaders: backtrack on what the good ingredients are, the characteristics you see in high-performing people. Always have that feedback loop.
Vladan: And since you’ve made hiring mistakes — is there something you now do that you didn’t do before? Something in your hiring process, or the questions you ask?
Koen: You’re constantly updating that process. But compared to years ago, when I was younger in that leadership trajectory: it sounds weird, but gut feeling becomes more and more important. After a first conversation I kind of have the feeling: I see this clicking, I see this working. Of course, in a high-performing business where a lot of money is involved, it’s difficult to make decisions only on gut feeling — but it’s a really important indicator, and it’s something I focus on much more, because intuition to some extent always comes true.
Back in the days, if I needed to hire an SDR, I was really looking at the traits and doing role plays to see if this was the right fit for the SDR role. Whereas — let’s be honest, we see it in our data — the average tenure of an SDR beyond 18 months is non-existent. That means you can’t hire only for “is this person right for being an SDR.” What I’m really proud of, especially in the Benelux but in Personio overall: we’ve hired so much good talent as SDRs who turned out to be fabulous people outside of the SDR role. In Q2 — I actually wrote a post on it — I think seven of our nine high performers in the Benelux started as an SDR. So that’s a key thing: look beyond the current role you’re hiring for.
Vladan: I love that.
Koen: And the last one — I did this from the start, but even more now, regardless of the role or experience, even for leaders: role-playing. I also want to understand how seriously you take the role play. At my previous company, 24sessions, we were selling high tickets — easily up to 100k, 250k, up to a million ACV, to financial institutions, big banks, insurers. We did role plays where we even required a qualification call prior to the role play — someone would pick up the phone the day before, to mimic an intro call before a discovery call. And even if you have a lot of experience — don’t tell me “I know, I’ve done this many times.” Show me. And take it very seriously: what is your preparation for these kinds of meetings, what questions are you asking, how curious are you?
Then the most important part: we stop, and I ask you — okay, that was the first part of the role play. How do you feel about it? And of course people always start with the good things — that’s how our ego works. Then I ask: what are the two things you could do better? Typically they’ll bounce it back — “what do you think I can do better?” No: I want you to analyze yourself. I want to understand whether you dare to be open about some vulnerable parts — because I’ve already noticed from the role play where I think you can improve. Are you open and honest and vulnerable enough to mention those things? Then I give my feedback — and I learned this from my own manager, who would ask “am I allowed to give you feedback?” — I write it down, and then: okay, we’re going to do a retake in 15 minutes. And I give you only one tip: really apply the feedback I gave you. Then I want to see how you apply it. Some people don’t have the experience, but they’re directly open, they mention the right points, and they directly put the feedback into practice — I’m sold. That’s the mentality: a coaching mentality, wanting to become better, regardless of the role we’re hiring for. And then of course you need the cultural fit, the budget fit, et cetera — but that’s a key element I focus on.
Vladan: Honestly, that’s a great tip — I hope everyone is taking notes.
Koen: You don’t have to take notes — just put the transcript into your LLM! That’s the thing I’m doing with GTMos: why should we as leaders or ICs always come up with the answers on the spot? “I have a problem now — what are the six best questions to ask when I’m hiring an AE, for my company?” You don’t have to reinvent the wheel. If you just ask AI you get very generic stuff, because it has no context. But there’s so much valuable podcast content out there: take this transcript, put it in your LLM, ask the question, and you have tailored questions that make you part of the 5% better.
Vladan: Fair enough. So still take notes — but AI can help you a little there.
“Look beyond the current role you’re hiring for. Seven of our nine high performers in the Benelux started as an SDR.”
Compensation, quota setting and career frameworks
Vladan: And what about compensation? How do you create a commission scheme, a quota, maybe long-term incentives, that motivate people to join your team, stay, and be successful?
Koen: This comes back to the juggling act of a first- or second-line leader. You’re always in this balance: on one hand I need to defend my team — I want to set realistic quotas and compensate the right way. On the other hand, towards the top, you need to make sure people are productive and efficient — they need to make revenue for the company.
One of those exercises: we’re moving quickly towards 2026, meaning we start annual planning in September. Typically that starts top-down, but I want my leaders — and myself — to also start bottom-up. Before deciding whether we’re setting the right quota and compensation, first understand: what’s the big number we need to aim at top-down, with all kinds of assumptions — and then have a bottom-up plan to see whether it actually makes sense, also given the growth trajectory we’ve seen over the last couple of years. Based on that you can look at how to compensate the team: do we need more people, or can the current people do more? Then look historically — especially the last six, nine, twelve months — at how quota attainment is averaging, and compare it to other regions. We do a lot of benchmarking, which I like: why is the UK or Spain different — Germany is different for us because it’s such a big organization — and see what’s working, where we can squeeze, where we can challenge.
And then it’s really important as a leader that the team feels they can accomplish it. I’d say 80% of the team should be at 80% attainment. Of course you want everyone at 100%, but let’s be honest, in difficult times that’s not always realistic. And if everyone is at or above 100%, that can be an indicator that quotas are too low.
Then — and I’m part of Pavilion, so I’ll echo our CEO Sam Jacobs here — I find it very important that anyone in leadership has financial literacy. You need to understand how a P&L works. I don’t mind that you do 200% this quarter with all kinds of accelerators — but we also need to understand how that impacts the bottom line. We need to be able to keep paying everyone. As a leader you have to understand the financial impact — and that’s only the cost of acquisition. There’s my cross-functional leadership hat again: nice that we have this new logo acquisition — how does it fit with the ICP, so the customer stays long-term?
The other thing you mentioned is compensation — also highly underestimated. You need to comp right. I know Nobel does annual benchmarks. It’s really important to have a clear career framework: what steps can I make from my current role, what do I need to do to get there, and how often are we evaluating — annually, semi-annually? Have it clearly documented. And when it comes to salary bands: it comes back to being a satellite office — the wages and salary bands in Germany are really different from the UK, and having an office in Amsterdam versus London is different. So make sure that locally, in that region, you benchmark: are we paying fairly, in line with the market? Otherwise you just can’t attract or hire people. But it’s not only hiring — I want to retain my people, because that’s why we hire them. And I’m very satisfied that, five years into the Benelux, we have an average tenure of about three to three and a half years. We have people who started five years ago who are still with us.
Vladan: That’s beautiful.
Koen: And that eventually comes down to recognition, career frameworks, compensation — people being paid fairly. That’s one of the reasons they keep working with us, among a lot of other factors.
Vladan: So it’s a balance between recognition, the right compensation, and documenting the steps for how to grow in your role — or outside of your role — and what you need to do to hit certain milestones.
Koen: Two hundred percent. And that comes back to a documented process: how are we making sure the people we’re hiring now are the right ones for the roles of the future in our company? And be as transparent as you can — it also depends on the policy of the company; we’re actually significantly transparent in what’s possible. So as an IC I know which steps I can make and where I can grow towards. We’re not ideal — if I ask my team they’ll say “that’s not true!” — but I think we’ve proven in the past that we’re really willing to make this possible for people, so people stay. It also benefits the company. Don’t underestimate that this structure, process and documentation is very important — and it evolves. It’s not done once; especially in this market, you almost need to check every six months whether you’re still in line with the market.
Vladan: And a super practical question: how is the OTE versus quota at Personio Benelux?
Koen: The Benelux isn’t different from other regions there — a lot of these policies come globally, from HQ and our HR teams. It differs per experience level, per seniority. For ourselves: in SDR we have three levels — SDR one, two, three. For AEs I think we have six or even seven steps, AE1 through AE7. And the more maturity and experience you have — it sounds weird — the more we feel the trust, and the more weight can sit in the variable part: the balance between fixed and OTE. It changes over the years; there’s no one specific answer. But we’re strong believers that when you outperform as an IC, you can make good money — really good money. And I don’t mind that we’re moving more towards, say, 50/50 — because top performers will still perform. They need to be rewarded well, because otherwise they’ll do it at your competitor. That’s the way it works. And then you need to make sure that the middle tier — because you always have one or two high performers — can really perform and make money, because that’s the most solid piece that you build your forecast and your plans on.
Vladan: Fair enough. It sounds like you guys have this really well sorted out.
Koen: It helps that we’re an HR company — we can sell it the best! Just kidding. I think it’s decent — really decent. And learned along the way: for anyone listening, we’re a company that’s existed for ten years. I can’t mention numbers, but there are not many companies our age in Europe as advanced as Personio. We’ve learned a lot and made so many mistakes. If you’re a startup of a few years, the context is all different, and you need to make those mistakes. But a key lesson, even as an HR company — because there are things on the HR-policy side we can do better too: if you make mistakes, or if you don’t do things — communicate. As leaders, as leadership, as a company. Overcommunicating on these things, within whatever range of transparency you have, really does a lot.
Inspiring and motivating: energy, pace and approachability
Vladan: Cool — thanks for sharing. Then moving on to the next pillar, and I can imagine it’s a difficult one: inspire and motivate. Are there specific things you do exceptionally well to inspire and motivate people in your team?
Koen: You should ask my team! But — you know me a little — I have a non-stop battery on my shoulder. I never shut up, if you let me speak. And I never stop putting a lot of energy into what I say or do — also in my gestures. One of the SDRs once said, after I’d been traveling for one and a half, two weeks: “damn, I was really missing this energy.” That’s me.
When it comes to motivating people: I’m a big fan of hybrid. I’m not a remote guy at all — in my teams it’s not going to happen, and I don’t see myself working for a remote company, even though it has a lot of benefits, also for myself as a young parent. I need the energy of an office. And I also think — though I’m biased — that as a leader you set the pace. We’re a commercial team: come on, we do this extra thing, we put in this power, we lead by example. The extra call, the extra meeting, staying half an hour longer, trying that extra stakeholder — that comes with your energy and pace.
But having said that — and I find this very important — this is my leadership style. My current leader, Tom, VP of International, who looks over all of international, is a 180-degrees different leader than me. And he’s so strong and so good — I really love working with him. Completely opposite: not that energized style at all. So this works for me, and I believe it’s a strong style — but there are different nuances depending on the personality you have.
Vladan: So maybe that’s the biggest takeaway: find your own personal style that really fits your personality to motivate and inspire people — and be authentic with it.
Koen: Yeah. And maybe two more things. One: being approachable — always being there for your team. It’s so important, because it creates trust that people can always come to you — whether it’s business, sparring over deals, or personal things. We’re human; things happen in life. Please be open and honest, and let’s be able to discuss those things. That comes down to my second point: communication. I’m energetic, I overcommunicate — where you can say things in one sentence, I say three; where you write one sentence, I write three. But being very clear in your communication — and maybe overcommunicating as a leader — I don’t think that harms, regardless of your personality.
Vladan: Exactly — being super approachable as a leader, but also communicating everything clearly: your goals, what you expect from somebody.
Koen: And I like to be as transparent as I can. Of course, in your role you can’t share everything — but what I can share, I will, with the right context, if it’s relevant. That’s also an important role for a leader. Because if I create this trust with you, I hope and expect you’ll do the same with me. I want to know when you have the feeling you’re not in the right spot anymore, or when you’re maybe looking externally — hey, could we have prevented this?
“Be specific about the metric where you can make the biggest impact — and put the ownership of the coaching with the person themselves.”
Training, coaching and performance management
Vladan: Nice. Then let’s move on to the sixth and final pillar: training, coaching and performance management. Do you have a specific tip for sales leaders — maybe also for when things are not going well?
Koen: This is one of my biggest things — I really love developing people, training people, coaching people. You can wake me up in the night for it. But doing this very well and executing consistently is the hardest thing for a sales manager. Even though I’m a big fan, I know the biggest gap is doing it consistently and specifically.
The first thing I actually did with AI — already two and a half years ago — was building coaching frameworks. What’s really important, and typically missing: I want to develop you as a person, but if there’s no process, no structure, if we don’t know what to focus on and we’re not aligned on what we’re coaching on — how can we measure progress? You can become better as an AE at ten different things, but no: be specific. What is the metric I need to hit, the metric we need to influence — is it pipeline creation, better demoing, the closing part, the post-demo part? Be really specific about the metric where you can make the biggest impact on your number — because come on, we need to get to a number.
Then we break it down. First we align: if I see this, I want you to see it too — because if you don’t see it, how can we work on it? You’d never be intrinsically motivated to solve it. Once we’re aligned, we make a plan: these are the two or three things we’re going to focus on this quarter. And the last thing, which I really like — it’s also easier for a leader: I put the ownership on your side. I give you the structure, we align on the two things we’re coaching on, we do bi-weekly coaching — it’s in my agenda, but I’m not going to prep it. You take the lead. I want you to own it: show me your progress. I don’t care if it’s an IC or a first-line leader — you own it. You come up with it: is it going to be a role play, what do you want to do? And it’s difficult — it’s easier for the leader — but they should always come prepared for this meeting.
Vladan: That’s a really good point.
Koen: And the people who do this in the right way — of course it’s busy, and if it’s bi-weekly you can’t always do that much prep — but those who take this most seriously, I eventually also see it in their attainment and their promotions. That’s anecdotal, but definitely.
Vladan: So you see a real strong connection.
Koen: Definitely. And to break it down for anyone: make it specific, and make it small — only a few elements. If you listen to someone else’s call as a coach, there are so many things they could do better — if you listen to my calls, there are tons of things I can do better. But that’s not the point. We need to understand what moves the needle for your role — and for an IC or a leader, that’s hitting goals. Always move from a metric, then go down towards root cause, then be specific — and document.
And a tip for anyone to follow — this doesn’t come from me: I’m a big fan of Kevin Dorsey. Most people in the SaaS space know him — if you don’t, you need to update your knowledge. He’s one of those key leaders who really trains on these kinds of things and has all kinds of frameworks to turn this into a process. That’s what creates the right sales talent and the right sales leaders.
Vladan: Beautiful. Thanks a lot, Koen, for all the great insights today — I think it was a great episode. If you’re interested in following Koen’s growth journey, make sure to give him a follow on LinkedIn. And if you enjoy this podcast, make sure to subscribe and listen to one of the episodes coming up. Thanks a lot, thank you again, Koen — and see you next time.
