What It Really Takes to Be Successful in Enterprise SaaS Sales with Christian Smith, CRO of Splunk

In this week’s latest episode of CRO Confidential, Sam Blond, Partner at Founders Fund and former CRO at Brex, sits down with the CRO of Splunk, Christian Smith. Splunk is a 20-year-old Enterprise software giant that has accomplished many things - a 2012 IPO, a $28B+ Cisco acquisition in 2023, and $3.7 billion of ARR last year, with a market cap of $25.7 Billion.
Splunk's core product is a platform for collecting and analyzing high volumes of machine-generated data. Over the years, Splunk has expanded its offerings through acquisitions and product development. As Christian shares on the pod, the company's current customer list includes many notable companies, with 92 of them being on the Fortune 100. A feat!
Together with Sam, in today's episode, they discuss everything Enterprise SaaS sales including:
Pipeline health
Enterprise pipeline generation
How to create demand in the Enterprise when new business slows
The pros and cons of a product-led pipeline
And of course, Customer Success with Enterprise-level customers
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[@gabrielmouravo]

Great episode. I loved Christian’s perspective on quantity vs quality when it comes to demand generation.

[@Saastr]

Thanks yeah a great one!!

[@stang6D8]

Christian, Thank you for sharing your thoughts and experiences regarding pipeline ownership, pipeline analytics and pipeline management. Very insightful.👊🏼

[@cboyda]

Appreciated how this discussion really relates to dashboards with some really great points, thanks Christian! @Sam please upgrade your microphone for less echo :)

[@vidyanair77]

In Splunk, what doesn't work is their professional services. They pull the org down. They still work on T&M when whole world has moved to scope based PS. In the end CX is impacted miserably that field team later has to fix.

[@vidyanair77]

You speak more than asking questions. Let the man speak. Check amount of time you take to phrase your question!