Cloudflare CEO publicly calls out sales team in worst earnings call to date

Quote from their CEO:

Although we've won a third of the Fortune 500 customers, if we're honest with ourselves, we saw a lot of our success with our enterprise customers because our products were so good and solved real problems that every big company faces. That allowed many on our sales team to succeed largely by just taking orders.

When the fish are jumping right in the boat, you don't need to be a very good fisherman. But at the risk of mixing watering metaphors, as the tide goes out, you get a clear view who's not wearing shorts.

The macroeconomic environment has gotten harder, and we're seeing that some on our team aren't dressed for work. Digging in with Marc, we've identified more than 100 people on our sales team who have consistently missed expectations. Simply put, a significant percentage of our sales force has been repeatedly underperforming based on measurable performance targets and critical KPIs. That's obviously a problem.

But it's one in this environment with a particularly available and actionable solution. We are now in the process of quickly rotating out those members of our team who have been underperforming and bringing in new talent with salespeople who have a proven track record of success, grit, and a strong cultural fit. To give you some sense, these 100-plus people contributed approximately 4% of annualized new business sold over the last year. So, we're optimistic we can make this team upgrade without significantly impacting sales capacity.