Splunk

Great product. A lot of people have mentioned that already, but this is true unless your prospect is willing to spend time to understand. On the other hand, as we are being pushed for a fast landing solution, we are trying to sell Splunk (Splunk Insight... who will really buy?) as a packaged solution, and this is not what Splunk is supposed to be.

Deal Size and Linearity - Keep pushing for multi-million dollar deals, without giving clear direction, and keep changing how sales teams can get credit. This essentially pushes experienced Splunkers to leave, and new hires won't survive for six months. Before you can ramp up, you're fired because you cannot meet linearity.

Useless Selling Process - Prospects need a solution, not a bunch of selling talk. BVC, DSA, IVA are all business talk. While they are needed, you can't push a prospect to buy another 1TB just because of BVC, DSA results. Prospects won't enjoy these kinds of conversations, and pushing the sales team to do this is meaningless.

Endless Learning - This can be good or bad. For instance, you need to learn security operations, including firewall, WAF, sysmon, IDS/IPS, OS event logs... only for you to sell SIEM. Then, all of a sudden, you need to speak a different language of LTM, JVM, transaction logging for IT/App Monitoring. If you are lucky enough, then you also need to talk about IoT, BA, ML... and please, you need to understand a bunch of SPL to show the real value of Splunk. Is that a bit too much for a single SE to handle to build a 100GB deal, and then management barks at you on why you spent time on such a small deal and where is the M deal? What can you say?

Toxic Management - Everyone is just playing political games and doesn't care about how to truly achieve "Customer Success." What a joke when we say "Customer Success" is our top initiative. The end result is, no big deal, no talk.

Terrible CRO - All are numbers. Where is the CEO? It seems just like a few years ago in SKO, "We are all working for her." Lol.

If you believe you can GT5B with your Exec/Management team alone, then keep what you are doing right now. Soon you will pay for what you have done.

I have seen many experienced Splunkers leave the company, and their experience and knowledge are irreplaceable.