We all know Salesforce laid off 7,000 Sales Reps this year.
And Cloudflare's CEO recently threw his Sales team under the bus.
How does this happen?
Not listening to Rev Ops.
When announcing layoffs earlier this year, Benioff quoted a stat:
"96% of ACV is delivered by 50% of AEs."
👉 Salesforce has 85+ Directors or VPs of Revenue Operations.
Cloudflare's CEO said this in a recent statement:
"These 100+ [under performers in Sales] contributed only 4% of ARR."
👉 Yet Cloudflare has 22+ Directors or VPs of Revenue Operations.
There is simply NO qualified Rev Ops team that wouldn't have flagged this as a concerning figure in the Sales data.
Which means 1 of 2 things:
1. The Rev Ops teams at Salesforce and Cloudflare didn't see it.
I simply don't believe this is the case.
Salesforce is known for the Sales & GTM sophistication they have built.
2. Leadership didn't take the advice of Rev Ops.
If 50% of your Sales team isn't selling effectively, there is no scenario in which Rev Ops endorses adding thousands more Reps.
Some may say this was all part of Salesforce's strategy.
Hire more AEs to boost top-line growth, even if margins are low.
But shrinking territories and hiring underperforming Reps doesn't achieve that goal either.
Again, a good Rev Ops team sees this in the data.
Rev Ops helps capitalize on the good times and accelerate growth.
And allow you to prevent the bad times from wreaking havoc on the org.
But only when you listen to them.
