SaaStr 720: CRO Confidential: What It Really Takes to Be Successful in Enterprise SaaS Sales with Christian Smith, CRO of Splunk. Hosted by Sam Blond, Partner at Founders Fund

In this week's 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!

As Christian's been the CRO of Splunk for over seven years now, he's a wealth of knowledge on what it really takes to be successful in Enterprise SaaS Sales.

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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Stéphanie Mazza

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