The senior security sales leadership is hard at work to hide their complete incompetence. Unfortunately, it is not going to get any better as it is going to get much worse with the upcoming changes that will accelerate the decline of security sales and accelerate layoffs. You will see that they will try more sales programs and gimmicks. These simply don’t work. See the last several quarters performance for evidence. You will see org changes in the name of efficiencies but are really layoffs, all while the security competitors are hiring and growing. You will see non-security executives trying to inject themselves into security but look foolish and cause customers to laugh and further ignore Cisco security sellers.
The products could be better but the security competitors have product challenges too but are outselling Cisco.
How and Why are the competitors growing significantly.
The security competitors are directly selling to the security teams at customers. The security competitors are not trying to use other sellers such as AMs and SEs to sell thru. AMs and SEs have very little security relationships and are too scared to try to establish. Customer security teams do not take Cisco AMs and SEs seriously.
The security competitors have real executive leadership that leads and are accountable and transparent. They don’t ignore the field and let issues spiral out of control. The dishonesty by the current senior security sales leadership has directly impacted security sales and resulted in dismal growth. See previous quarters on performance for reference.
The security competitors are actually paying their sellers full commissions based on reasonable and accurate goaling. They are not incorrectly goaling then come out with a program and lie to their sellers to make it seem they can really make $.
The security competitors are having advanced security conversations with customers. They are not having basic 101 conversations on what a NGFW is or what an advanced endpoint solution is. This is exactly why Cisco does not get a seat at the table often. Customers are smarter than what senior security sales leadership gives them credit for.
The security competitors have sales and technical relationships with security teams at customers. They are not trying to use a disaster program like Click-to-Expert that does damage to customer relationships and creates more work before and after for sales teams. The competitors actually let their sellers focus on selling.
See any other security competitor for what does work as every security competitor is growing by significant double digits while Cisco is growing in the low to mid single digits.