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Hilarious you got sales to call you back. I had to ping their CTO after multiple attempts to have sales work with me failed. He finally got them to give me a de

Hilarious you got sales to call you back. I had to ping their CTO after multiple attempts to have sales work with me failed. He finally got them to give me a demo of their zero trust solution. No one ever followed up with me again though. It’s like they don’t want to sell an enterprise (tens of thousands of dollars a year) subscription… The only sales guy who called me back before the CTO got involved was Kingsley Okoroh out of their UK office. I’m in the states. He even had no idea why no one in the states would call me. Anyway, Kingsley tried hard to help, Kingsley should be their head of sales since no one else cares.

yamtaddle 4y ago
I've had only limited interaction with their sales people, but find it interesting they weren't on-the-ball trying to sell an account that valuable, either—we were more toward the bottom end of their enterprise range, so I'd just assumed we were too small-potatoes for them, but those were by far the least-hungry sales people I've ever interacted with. It was like I was bothering them. LOL. Also some of them seemed to know very little about their offerings, market segments, et c., which was weird. [EDIT] Oh, tens of K $ per year, not month. Yeah, that'd have been us, too. Mid tens of K $ per year.
- dismantlethesun 4y ago
  I agree. I contacted Cloudflare sales for a small order of just a 100k or so per year, and they totally ghosted me after my first round of questions. No quote, no contact, nada. I gave up and went to Fastly. You may say my order was too tiny but even Akamai gave a response; they just didn’t have any turn key product that suited my needs.
  - tachim 4y ago
    exact same experience here.
  - yamtaddle 4y ago
    Yeah, CloudFlare was unique among the companies in this space that we contacted. The others' sales folks all gave way more shits, even at fairly big companies where I'm certain we wouldn't be a notably-large account. They were also by far the least-interested in tailoring their plan. "Oh you don't want to pay for this giant pile of stuff you don't need? Hm. Well. Too bad." Seemed like they wanted all-or-nothing, for enterprise plans, which leaves a big gap in their offerings between the top self-serve and the bottom end of enterprise—seems like a pretty major gap in their funnel, letting all those accounts just leave if they exceed self-serve but can't justify the very-expensive minimum enterprise plan, but I guess it's working for them?
  - nolok 4y ago
    Wait they're less reponsive than Akamai ? I ran away from Akamai because of their sales people and how they apparently embedded their dark soul straight into the user interface they give you to use, and by use I mean summon an akamai billing person from the depths because you're not allowed to do anything without them. I know they're doing good but Cloudflare must be even more successful than I thought if they can afford that level of ineptitude at sales level
    - rgbrenner 4y ago
      Akamai is growing at 7% per year vs 40% per year for Cloudflare. Akamai is still 5x the size of Cloudflare but their growth rate is a lot more manageable than 40%.
bastardoperator 4y ago
Why would I chase 10 of thousands of dollars a year when I can chase hundred of thousands or millions of dollars? You didn't talk to an actual salesperson, you spoke to a BDR. A BDR quantifies leads and determines if your spend is worth the time. If you didn't get a call back it's because the BDR identified you as small time. I'm not trying to be rude, just pointing out how many sales teams tend to work.
- hapidjus 4y ago
  BDR?
  - CallMeJim 4y ago
    Business Development Representative.
    - tobyjsullivan 4y ago
      Impressively, the expansion conveys about as much information as the acronym. "Gatekeeper" is a more accurate translation.
      - notahacker 4y ago
        In most companies it's more accurately translated as "lead generator" or "sender of spam emails and LinkedIn messages"
- UncleEntity 4y ago
  > Why would I chase 10 of thousands of dollars a year when I can chase hundred of thousands or millions of dollars? They have someone on the hook with customers hounding them to get their system back online and it isn’t worth spending a few minutes to quote a guaranteed sale? Something about a bird in the hand comes to mind…
- luckylion 4y ago
  Why wouldn't you do both? And if your sales department is maxed out by chasing the big contracts so much so that they don't have time to onboard someone spending 50k a year, get more sales people.

yamtaddle 4y ago

I've had only limited interaction with their sales people, but find it interesting they weren't on-the-ball trying to sell an account that valuable, either—we were more toward the bottom end of their enterprise range, so I'd just assumed we were too small-potatoes for them, but those were by far the least-hungry sales people I've ever interacted with. It was like I was bothering them. LOL. Also some of them seemed to know very little about their offerings, market segments, et c., which was weird. [EDIT] Oh, tens of K $ per year, not month. Yeah, that'd have been us, too. Mid tens of K $ per year.

dismantlethesun 4y ago
I agree. I contacted Cloudflare sales for a small order of just a 100k or so per year, and they totally ghosted me after my first round of questions. No quote, no contact, nada. I gave up and went to Fastly. You may say my order was too tiny but even Akamai gave a response; they just didn’t have any turn key product that suited my needs.
- tachim 4y ago
  exact same experience here.
- yamtaddle 4y ago
  Yeah, CloudFlare was unique among the companies in this space that we contacted. The others' sales folks all gave way more shits, even at fairly big companies where I'm certain we wouldn't be a notably-large account. They were also by far the least-interested in tailoring their plan. "Oh you don't want to pay for this giant pile of stuff you don't need? Hm. Well. Too bad." Seemed like they wanted all-or-nothing, for enterprise plans, which leaves a big gap in their offerings between the top self-serve and the bottom end of enterprise—seems like a pretty major gap in their funnel, letting all those accounts just leave if they exceed self-serve but can't justify the very-expensive minimum enterprise plan, but I guess it's working for them?
- nolok 4y ago
  Wait they're less reponsive than Akamai ? I ran away from Akamai because of their sales people and how they apparently embedded their dark soul straight into the user interface they give you to use, and by use I mean summon an akamai billing person from the depths because you're not allowed to do anything without them. I know they're doing good but Cloudflare must be even more successful than I thought if they can afford that level of ineptitude at sales level
  - rgbrenner 4y ago
    Akamai is growing at 7% per year vs 40% per year for Cloudflare. Akamai is still 5x the size of Cloudflare but their growth rate is a lot more manageable than 40%.

bastardoperator 4y ago

Why would I chase 10 of thousands of dollars a year when I can chase hundred of thousands or millions of dollars? You didn't talk to an actual salesperson, you spoke to a BDR. A BDR quantifies leads and determines if your spend is worth the time. If you didn't get a call back it's because the BDR identified you as small time. I'm not trying to be rude, just pointing out how many sales teams tend to work.

hapidjus 4y ago
BDR?
- CallMeJim 4y ago
  Business Development Representative.
  - tobyjsullivan 4y ago
    Impressively, the expansion conveys about as much information as the acronym. "Gatekeeper" is a more accurate translation.
    - notahacker 4y ago
      In most companies it's more accurately translated as "lead generator" or "sender of spam emails and LinkedIn messages"
UncleEntity 4y ago
> Why would I chase 10 of thousands of dollars a year when I can chase hundred of thousands or millions of dollars? They have someone on the hook with customers hounding them to get their system back online and it isn’t worth spending a few minutes to quote a guaranteed sale? Something about a bird in the hand comes to mind…
luckylion 4y ago
Why wouldn't you do both? And if your sales department is maxed out by chasing the big contracts so much so that they don't have time to onboard someone spending 50k a year, get more sales people.