What is the sales culture like at Darktrace, and how does it contribute to the overall success of the team?

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Accepted Answer

Not great.  You're just a number, and if you can't hit your numbers in your first 4 months (which are aggressive mind you) then you are looking at a PIP.  You'll have roughly 200 named new logo accounts to prospect into, but of that, probably 100 are actually workable.  Those that aren't workable include customers that outsource their IT and security, run through a parent company, or upright won't take your calls.  I've been told "We don't take calls from Darktrace" by a receptionist.

There are favorites at each and every office.  They'll get preferential treatment over newer reps.  You have to get in early with a sales manager and get them to like you as fast as possible to even have a shot.

The sales motion is a mess, we're trying to go to a channel partner focus, but Darktrace burned a LOT of those bridges in the past and we're currently trying to rebuild it.  It's going to take a massive amount of time before that happens.

It is very much a high pressure, process and you will be expected to do more work outbounding than your BDR/ISR and be treated like one, even though you're an AE.

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It is horrible. Just awful and there is no "success of the team"

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To define it - High Pressure & Unrealistic expectations.

All the work is put on the Sales rep - no sales ops team, all prospecting (this includes end users and with partners), running deals, CRM work, forecast calls, etc.

For example - our VP is expecting us to get 1/2 our deals through the channel, but its on the individual sales rep to break into that partner. If that partner starts to refer deals and if you do not have that account... it's not yours.

Directors schedule mandatory call blitzes 3-4x a week. Salesloft is a metric tracker not a sales productivity tool. Most of the directors were promoted internally, very rarely give insights and just ask questions that their VP has asked them. Pretty classic for any SaaS org.

If you do come to DT - Get a good partner that refers you into deals or else you are not going to find success. Be a shark and fight for everything. There is minimal team culture.

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Im honestly not sure how this company has a 73 rating...realistically should be tanking into the 60s and 50s. I suppose they are asking current reps to jump on and leave more positive reviews to boost scores.

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Sales culture in two words: HIGH PRESSURE. Forcing you to churn out two new logo proof of concepts each month (which in fact is not as easy as it appears because the cold calling market in cybersecurity is incredibly saturated, and there is not enough time in your day with responsibilities as an AE to get people on the phone to fill your own pipeline. Inside sales does not book enough meetings (there have been several weeks and months where AE's would make more dials and book more meetings than the inside sales reps supporting them). There is not enough help from partners or logo recognition in the US to gain you instant consideration or inbound opportunities. And depends on your named account list which was recently rolled out. There have been investments in Salesloft, upgraded to Workday, and Salesforce coming in the future, which in my opinion will cause a TON of salesops problems. When the move was made to named accounts, the data scrubbing and research reorging was pushed to the individual AE's (on top of our normal stressful days) the Sales ops team quit because of the workload.

In turn you and your director (depending on their Darktrace experience, it has been traditionally easier to close a deal when there is a Darktrace fluent Director or VP assisting with the deal) pass unnecessary pressure on the prospect to have deals close, take meetings, and harass them with cold calls to satisfy metrics), and if you don't, the only other thing to save you is to close revenue (and that is mostly upsells) which is few and far between because the product is insanely expensive and eats up security budget, which opens up timeline objections and product overlap contractual obligations every time, unless they had initiative and budget to start.

Name of the game is what have you done for me lately...with upper management being nothing more than a glorified mix of frat house Americans and aristocratic Brits who take the attitude of 'this is how we have always done it, so why cant you' and the metrics sources they use to determine what have you done for me lately is HIGHLY unreliable due to a homegrown CRM.

WARNING: if you join this company, you are doing so at your own risk. Being successful here is pure LUCK. I do not recommend anyone to join here if you value your mental health, would rather not deal with unnecessary stress, and if you are new to sales it will RUIN what your idea of what tech sales is supposed to be like. Other than that, go for it!

I will say that there has been an ongoing push to overhaul and make better what I have just described, but I'm hearing through the grapevine that even that initiative could be imploding due to the poor organizational foundations.

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fast, 30 days to sell it. But its rewarding and fun, the people are great.

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culture varies from team to team so I can only speak on the behalf of mine. It’s a very collaborative and supportive team environment. There’s no famine mentality here there’s infinite amounts of success for each rep, and that leads to a really awesome culture. It wasn’t always like this tho.

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Darktrace

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Anonymous Q&A

What is the sales culture like at Darktrace, and how does it contribute to the overall success of the team?