Learn about our Account Executive openings in Austin, TX

Awesome. Well, thank you everybody from joining all over the world to another episode of Cloudflare's Recruiting Corner. I am your host, Todd Ciampa, normally based in Austin, Texas, but spending the month of July in Denver as we go through this paradigm shift in terms of how we work. And I'm thrilled to be joining with two of my co-workers also in the Austin office, Tracye Shaw and Jodie Holland. And so today we are going to talk to you a little bit about the mid-market account executive team and what it's like to work here, the type of things that we work on, the impact we have across the globe, and what kind of competencies and behaviors we look for in the type of talent that are successful on our team. So before we dive into all of that, I'd love to let each of my co-workers introduce themselves. So let's start off with Tracye, tell us a little bit about yourself, how long you've been at Cloudflare and what your role is. Yeah, obviously my name is Tracye, I'm the Austin sales leader slash GM, and what that means is I manage sales teams and I also am responsible for aligning sales teams that are housed in Austin. I've been at Cloudflare almost 10 months and it's been pretty good so far, I really like it. Prior to that I was in a variety of roles, everything from HomeAway slash Expedia to Apple and Dell, and I've got, I've worked in startups and I've worked in really established companies and this is a really, really neat job for me because it allows me to work in a scale-up space, which is the sweet spot for me. That's awesome. Jodi, how about yourself? Hi, yes, my name is Jodi Holland, I've been with Cloudflare just over two years. I started in June 2019, started off as an account executive, so what we're going to be discussing today, I'm very familiar with the role. Towards the end of 2020, I moved into a team lead role and then since the beginning of this year, I transitioned into one of the sales managers on the mid -market team. So, really excited to be here to talk about the role and since I have very hands-on experience, happy to discuss. That's awesome and I always love hearing from our co-workers that started off in an individual contributor role and moved themselves up the ranks into management, so that's awesome to see. Jodi, for those people who might be joining who aren't familiar with Cloudflare, what does Cloudflare do? Yeah, so I would say in the simplest terms, we are focused at Cloudflare on accelerating and protecting applications, networking and infrastructure and teams. So, we have quite a few solutions under those kind of three buckets that we're really excited about. We're kind of innovators at heart, we're growing out our Zero Trust network access suite but in a nutshell, we're really focused on how we can help kind of build a better Internet as our tagline states and I think one of my colleagues, Russell, who's going to be popping in in just a moment is probably a good example of that. He's helping a customer as we speak and I'm sure we'll be able to pick his brain when he jumps on. That's awesome. You know, I think that's something that really resonated with me when I first heard about Cloudflare and started doing a little bit of research was the mission statement of helping to build a better Internet. Tracy, what does that mean to you? Well, it means a lot of different things because there's a lot of layers in there. First, you know, as Jodi talked about, we are a technology company and part of making the Internet better is making the technology surrounding it work better. So, we, you know, we sit out on the periphery outside of networks to protect against what might enter your network and along with that, we see a ton of traffic and so one of the things we do is we sniff out people who may be child trafficking or any kind of sex trafficking or drugs or anything that's kind of underground and we make sure that that gets to the right authorities, right? That makes a better Internet. We are responsible for moving data across all sorts of networks globally and we make sure that it gets there quickly. We make sure that it's accurate and we make sure that the right people receive it at the right time. So, you know, being a better Internet can really run the gamut. It can be a technology-driven type of improvement or it can literally be let's make our world better by getting rid of people and things that are hurting our children or women or any other kind of person out there. Awesome and I think, you know, one of the things that I noticed too is just the amount of traffic that does go through the Internet and the number of cyber attacks that we block on a daily basis and correct me if I'm wrong but if memory serves in Q2, we were blocking 72 billion cyber attacks on a daily basis. Yeah, yeah. We see more traffic than anybody out there and one of the ways that we protect our customers is we can protect them from a DDoS attack, bots that are attacking their website and for those of you who are not familiar with those terms, those are a denial of service attack. It's basically sending a ton of requests to a website to the point where it basically kind of shuts down and can't operate for the customers that it should operate for. Those are the typical things that we protect against. We also, you know, are responsible for encryption. We also have products that Jodi mentioned that are called Zero Trust products and we make sure that the right people have the right access to data. So, for compliance reasons, you might not want everybody to see specific information. You might have a regulation that requires that you shield information from certain parties. We ensure that you can actually apply those permissions to all those different customer sets. We also can help you prevent data from getting outside your org, you know, so if you're using access and gateway with us, we make sure that the right things get in and we make sure that the wrong things don't get out, if you want to think of it in a very simplistic way, but we see so much traffic that and we have so many customers on our self -serve product, which is, you know, anyone can go onto our site and use our products today without paying anything and then you can obviously upgrade, but part of making a better Internet is making it accessible to everybody, but what that also gives us is the ability to see trends and patterns before anyone else sees them and adjust our security measures to protect for that. So, that's why, you know, when Jodi mentions an innovation company, we're always taking the information that comes from the data that we see, the traffic that we see going across our network and we use it to innovate and be better at protecting your network. That's awesome. Jodi, you started here as one of the sellers two years ago. What attracted you to the opportunity at Cloudflare? Yeah, so I was actually familiar with Cloudflare. I worked at one of our resellers prior to coming on board, so I was familiar with some of kind of what we refer to as our core solutions, DDoS, CDN, web application firewall, so I was familiar with Cloudflare and when I saw the posting, it piqued my interest because I knew the company, but also I knew that I didn't, I wasn't aware that there was a presence in Austin at the time and after talking with one of the hiring managers, I learned about the role and that it was actually a very new sales team they were building out here. I was actually hire number three, so I was on the first sales team in Austin and it's kind of exciting to see us grow from there and what's ahead and the extended growth that we see through the year and beyond. So, I think what initially attracted me to it was being part of this core group and knowing the power of Cloudflare and how they sit in the market, so I think that really excited me to want to be a part of it and help it grow here in Austin. Awesome, and that's kind of a good segue in terms of when you joined and what things look like today. So, you were employee number three on the sales team in Austin a little over two years ago. Right. How many people are you managing just on your team today? On my team now, we actually have a team lead, a role that we established who's rolling up to me now. So, in total I have nine people rolling up to me now, but we're really in this mode of growth and team leads who could potentially move up to become leadership roles is a possibility. So, right now I have nine AEs, which I know it sounds like a lot, but I have the team lead who's helping at the moment and he's great. Okay, good. And then Tracy, in terms of the size of the team today and then what's driving the reason why we're here today in terms of how many folks you want to hire before the end of the year? Yeah, we're sitting at about 33 today and we need to exit the year around 55. And so, all of that is growth, new growth. We are going after different channels, different industries. We are expanding in Austin. This is going to be a major hub for sales and we need people to be a part of that. These are all growth positions. I anticipate that we will continue to grow like that next year. I don't see it slowing up anytime soon. So, it's literally to accommodate the growth projections that we see for the business throughout the next, say, 18 months. Awesome. Awesome. Jodi, the mid-market account executive team, what does it mean to be on the mid-market team? How does that play in the organization in terms of the kind of companies that we try to assist? Right. So, we are actually on the sales team. We're split into different segments with our field and mid-market. And mid-market encompasses S&B and mid -market. So, how we define that is any organization or business under 2,500 employees or less and less than a billion in revenue. That's what we define as what the mid-market space and what are the accounts that we can work and that we prospect into. Above that goes to our field team. So, yeah, we're really focused on quite a variety of really small, medium businesses, kind of true mid-market to upper mid-market who may be on the cusp of field accounts. Okay. Awesome. And then, typically, how many customers is an account executive responsible for? Yeah. We manage a book of business that maxes out at 150 accounts. Within that, of course, we're able to add and drop accounts at will. Really, we're looking for and we're prospecting into who would be a good fit for Cloudflare. Is their website mission critical to their business? How do we identify that? These are things that we talk through. We're really collaborative. And my team, we're in a group chat. We're talking about different prospects. We're feeding off each other and sharing ideas. So, the ideal customer for Cloudflare is someone that if their website is really crucial to their business, if that website was to go down, how would that impact that business? And that's where we help. Gotcha. And what would be the kind of examples of the titles of the people that our account executives are usually working with and trying to get in touch with? Yeah. It really ranges. We're talking with network engineers. We're talking with different people within the networking aspect, but we're also talking to C-level CTOs, head of infrastructure, CISOs. Primarily, the account executives are dealing with the C -level. We also partner with our business development representatives who we work in tandem with. So, sometimes the BDRs will focus on maybe that mid-level prospect and the account executives are focused on more the C-level and bridging that gap. And we work really in tandem really well. Gotcha. And Tracy, when you think about the team and maybe some of the behaviors or competencies that make for a successful account executive at Cloudflare, tell me a little bit more about that. Yeah. We are looking for a few key qualities. I would say top among them is learning agility, being able to pick up information and then use it and iterate on that. So, if I tell Jody, oh, today I saw that we can now have zone-based access in some of our products. Jody should be able to listen to that, pick that up, and then use it in a conversation. That's the type of learning agility that we're talking about. Or being able to read our Cloudflare blog and come away with the key points of that blog and explain it to the customer. We're looking for someone who's really self-disciplined and driven. So, someone who likes kind of the thrill of the hunt for acquisition. So, that means someone who doesn't mind picking up the phone or reaching out on LinkedIn or using outreach to find new people to talk to within a company. And really that sort of, what's the word I'm looking for? Persevering? Is that? Persistent. Persistent kind of personality that will just go after it until they get what they want. But we're also looking for smart. We're looking for kind. We're looking for collaborative, to Jody's point earlier. Those five things make for a really good employee. We don't necessarily have to have tech experience. Some of our top performers don't. They come from industries that have nothing to do with tech. But what you do need to have is drive, curiosity, that real kind of persistence that gets you into a door. And you've got to be willing to collaborate and share your knowledge. Because what we have found in Austin is that if one person wins, we all win. And if we're all winning, that one person wins. A rising tide races all boats. So we're really looking for smart, kind, collaborative, driven, persistent, and learning agile. And also just to add on that, I think when I started too, I didn't know. I knew the basics of Cloudflare. I didn't know the extent of the technology. And I'm by no means an engineer. So coming on board, I think another good quality to possess is just being resourceful. We have a lot of resources at our fingertips. The blog, developer docs, even just Googling or using so many tools that we have available. I think just thinking that maybe I don't understand what this means, but I know where I can find out. And I did that a lot in the beginning, really just searching through the developer docs, searching through the blog, just to have a good understanding. And then, of course, I would make feverish notes to make sure I had that in preparation for my calls. Makes sense. And I do imagine over time, as we really start getting closer to customers and conversations continue to evolve technically, what kind of support does Cloudflare provide its account executives in that regard? Yeah, that's a great question. We've actually been pouring a lot into our onboarding. Since the start of the year, we've expanded onboarding from being two weeks. The first week, which is like an all company onboarding. The second week is a sales specific training week. After that, they go into what we call the accelerator, which meets every day in the morning for about six weeks. And we really try to cover all of the topics that are going to be relevant to someone who's ramping at Cloudflare. And that has done exactly what we thought it would. It's starting to accelerate how quickly people get to their first opportunity and close it. Because we want, ultimately, everyone to be successful here. So, the training is important to us. We also have these sessions. I call them skill builders. But we do this with the team where we just get together and we work on improving a specific skill or a knowledge set that we all need to be successful. And then, more recently, we've started more sessions called the vault. And it's kind of a parody on the vault. What it means is we're opening the vault. And the vault being what's in everybody's head. We get everybody from Austin and San Francisco together on a call. And we get into breakout sessions. And we do real live role plays or examples of things that you're going to encounter as an AE. So, for example, today, we're diving into how do you prospect with customers using our self-serve products. There's a right way and a wrong way to do that. Not all of them want or need an upgrade. And we don't want to sell anything to someone who doesn't need it. So, we want to make sure all AEs are on the same page about it. So, yeah, training and development is a big focus for us. And I think that will continue to be part of our DNA. We work in a technology company that moves this quickly. You cannot afford not to invest in that kind of training and development. Awesome. Awesome. Anything you'd add, Jodi? Yeah, I'd actually add that the Skill Builder sessions I think are really fun because we make it a very interactive thing. We make it a game. Tracy's done a good job of making it seem like it's something that we're learning and it's part of the job. But it's also really kind of competitive and fun. And we do prizes and games. So, I really enjoy the Skill Builder. I think it's a fun thing we do, especially on a Friday. Yeah. Let's let Liz and learn something, but let's not be so tight about it. Yeah. Right on. So, it looks like Russell is probably dotting the I's and crossing the T's on his deal and probably won't be able to join us. But Jodi, maybe you can share a little bit about a day in the life of an account executive. Yeah, absolutely. So, I think we, as account executives, I think we work with different revenue streams. But the ultimate goal is that we are prospecting on this team. We are prospecting out to finding good fits for Cloudflare. And that can, like Tracy mentioned earlier, it could entail cold calling, LinkedIn, messaging, email, social, Twitter. We use quite a bit of different avenues to try to pique someone's interest, see if, you know, I think this person might be a good fit for Cloudflare. This is why I'm going to actually reach out to these different personas and see if there's interest in having a conversation. This is how I think we can help you. So, we, a day in the life is really a mixture of prospecting, finding, identifying new accounts. We also, of course, your existing account base, you're maybe having discovery calls with them to qualify them, to make sure that they're good fits for Cloudflare. And then we work with enterprise contracts. So, we're also qualifying budget. If maybe they're better suited for one of those self-serve plans, which is perfectly fine, then we would help them and guide them to go to the website and sign up for a self -serve plan. So, we do a little bit of balancing between existing accounts, prospecting into new accounts, and then, you know, working the sales cycle through demo with our solutions engineers, pricing, and close. So, within all of that, like I mentioned, we are very collaborative and we want to make sure that no one feels like they're alone in working and doing these things, especially in a remote environment that we're in. We definitely kind of do a team, a team sell. I encourage all my AEs to include me on their calls or our team lead so that we can kind of go at it together and use and brainstorm together. Yeah, you know, a good example of that is why Russell isn't here right now. Russell was supposed to join us today. He's one of the AEs and a customer called in under attack, meaning that they were under some sort of bot attack or DDoS attack of some sort. And he and another AE decided to go in on it together. Another manager just jumped on a call with both of them and the customer to make sure that everything was good because Jodi was going to be here. So, that is very indicative of like how we work. We don't want anyone to feel like they're going it alone and we also want to make sure that anyone who's been here a while and who has the knowledge that might be helpful to you is available to you regardless of what team you're on. That's awesome. One more question on this topic, then I want to kind of switch over and start talking a little bit about our interview process and how to get in touch with us. But Jodi, do you have a customer acquisition that you're particularly proud of? And if so, why? Yeah, it's a good question. It's probably leads into, I know we've talked about, you know, kind of the DDoS attacks and under attack situations that we are dealing with day in and day out because like I mentioned earlier, some of these are such mission critical to these businesses and we want to make sure that we help the customer. One of our recently closed opportunities was last quarter and it plays into that. It was a software company that provides website platform for car dealerships. So one of their clients who was a really, it was a high revenue client of this company. It was about a $13 million a year customer for them and their site had gone under a DDoS attack and it was crucial that they were able to protect that site. So the contact of this SaaS platform signed up for one of our self-service plans, just a credit card, put them behind Cloudflare immediately. And I was actually in contact with this customer and we started having a conversation about what was the thought about bringing that customer behind Cloudflare? What happened? How can we help? And then we uncovered that they have quite a few car dealerships that they need help with and everyone, all of their customers need this protection. So it turned into quite a lucrative deal that we closed and we were able to help them protect them with our web application firewall, DDoS protection. And it was really what made us stand ahead of maybe some of our competitors was our kind of customer first mentality. We really went above and beyond to help them and make sure their business was secure and everything was working well for them. And I think that goes into kind of the day-to -day of an accounting executive. We're really wanting to build that relationship, to build that trust and let them know that we are really wanting to build that partnership. That's important to us. We want to help you. And it really helped with this customer and we ended up closing a six-figure deal. Awesome. Tracy, anything you'd like to add? I think she's probably being modest. That particular customer was really struggling with a lot of different technology concerns and they also had competing interests kind of internally that they were able to navigate. But I think why that particular deal is so special is it really did take a team effort to get it across the line. And Jody was involved. There were AEs involved. I was involved. My counterparts in San Francisco were involved. And I think that's the takeaway from any opportunity you'd get here. We're going to celebrate it with you and we're going to make sure you have a cause to celebrate. So that's really the kind of culture we're trying to create in Austin. And I think we're making pretty good progress. I feel like our team is very cohesive and I don't think anyone would hesitate to like step in and help on something like that. So I do want that to be, for someone listening to this, I want that to be the takeaway. This really is a great group to join. That's awesome. And for those of you that are out there that are interested in opportunities, I think one of the unique things about Cloudflare and our recruiting process is the amount of involvement that our hiring managers do participate in at the top of the funnel. And I would say virtually for any position that you apply for, but very specifically in anything in field operations, which includes sales, your first point of contact, unless a recruiter contacts you directly from a passive outreach, would be with a hiring manager. And so Tracy and Jody are committed to anybody that's interested, reach out to them on LinkedIn, connect, tell them why you are and they'll get you into our process. And for Jody and Tracy, what are some other things that are unique about our interview process that you think is a little bit of a value proposition? I think one thing that is, I think sets us apart is aside from, you know, what you just mentioned, the hiring managers being involved, you're going to get to speak to the managers. You're also get to speak with a peer, also with an SC. And the reason for that is we want you to interview us as much as we interview you. We want you to feel comfortable accepting an offer from us and knowing that you're going into the right environment. So, you know, we give you an opportunity to ask a lot of questions. We deliberately expose you to different people within the org so that you can look for any kinks in our armor that you care to see. But it's really meant for it to be a conversation and for both parties to feel really comfortable when an offer comes across that they're heading into the right place and we've got the right person to join us. Awesome. And something I would add on to that as well is, and gosh, Tracy, you sound just like one of the recruiters on the team in terms of that pitch, but the data points, right? And not only from the direct people you'd work with or the cross -functional, but that includes executives. And so everybody who interviews at Cloudflare gets an opportunity to have a final 20-minute phone call with either one of our co-founders, our head of the people team, or our CTO, because we do feel it's important that you do get a chance to ask any kind of questions about the strategic vision from somebody at the top of the organization and also really kind of demonstrates the overall kind of flat philosophy that we all work together and there's not so much hierarchy. And then I think another thing that was very unique that I was really impressed with was being invited to one of the all-hands meetings before you actually even join, right? And getting an opportunity to see the culture, kind of how teammates get to share, how we share shout-outs globally. And so for me, that was just such a great touch to really know that Cloudflare is or isn't the right company for you. And so I think it's important to kind of wrap things around as we get to the two-minute section here again. So for everyone who's out there listening, we are hiring 20-plus account executives in our Austin office to finish this year. We want you to join us. Yes, we want you to join us. And so if you have prior sales experience, if you have an entrepreneurial mindset, if you have a connection to helping to build a better Internet, if you're persistent, resilient, adaptable, and feel like you want to make an impact in this space, we want to talk with you. And so before we do wrap up, I just want to see if Jodi and Tracy had any other kind of concluding statements. Just reach out to us if you have any questions. If you are on the fence and you're just not sure, reach out to us. We're more than happy to answer any questions that you might have, allay any concerns that you might have. There are a lot of you out here who will be a great fit for working in the tech space, even if you don't have experience in tech. Call us, email us, reach out. Yeah, I would just agree with that. And we have such a diverse group coming from different backgrounds, you know, technology experience, and we really welcome anyone who is interested to apply. Feel free to reach out to me on LinkedIn. I'm happy to answer any questions. But we hope that we will see more people coming on board and interested in joining this team. Awesome. Well, Jodi, Tracy, thank you so much for participating in an episode of The Recruiting Corner and look forward to continuing your great work.