After announcing a sales force reorganisation last quarter, Palo Alto Networks said it is “on track” with the changes and starting to see improvement.
CEO Mark McLaughlin said on the company’s third quarter earnings call that the company was making solid progress in these efforts and is on track with its project plans.
“While we have much more to do and it will take time to realize changes, early feedback from customers, partners and our sales team has been good,” he said.
Palo Alto Networks had a disappointing performance in the second quarter and announced it had changed its sales strategy and reorganised its account coverage model.
The company also said it was making changes to its sales and marketing resources and updating its second half revenue expectations.
CFO Steffan Tomlinson said the company’s third quarter numbers showed “early positive indicators of the changes in the go to market strategy”. Palo Alto Networks reported sales for the quarter, which ended April 30, of $431.8 million, up 25 percent year-over-year. Of those sales, $164.2 million were product sales and $267.6 million were subscription and support.
Palo Alto Networks reported a net loss in the quarter of $60.9 million, compared to a loss of $64.1 million in the same quarter last year.
McLaughlin said Palo Alto Networks still has some work to do on its sales strategy and was taking a four-step approach to updating its sales strategy.
It was designing what needs to be done differently, communicating those changes, re-do account mapping strategies, putting the right people in the right places to run those accounts, and then executing on that strategy. He said the company has finished the design, communication, and account mapping over the past quarter and now will look to finish making sure the right people are in place and executing on the strategy in the quarters to come.
“We will be continuing that through the fourth quarter for us and hopefully you will see positive impacts for that through fiscal 2018,” McLaughlin said.
