Account Executive

Overview

You sell BlinkOps' agentic security automation platform to enterprise security teams. Your buyers are SOC managers, security engineers, and CISOs who are drowning in alerts and looking to automate repetitive security workflows. You're explaining how micro-agents can replace manual playbook execution while competing against legacy SOAR tools (Splunk, Palo Alto) and newer AI security startups.

Role Snapshot

Company Context

Stage: Series A/B estimated (119 employees, attending RSA with booth)

Size: 119 employees

Growth: Actively hiring across multiple roles, investing in field presence (RSA booth)

Market Position: Challenger in crowded security automation space - competing against established SOAR vendors and AI-native startups. "Agentic" positioning suggests newer AI-focused angle vs legacy workflow automation.

GTM Reality

Pipeline Sources:

• 30% Inbound - RSA/conference leads, website demo requests, security community referrals (sporadic quality - lots of tire-kickers)
• 50% Outbound - cold outreach to SOC/security teams at F1000, targeted account campaigns
• 20% Partners/Referrals - security consulting firms, MSSP partnerships

SDR/AE Structure: Likely self-sourcing with some SDR support (small team size suggests limited SDR coverage)

SE Support: Shared SE pool - you'll need to be technical enough to do first demos yourself, bring SE for deep dives and POCs

Competitive Landscape

Main Competitors: Splunk SOAR, Palo Alto Cortex XSOAR, Tines, Torq, legacy security orchestration players

How They Differentiate: "Agentic" AI-driven automation vs traditional playbook/workflow tools. 30K+ integrations is table stakes now. Emphasis on AI reasoning + code reliability.

Common Objections: "We already have a SOAR tool we're not fully using", "How is this different from what Splunk does?", "Our team doesn't have bandwidth for another platform implementation", "Prove the ROI on automation - we need to see time saved"

Win Themes: Speed of deployment vs legacy tools, AI-native vs bolted-on automation, doesn't require security team to write code

What You'll Actually Do

Time Breakdown

Prospecting (35%) | Active Deals (40%) | Internal/Admin (25%)

Key Activities

• Outbound to security teams: You're researching companies with large SOC teams (200+ security alerts/day), finding the right contacts (SOC Manager, Director of Security Operations), and cold emailing/calling. Most won't respond. You need 40-50 conversations to get 2-3 qualified meetings.
• First calls and discovery: You spend 30-45 minutes understanding their current security workflow, what's manual vs automated, which tools they use, where analysts waste time. You're qualifying budget ($100K+ security spend), timeline (this year or next), and whether they actually have executive buy-in to change tools.
• Technical demos and POC management: You demo the platform (basic workflow automation examples), then coordinate a 2-4 week POC where they test it on real use cases. You're chasing them for feedback, troubleshooting integration issues with your SE, and dealing with their IT security review that stalls everything.
• Multi-threading and deal progression: Security deals need 4-6 stakeholders (SOC manager who loves it, CISO who controls budget, IT who worries about another vendor, procurement who wants 20% off). You're doing separate calls with each, sending custom ROI analysis, and waiting weeks between meetings because everyone's calendar is packed.

The Honest Reality

What's Hard

• Security teams are burned out and skeptical of "another tool" - many have SOAR platforms collecting dust. You'll hear "we already tried automation and our team didn't adopt it" constantly.
• Long, technical sales cycles with multiple security reviews, POCs that extend because the team is too busy responding to incidents to test your product, and budget that disappears if there's a breach or leadership change.
• You're selling against entrenched vendors (Splunk, Palo Alto) with existing relationships and proving ROI on automation is subjective - "we saved 20 analyst hours/week" is hard to quantify in dollars that finance believes.
• At 119 people, you won't have tons of support - limited marketing content, case studies still being built, SE coverage stretched thin during POC season.

What Success Looks Like

• Close 8-12 deals per year at $80K-200K ACV
• Build a pipeline of 15-20 active opportunities (assuming 30-40% close rate after POC)
• Get 3-4 champion referrals per quarter from happy customers who'll talk to prospects

Who You're Selling To

Primary Buyers:

• SOC Manager / Director of Security Operations (day-to-day user, your champion)
• CISO / VP of Security (budget holder, cares about risk reduction and team efficiency)
• Security Engineer / Architect (technical evaluator, will stress-test integrations)

What They Care About:

• Mean time to respond (MTTR) to security incidents - can your platform shave hours off their response?
• Analyst burnout and retention - are you reducing manual toil so their team doesn't quit?
• Integration with existing stack (SIEM, EDR, ticketing, cloud providers) - does it actually work with their 40+ security tools?
• Proof it works - they want a POC on real use cases, references from similar companies, evidence of time saved

Requirements

• 3+ years selling B2B SaaS to enterprise, ideally security, IT ops, or dev tools
• Experience with technical, multi-stakeholder deals (security, IT, procurement, legal)
• Comfortable with 4-6 month sales cycles and managing 10-15 concurrent deals
• Able to do technical discovery and basic product demos (understand APIs, integrations, security concepts)
• Self-starter who can build pipeline through outbound when inbound slows down
• Based in or willing to relocate to Florida (likely for territory coverage or proximity to team)