The "Do More With Less" Era Is Breaking Cybersecurity Sales Teams. Here's What the Data Shows.

CrowdStrike cut 500 people and said AI would flatten the hiring curve. Palo Alto laid off hundreds of CyberArk employees the day after closing a $25 billion acquisition. Nearly 245,000 tech jobs were cut across the industry in 2025.

The cybersecurity sales profession is being squeezed from both sides: fewer people carrying bigger numbers in a market that has never been more complex to sell into. This article examines what "do more with less" actually looks like from the AE's chair, and why the efficiency gains companies are chasing won't come from where they think.

The Layoff and Restructuring Wave

The cybersecurity industry was not spared from the broader tech workforce correction of 2025-2026.

CrowdStrike cut approximately 500 employees (5% of its workforce) in May 2025. CEO George Kurtz cited AI as a factor, writing that "AI flattens our hiring curve and helps us innovate from idea to product faster. It streamlines go-to-market, improves customer outcomes, and drives efficiencies across both the front and back office." The company reaffirmed its revenue guidance and said it would continue hiring in "key strategic areas," but the net effect was a smaller workforce expected to drive the company to $10 billion in ARR (CrowdStrike SEC filing, May 2025; CNBC).

Palo Alto Networks laid off hundreds of CyberArk employees the day after completing its $25 billion acquisition in February 2026. Over 10% of CyberArk's approximately 4,000 employees were affected, primarily in roles where overlap existed between the two organizations. CEO Nikesh Arora had previously stated the integration "shouldn't affect most of the organization," but the cuts came quickly (CTech; SDxCentral). Separately, Glassdoor reviews from Palo Alto sales professionals describe quotas increasing 40% or more year over year, with strategic district turnover exceeding 50% annually.

SentinelOne cut approximately 105 employees (5% of its workforce) in June 2023 after revenue fell short of expectations due to declining data consumption on products with consumption-based pricing. The company implemented a hiring freeze alongside the cuts (Bank Info Security).

These are three of the most prominent names in cybersecurity. Their products are strong, their markets are growing, and their AEs are being asked to do more with less.

The Quota Attainment Crisis

The performance data tells the same story from a different angle.

Salesforce's 6th State of Sales report found that 67% of sales reps don't expect to meet quota, and 84% missed it the year before (Salesforce, 2024). SPOTIO's 2026 compilation of sales statistics reports that only 25% of B2B sales reps hit quota in 2024 (SPOTIO).

In cybersecurity specifically, the numbers are worse. RepVue's Q2 2024 Cloud Sales Index reported cybersecurity vendors at 36.5% quota attainment, the lowest of any sector tracked since the index began in Q1 2022 (RepVue Cloud Index Q2 2024). Individual company data as of early April 2026 shows CrowdStrike at 41%, Varonis at 38%, and Armis at 27% (RepVue).

These numbers reflect a profession where the majority of AEs are missing their number, and the companies they work for are simultaneously reducing headcount.

What "Do More With Less" Actually Looks Like

The phrase "do more with less" appears in nearly every CRO's vocabulary in 2026. On earnings calls and at sales kickoffs, it sounds strategic. On the ground, it translates into a set of very specific realities for individual AEs.

Territories expand without additional support. When a rep leaves and the position isn't backfilled, the territory gets absorbed by whoever is closest. A rep covering Florida now covers the entire Southeast. The quota for the expanded territory isn't reduced proportionally; it's often increased based on the company's overall growth targets.

Product portfolios grow faster than enablement. The $96 billion M&A wave of 2025 means many cybersecurity companies have significantly expanded their product offerings through acquisition. A CrowdStrike AE who sold endpoint security two years ago now needs fluency in endpoint, identity, cloud security, and AI-driven threat detection. A Palo Alto AE now needs to speak to CyberArk's identity security portfolio in addition to the existing network and cloud security stack. The enablement budget to train AEs on these expanded portfolios rarely matches the pace of the expansion.

Competitive landscapes multiply. Vendor consolidation means the AE faces different competitors in different deals depending on which part of the portfolio the prospect is evaluating. The battlecard that covers CrowdStrike vs. SentinelOne on endpoint doesn't help when the conversation shifts to identity, where the competitors are CyberArk, SailPoint, and Microsoft Entra.

The time available for actual selling shrinks. Salesforce's State of Sales data consistently shows reps spending only 28-30% of their time on selling activities. The remaining 70% goes to administrative tasks, CRM updates, internal meetings, and prospect research (Salesforce State of Sales, 2024). Forrester's activity study found that the average rep spends nearly two full days per week on administrative tasks alone. When headcount shrinks, the non-selling burden doesn't decrease; it often increases as remaining reps absorb additional accounts, forecasting responsibilities, and internal coordination.

Why the Efficiency Gains Aren't Coming From Where Companies Think

The standard playbook for "do more with less" relies on three assumptions, all of which break down in cybersecurity enterprise sales.

Assumption 1: AI will make individual reps more productive. This is partially true but widely misapplied. George Kurtz's claim that "AI flattens our hiring curve" reflects a real trend, but the productivity gains from AI in 2025-2026 are concentrated in areas like email drafting, data entry, and CRM automation, not in the high-stakes moments that actually determine deal outcomes. AI can write a prospecting email. It cannot navigate a live conversation with a CISO who just asked about your FedRAMP authorization timeline while a competitor's name is on the table.

Gartner found that sellers who effectively partner with AI are 3.7x more likely to meet quota. But "effectively partner with AI" is doing a lot of work in that sentence. The gap between using AI to draft emails and using AI to access domain-specific intelligence in real time on a live call is enormous.

Assumption 2: Bigger territories mean more pipeline. In theory, a larger territory gives the rep more accounts to work. In practice, enterprise cybersecurity sales cycles run 9 to 12 months with buying groups of 6 to 10 stakeholders. A rep cannot run more deals simultaneously by covering more geography. The constraint is deal complexity, not addressable market. Doubling the territory doubles the travel and account management burden without proportionally increasing the number of deals a rep can actively manage.

Assumption 3: The same enablement supports more reps doing more. When headcount shrinks but the product portfolio expands, the enablement gap widens by definition. The rep needs to know more, across more product categories, competitive landscapes, and compliance frameworks, while the resources available to support that knowledge acquisition stay flat or decrease. Training decks from the last SKO become stale within a quarter as compliance frameworks update, competitors ship new features, and acquisition integrations change the product story.

What Actually Drives Efficiency in Complex Sales

The reps who are hitting quota in this environment have solved the efficiency problem, but not by working more hours or covering more accounts. They have built personal systems for accessing and applying knowledge in the moment it matters.

These systems look different for each rep, but the pattern is consistent: they have organized competitive intelligence in a way they can access quickly, they have practiced reframes for common objections until they are instinctive, they have mental models for navigating complex buying groups, and they know how to go deeper in discovery than the typical AE.

These are not superhuman abilities. They are learned skills supported by personal knowledge management systems. The problem is that they are non-transferable. When a top performer leaves, their system leaves with them. When a company hires a new rep, that rep starts from scratch building their own system over months or years.

The real efficiency opportunity in cybersecurity sales is not in asking fewer people to carry bigger numbers. It is in making the knowledge and skills of top performers accessible to every rep, in real time, on every call. That is where the leverage exists.

The companies that figure this out will see it in their quota attainment numbers. The companies that keep shrinking headcount and raising quotas will keep watching their best reps leave and their attainment numbers decline.

The math doesn't change just because you ask one person to carry what two people used to carry. What changes is how fast they burn out.

References

1. CrowdStrike. SEC 8-K filing, May 2025. 500-employee reduction (5% of workforce). Bank Info Security
2. CrowdStrike CEO George Kurtz. Employee memo, May 2025. "AI flattens our hiring curve." CNBC
3. Palo Alto Networks / CyberArk. Post-acquisition layoffs, February 2026. CTech
4. Palo Alto Networks / CyberArk. Post-acquisition layoffs coverage. SDxCentral
5. SentinelOne. 5% workforce reduction, June 2023. Bank Info Security
6. Salesforce. "State of Sales," 6th Edition, 2024. 67% of reps don't expect to meet quota; 84% missed the prior year. Salesforce
7. SPOTIO. "140+ Sales Statistics, 2026 Update." Only 25% of B2B reps hit quota in 2024. SPOTIO
8. RepVue. Cloud Sales Index Q2 2024. Cybersecurity at 36.5% quota attainment. RepVue
9. RepVue. Company ratings. CrowdStrike 41%, Varonis 38%, Armis 27%. Accessed April 2026. RepVue
10. InformationWeek. "2026 Tech Company Layoffs." Nearly 245,000 tech jobs cut in 2025. InformationWeek
11. Momentum Cyber / Return on Security. $96 billion in cybersecurity M&A across 400 transactions in 2025. Tech Insider
12. Salesforce. State of Sales, 2024. Reps spend 28-30% of time on selling activities. Salesforce
13. Gartner. Sellers who effectively partner with AI are 3.7x more likely to meet quota. Gartner
14. Glassdoor. Palo Alto Networks employee reviews. Quota increases of 40%+ YoY, strategic district turnover exceeding 50%. Glassdoor

*Written by Jonathan, founder of KillChain Sales. Ten years across software engineering, cybersecurity, and cybersecurity sales. If you're a cybersecurity sales leader watching quota attainment decline while your team carries bigger numbers with fewer people, join the waitlist or connect on LinkedIn.*