Latest / Cyber Go-To-Market Talk: The Cybersecurity Podcast About Cyber Sales, Marketing & Revenue Growth / What's working in cybersecurity sales in 1H 2024 with Patrick Sheehan, Founder and CRO at RevelUp Partners

Transcript

What's working in cybersecurity sales in 1H 2024 with Patrick Sheehan, Founder and CRO at RevelUp Partners · Cyber Go-To-Market Talk: The Cybersecurity Podcast About Cyber Sales, Marketing & Revenue Growth

• 0:32
  SPEAKER_00: The need for effective qualification, customer-centric messaging, and what we can expect from and do with SDRs in 2024.
• 0:42
  SPEAKER_00: Just three of the topics I chatted about with Patrick Sheehan, a multiple-time passionate sales leader at Cybersecurity Companies.
• 0:50
  SPEAKER_00: Don't go away.
• 1:16
  SPEAKER_00: Patrick, welcome to the podcast.
• 1:18
  SPEAKER_01: Thanks for having me.
• 1:18
  SPEAKER_01: Delighted to be here, Andrew.
• 1:19
  SPEAKER_01: Thank you.
• 1:20
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I'm looking forward to our conversation, Patrick.
• 1:22
  SPEAKER_00: You are a longtime sales leader.
• 1:25
  SPEAKER_00: You start off, I go back in your LinkedIn, you're at one time on the partner side at companies I recognize, such as uh Fishnet and then Optiv.
• 1:33
  SPEAKER_00: And then on the vendor side as well, you've been a full-time CRO and also as a fractional.
• 1:38
  SPEAKER_00: So I think this gives you a kind of wide view into different things going on as you're leading sales teams at different companies.
• 1:45
  SPEAKER_00: And now after trying before you buy, uh you're the used to be the fractional CRO for Network Decode, but now you're the full-time sales leader at Network Decode.
• 1:55
  SPEAKER_00: So I think you've got a great perspective on what's happening in our world right now and what it means as a CRO.
• 2:02
  SPEAKER_00: And in fact, uh you posted on LinkedIn reasonably recently, actually just a couple of weeks ago, uh, something that was titled CRO Lessons from Q1 2024.
• 2:12
  SPEAKER_00: And that's what we're gonna talk about today.
• 2:14
  SPEAKER_00: So I'm looking forward to our discussion about all that stuff, Patrick.
• 2:17
  SPEAKER_00: All right, well, stay tuned for later in this episode when we get to Patrick's personal questions, and he's gonna reveal how he used Razorblades to help him make money and how he had to do the walk of shame through the office after a Vegas trip.
• 2:31
  SPEAKER_00: So more for that coming later on.
• 2:33
  SPEAKER_00: But now let's get into the business end of this, Patrick.
• 2:35
  SPEAKER_00: So, as I said, you know, you did this post in LinkedIn.
• 2:38
  SPEAKER_00: There's a few things in there about what's working in in Q1 2024 for a CRO.
• 2:44
  SPEAKER_00: I want to pick up on two or three of the things, the topics that you mentioned.
• 2:47
  SPEAKER_00: So let me read out uh what you said, and then we can have a discussion.
• 2:50
  SPEAKER_00: So, number one that I want to talk about is around pipeline management.
• 2:54
  SPEAKER_00: And you said consistent sales hygiene and proper deal qualification are mandatory to provide an accurate health of the business to refine strategies and resource allocations to meet 24 goals.
• 3:08
  SPEAKER_00: Now, of course, the idea of you know good deal qualification being important is not new.
• 3:13
  SPEAKER_00: Are you seeing this especially important right now, given the buying environment we've been in for the last year or so?
• 3:19
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I think it's always been important from the very even the early 2000s when I started my sales career at Cisco was kind of uh in my DNA, so to speak, or at least my muscle memory having it been repeated over time.
• 3:30
  SPEAKER_01: But I think now, now more than ever, being in a CRO role where you have full go-to-market responsibility, the pipeline management and really understanding where we are, right?
• 3:40
  SPEAKER_01: Understanding that scoreboard informs the strategy.
• 3:43
  SPEAKER_01: So I don't think it's anything new.
• 3:45
  SPEAKER_01: And my post was really to reiterate the fundamental importance of these types of behaviors that have been around forever.
• 3:52
  SPEAKER_01: But to your point, I do think now more than ever, as we look at marshalling resources to either identify gaps in pipeline or to be spending time with the right customers, it's even more important.
• 4:04
  SPEAKER_00: So, where do you see people going wrong with this?
• 4:07
  SPEAKER_01: One of the biggest factors is commit to your goal, right?
• 4:11
  SPEAKER_01: I I I re hearken back to a manager who I learned more from of what not to do, frankly, than I learned what to do.
• 4:18
  SPEAKER_01: And he would always say, you need to commit to your target.
• 4:20
  SPEAKER_01: Aren't you gonna hit your target?
• 4:21
  SPEAKER_01: And I was like, Well, I'm at 70% of my target, but I'm coming to you early in the year.
• 4:26
  SPEAKER_01: I have a 30% gap.
• 4:28
  SPEAKER_01: So I need to identify how I can go bridge that gap for the right pipeline coverage in order for me to be successful here.
• 4:35
  SPEAKER_01: And I think what we find is it's a cascading effect.
• 4:38
  SPEAKER_01: No one wants to have a difficult conversation about underperformance.
• 4:42
  SPEAKER_01: So what I see is there's a lot of fluff that remains in the CRM and in the pipeline that should be qualified out.
• 4:49
  SPEAKER_01: And that that's really predicated on not wanting to have that difficult conversation about performance.
• 4:55
  SPEAKER_01: It falls back to sales leaders, in my opinion, where sales reps or anybody for that matter, respect what you inspect.
• 5:03
  SPEAKER_01: So if you're not really inspecting deals and really not looking for a high qualification, you just got things that are fluffing your numbers.
• 5:10
  SPEAKER_01: You don't really understand the reality of where you are.
• 5:13
  SPEAKER_01: And I think that ultimately detriments your strategy and it's something that you're gonna have to address later in the year.
• 5:20
  SPEAKER_01: So for me, I'd rather know the score at all times.
• 5:24
  SPEAKER_01: That way I know how to run the right offense.
• 5:26
  SPEAKER_01: Am I up by 10 and I can play prevent defense, right?
• 5:30
  SPEAKER_01: That analogy, or am I down 10 and I need a full court press?
• 5:33
  SPEAKER_01: There's a difference.
• 5:34
  SPEAKER_01: And as the CRO, if you don't or a sale any sales leader, if you really don't know what's going on, you don't really know what strategy to uh to execute on.
• 5:44
  SPEAKER_00: You know, it's interesting.
• 5:45
  SPEAKER_00: As you were talking there, one of the things that came to my mind was how important it is for the sales leader to create a culture of it being okay to talk about gaps.
• 5:54
  SPEAKER_00: You know, I've definitely worked in places where people didn't want to know, right?
• 5:57
  SPEAKER_00: They just said, you gotta do your number or else, and you know, you're sitting there as maybe a junior rep and you're going, well, I can see 50%, but I've got a huge gap here, and you you feel you can't bring it up.
• 6:07
  SPEAKER_00: You can't go and ask for help because that's the last thing you feel like you'll want to do.
• 6:11
  SPEAKER_00: Where, you know, if I'm in your shoes as a CRO, I want to understand where things lie so we can actually do something about it if we cut a gap and go and allocate resources or do something different.
• 6:21
  SPEAKER_01: 100%.
• 6:21
  SPEAKER_01: There was this notion of in my early days at Cisco, which is don't lose alone.
• 6:26
  SPEAKER_01: And and for me, I never wanted to lose anyways.
• 6:28
  SPEAKER_01: So I we've kind of shifted that culture here.
• 6:31
  SPEAKER_01: We're trying to do that, and I think we're doing a good job of it.
• 6:33
  SPEAKER_01: Win together, right?
• 6:34
  SPEAKER_01: It's okay.
• 6:35
  SPEAKER_01: You need help.
• 6:36
  SPEAKER_01: Everybody needs help.
• 6:37
  SPEAKER_01: But at the end of the day, if you don't ask for it, if you don't marshal the resources, this is an enterprise sale where we are now too, with very large customers and there's multiple stakeholders on their side.
• 6:47
  SPEAKER_01: So we're trying to create this culture of winning together.
• 6:49
  SPEAKER_01: And it starts really with pipeline hygiene, knowing where we are.
• 6:53
  SPEAKER_01: And then the other piece is just qualification.
• 6:55
  SPEAKER_01: I always talk about being selfish with your time because it's one of those resources that we can't get any back and you can't make more of.
• 7:02
  SPEAKER_01: So for me, it's like driving the narrative to the sales team of I want you to be really selfish with your time because it's important.
• 7:09
  SPEAKER_01: So there's this old adage of there's two winners in every deal, the first one to qualify out, and the one that gets the contract.
• 7:15
  SPEAKER_01: I I believe that.
• 7:16
  SPEAKER_01: If you're not going to win, it's not a fit, move on.
• 7:19
  SPEAKER_01: It's okay because your opportunity cost of time is too high.
• 7:22
  SPEAKER_00: And are you a medic, a med pick, or or something else advocate?
• 7:26
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, um, I believe it's it's case dependent on the organization.
• 7:30
  SPEAKER_01: I think I've been part of force management and Sandler and spin selling and value selling and different qualification metrics.
• 7:36
  SPEAKER_01: I I like them all.
• 7:38
  SPEAKER_01: It's for me, it's more about consistency of using them, right?
• 7:41
  SPEAKER_01: Pick one and just do it, right?
• 7:43
  SPEAKER_01: Whether that's medic or medpic or bant, right, whatever the qualification metrics are.
• 7:47
  SPEAKER_01: We we have a little hybrid of something.
• 7:49
  SPEAKER_01: We do a little bit some, we do a little different approach here so far, which is really more customer-centric type qualification, but we're rolling it out, we're using it, and it seems to be working.
• 8:00
  SPEAKER_00: Tell me more about customer-centric qualification uh methods.
• 8:04
  SPEAKER_01: Oh, good question.
• 8:05
  SPEAKER_01: Um, one of the challenges that I see in cybersecurity and really any tech sales is we've had such tremendous growth that we've hired people from other industries to bridge the gap.
• 8:16
  SPEAKER_01: That's great.
• 8:17
  SPEAKER_01: They come with different perspectives, diversity of thought, different skill sets.
• 8:20
  SPEAKER_01: Great.
• 8:21
  SPEAKER_01: But typically where I see it fall down is we give product training and sales enablement training.
• 8:25
  SPEAKER_01: And I know this is right up your alley, probably speak better than I do on this topic.
• 8:30
  SPEAKER_01: But when we're training sellers, it's mostly on the product functionality.
• 8:34
  SPEAKER_01: It does this, it does that, it bakes bread, it's AI.
• 8:37
  SPEAKER_01: That's not why someone's buying it.
• 8:39
  SPEAKER_01: But the challenge is the team's getting the training from the people who built it.
• 8:44
  SPEAKER_01: And they're so excited to tell you what they built, we're failing the sales leaders and the sales enablement team and ultimately the sales professionals to translate that into why something would why someone would buy it.
• 8:55
  SPEAKER_01: And so for me, I just see this systemic issue of people talking about speeds and feeds and features, not about client outcomes.
• 9:02
  SPEAKER_01: And I know that's a frivolous term, client outcomes, but it happens all the time.
• 9:06
  SPEAKER_01: So we're really taking a concerted effort to put ourselves in the lens of the customer and talking in terms that resonate to them versus the things that matter to us.
• 9:16
  SPEAKER_00: And this is in line with the second thing you said in your post, right?
• 9:19
  SPEAKER_00: Client-centric messaging.
• 9:21
  SPEAKER_00: Clients don't buy products, they solve business problems and achieve outcomes.
• 9:25
  SPEAKER_00: Look at your market message and ensure you're highlighting client outcomes, not features and functionality.
• 9:32
  SPEAKER_00: You know, I'm with you on this.
• 9:33
  SPEAKER_00: This is something that uh I think plagues tech in general, but especially cyber.
• 9:37
  SPEAKER_00: You go look at some websites and you know, you can see you know, their orientation.
• 9:41
  SPEAKER_00: And I understand it, right?
• 9:42
  SPEAKER_00: They're doing some cool stuff, they're building amazing products, but I I talk to people how product's a four-letter word um when it comes to sales.
• 9:49
  SPEAKER_00: It's like everything else in the company is all about product, but somehow the salesperson has to go out and translate that into, as you say, client-centric messaging.
• 9:57
  SPEAKER_00: And uh, you know, having a fit framework to do it is probably quite important as opposed to just having everyone guess on their own.
• 10:03
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, why don't you think that companies, even though intuitively when you remind them, they go, Oh, yeah, you're right.
• 10:09
  SPEAKER_00: Why do why do you think they still make this mistake?
• 10:12
  SPEAKER_01: I don't know.
• 10:12
  SPEAKER_01: I've been trying to trying to solve that hypothesis, uh test that hypothesis myself, solve the equation rather.
• 10:18
  SPEAKER_01: Uh I mean this with all due respect.
• 10:20
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, I love engineers.
• 10:21
  SPEAKER_01: I I am not technically orientated.
• 10:23
  SPEAKER_01: Uh I've started businesses and relied upon technologists to help me get there.
• 10:28
  SPEAKER_01: I just think it's in it's really for most engineers, it's zeros and ones and ones and zeros.
• 10:33
  SPEAKER_01: And so unfortunately, I think it goes back to the the gap between product management and sales sometimes is is that gap, right?
• 10:42
  SPEAKER_01: I and I think it's just systemic.
• 10:45
  SPEAKER_01: I think there's good change coming.
• 10:46
  SPEAKER_01: I think the ones that do figure it out win, right?
• 10:49
  SPEAKER_01: The ones that have a really clear value proposition that's customer centric tend to have more success because it resonates, right?
• 10:57
  SPEAKER_01: And it really facilitates something.
• 10:59
  SPEAKER_01: It's not the sales process.
• 11:00
  SPEAKER_01: You're enabling buying journey.
• 11:02
  SPEAKER_01: There's a difference there, right?
• 11:03
  SPEAKER_01: And so if you can tap into where that customer is from the buying journey and the challenges they're facing on from their perspective, I just feel like you have way more success resonating with that prospect who doesn't really know you or maybe knows read your website, but they're coming to you, you're coming to them.
• 11:21
  SPEAKER_01: And if you talk in their language, you're you're able to accelerate trust faster.
• 11:25
  SPEAKER_01: So I just think it's really comes back to we have a lot of engineering-centric organizations and founders, which are great.
• 11:30
  SPEAKER_01: I hope it continues, but it just comes down to at the go-to-market and product management level, just translating those really valuable features into more customer-centric, either challenge remediations or outcomes that they can drive.
• 11:45
  SPEAKER_01: And I and I think that's really what needs to happen.
• 11:47
  SPEAKER_00: And let's say there's a head of sales listening to this right now, and they're he's sitting there, he or she's sitting there going, God, that's the situation I'm in.
• 11:54
  SPEAKER_00: I'm at this company and uh I'm surrounded by all this, you know, me, us-centric stuff.
• 11:59
  SPEAKER_00: Any tips for that person how they would start making a change?
• 12:03
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 12:03
  SPEAKER_01: Go ask your customers why they bought it.
• 12:05
  SPEAKER_01: I I they're not buying it for the features, right?
• 12:07
  SPEAKER_01: I think that we oftentimes see that that this value realization phase, that information around derived value that happens at the customer level very infrequently gets back to the sales and marketing team.
• 12:20
  SPEAKER_01: But I think if there's the fastest way to do it is go ask your customers why they bought your product and what value have they derived from your solution.
• 12:29
  SPEAKER_01: And you'll know exactly what how you should be talking to the next customer and how your market message should shift to those outcomes.
• 12:35
  SPEAKER_00: I I love that.
• 12:36
  SPEAKER_00: It's interesting.
• 12:37
  SPEAKER_00: One of the things that I hear is um, well, you know, our prospects need to know what we do.
• 12:43
  SPEAKER_00: And I I get it, right?
• 12:45
  SPEAKER_00: They do at some level, but I think what people don't realize is there's this unsaid part of that question, which is they want to know what we do for them.
• 12:54
  SPEAKER_00: And it, you know, every time working with PMMs or PMs or like that, the the orientation has to be a for them at the end of all these statements or questions we're asking internally.
• 13:05
  SPEAKER_00: And uh, as you say, if you can if you can go get the evidence and have that ready to go and say, look, I talked to 15 customers and here's what they're telling us.
• 13:12
  SPEAKER_00: We need to figure out how we use this as part of our our go-to-market as opposed to all the stuff about ourselves.
• 13:17
  SPEAKER_00: It feels like that might be quite impactful, actually, in a lot of companies.
• 13:21
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, you learn a lot.
• 13:22
  SPEAKER_01: You learn a lot.
• 13:22
  SPEAKER_01: I I mean, with all due respect to sales and marketing professionals, I'm one of them.
• 13:26
  SPEAKER_01: Um in large organizations, depending upon where they they rank, some some leaders have haven't talked to customers in years, right?
• 13:34
  SPEAKER_01: They haven't carried a bag in years.
• 13:35
  SPEAKER_01: And and so while they're driving strategy, my my best ask is go talk to your customers, right?
• 13:41
  SPEAKER_01: Go talk to the people, the field, because that's where you really learn the insights of what's going on to help inform your strategy.
• 13:48
  SPEAKER_01: It's not a knock on people that get promoted and it's it's fantastic and it's uh it's great.
• 13:52
  SPEAKER_01: But I think you've got to have an ear to the ground.
• 13:55
  SPEAKER_01: You've got to really understand why your customers are buying and how they're deriving value from your customer to set the strategy at the top.
• 14:02
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, God, I think you're you're dead on with that.
• 14:07
  SPEAKER_00: Patrick, let's learn a little bit more about you.
• 14:10
  SPEAKER_00: Uh I've got my incredibly sophisticated random number generator here.
• 14:15
  SPEAKER_00: It's it's all based on AI.
• 14:17
  SPEAKER_00: Of course, it's next generation.
• 14:18
  SPEAKER_00: It's using advanced encryption to protect the algorithm that we created over many months to make sure that we get completely random questions from the generator.
• 14:27
  SPEAKER_00: So I'm gonna spin the wheel here, and then whatever it comes up with, we're gonna ask that question.
• 14:32
  SPEAKER_00: You ready to go?
• 14:33
  SPEAKER_01: Fire away.
• 14:39
  SPEAKER_00: All right, question number 17.
• 14:41
  SPEAKER_00: How did you make money as a kid?
• 14:43
  SPEAKER_00: Whew.
• 14:44
  SPEAKER_00: A lot of different ways.
• 14:46
  SPEAKER_01: There's one that sticks out in my mind.
• 14:47
  SPEAKER_01: I was about 10 years old, and I realized that at the time there were these number two pencils.
• 14:54
  SPEAKER_01: We all took standardized testings, and you had these number two pencils that were yellow.
• 14:58
  SPEAKER_01: And at the time, these wooden pencils without any paint on them were kind of in vogue.
• 15:03
  SPEAKER_01: And I realized pretty quickly that if I saved my lunch money, I could buy these yellow pencils at the school store.
• 15:11
  SPEAKER_01: And then what I would do is I would shave it off, literally just scrape off the yellow paint, sell them to my colleagues for a lot or my classmates for a lot more money.
• 15:19
  SPEAKER_01: So I'll never forget it.
• 15:20
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, I could call to the principal's office, my parents came in and they found razor blades in my desk.
• 15:25
  SPEAKER_01: And so that being kind of an interesting thing to find in a 10-year-old's desk, I remember being in the principal's office and my parents came in, they go, What's going on?
• 15:34
  SPEAKER_01: Is there something wrong?
• 15:35
  SPEAKER_01: And I'll never forget this day and my moment and moment in my life.
• 15:38
  SPEAKER_01: And my dad's like, What's going on?
• 15:40
  SPEAKER_01: Is there something you need to tell me about?
• 15:41
  SPEAKER_01: And I said, Yeah, there is that.
• 15:42
  SPEAKER_01: I'm really sorry.
• 15:43
  SPEAKER_01: And I showed him not only the pencil box full of shavings, but I showed him the other pencil box probably about 50 bucks.
• 15:51
  SPEAKER_01: And thinking that I was gonna get in trouble, he looked at me dead in the face and he said, If you had 50 bucks, why do you keep asking me for lunch money?
• 15:57
  SPEAKER_01: So I knew at that point I had the entrepreneurial uh spirit and never looked back.
• 16:03
  SPEAKER_00: I love that story.
• 16:04
  SPEAKER_00: That's I've never heard anything like that before, but that's awesome.
• 16:07
  SPEAKER_00: So you're just basically trying to serve the market, right?
• 16:09
  SPEAKER_00: You you you know what they're after and you've got a way to serve them.
• 16:12
  SPEAKER_00: It saves them having to go to the store or beg for their parents for some new pencils.
• 16:16
  SPEAKER_00: Uh that's awesome.
• 16:17
  SPEAKER_00: All right, let's uh let's spin the wheel again.
• 16:24
  SPEAKER_00: All right, question number 34.
• 16:27
  SPEAKER_00: What's the most embarrassing moment in your career so far?
• 16:32
  SPEAKER_01: Probably the most embarrassing moment was with my first job out of college, and I learned my lesson early, so I'm glad I made my mistakes at an early age.
• 16:39
  SPEAKER_01: Um, I had the fortunate pleasure of working for a large bank in Los Angeles uh that was part of the gaming and leisure group.
• 16:46
  SPEAKER_01: So our clients were the Native American tribes, the public gaming companies, and so we go to Vegas all the time.
• 16:52
  SPEAKER_01: And I remember on my first trip, my boss said, Do yourself a favor, do not get stuck and sucked into the vortex in Vegas.
• 16:59
  SPEAKER_01: You're there for work, not pleasure.
• 17:01
  SPEAKER_01: And uh keep a low profile, he kept telling me.
• 17:04
  SPEAKER_01: Well, I didn't keep a low profile, and I enjoy the fruits and uh the things that are that people do in Vegas, and I'll never forget missing the morning meeting.
• 17:15
  SPEAKER_01: And I woke up and my hotel room, right, lead was flat red light was flashing, and I missed the meeting.
• 17:21
  SPEAKER_01: And I had to fly back immediately to Los Angeles, and the most embarrassing moment of my life was walking back through the office, and everybody in the office had heard that I missed the meeting, having the walk of shame going back to my boss's office, and he said, I told you so.
• 17:36
  SPEAKER_01: So, as a punishment for that, the next day I was on a red-eye flight to uh New York.
• 17:41
  SPEAKER_01: I had to do a site survey of a casino up in upstate New York in the middle of January, and I had to fly right back.
• 17:47
  SPEAKER_01: So my penance was red-eye flight, same day flight back, and I can assure you I have never missed a meeting uh after that moment.
• 17:55
  SPEAKER_01: So it was a valuable lesson that I learned early in my career, and I've never duplicated, and I'm glad I have it.
• 18:00
  SPEAKER_00: I think that's a lesson that many people listening to this might have learned at kickoffs in in the past as well.
• 18:05
  SPEAKER_00: And I, you know, we've all got stories of different kickoffs where someone misses the star of the meeting, gets found out.
• 18:11
  SPEAKER_00: And even some people do stuff so stupid they they get let go.
• 18:14
  SPEAKER_00: So uh yeah, that that walk of shame.
• 18:17
  SPEAKER_00: I can feel your pain as you're going through that for sure.
• 18:19
  SPEAKER_01: Yep.
• 18:20
  SPEAKER_01: Young and and you said I told you so.
• 18:22
  SPEAKER_01: And I was like, you were right.
• 18:23
  SPEAKER_01: So I I took my penance and and I learned, and it was a valuable lesson uh from that day forward.
• 18:28
  SPEAKER_00: Awesome.
• 18:29
  SPEAKER_00: All right, last question.
• 18:29
  SPEAKER_00: Let me spin the wheel again.
• 18:35
  SPEAKER_00: All right, number six.
• 18:37
  SPEAKER_00: What is the story behind you getting your first job in cybersecurity?
• 18:42
  SPEAKER_01: First job in cyber, oh, that's a good one.
• 18:44
  SPEAKER_01: Um, it was a really interesting run.
• 18:46
  SPEAKER_01: I was, again, I started my career in banking, and then I had the fortune and pleasure of joining Cisco Systems for a while.
• 18:51
  SPEAKER_01: And while they had security products at that point, my real first foray exclusively into cyber was when Fishnet Security acquired a company called Torrey Point.
• 19:00
  SPEAKER_01: Torrey Point was a really interesting company, was similar to what I'm doing now, and they were kind of a thought leader as it relates to large service provider networks and doing some kind of software-defined networking stuff.
• 19:11
  SPEAKER_01: And that company got bought by Fishnet, and I'll never forget going out there.
• 19:16
  SPEAKER_01: You had two really different cultures, San Francisco-based company and the Kansas City-based company.
• 19:21
  SPEAKER_01: We sat down and we consummated the relationship, and I said, wow, this is gonna be a really interesting run.
• 19:27
  SPEAKER_01: And I wasn't totally certain that cybersecurity was the right place for me.
• 19:30
  SPEAKER_01: And the more I looked around at that impressive facility and what they had built and the client deck that they have, I said, wow, I'm gonna give this a run.
• 19:37
  SPEAKER_01: And fortunately for me, it was the right decision.
• 19:39
  SPEAKER_01: It was a great run in cyber, learned a ton.
• 19:42
  SPEAKER_01: So that was really 2011, 2012 timeframe.
• 19:46
  SPEAKER_01: So it's been about a decade or you know, the baker's dozen plus years in the space, and it's been a wild ride.
• 19:52
  SPEAKER_01: So very fortunate to have that experience.
• 19:54
  SPEAKER_00: And that was before the Fishnet Acuvent merger, right?
• 19:58
  SPEAKER_01: Correct.
• 19:58
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, that was when Fishnet was just a um sole entity, and then about a year and a half later, the the AcuVant merger happened.
• 20:06
  SPEAKER_01: The Optive run was a good run.
• 20:08
  SPEAKER_01: So yeah, it was uh it was a fun experience.
• 20:11
  SPEAKER_01: It was a series of multiple roll-ups, a lot of MA, a lot of activity, which suits my background.
• 20:16
  SPEAKER_01: It's never a dull moment, and I kind of like it that way.
• 20:18
  SPEAKER_01: So very fortunate to have that uh that occur at that time.
• 20:25
  SPEAKER_00: And one more area in your LinkedIn post I want to talk about, uh, you put it like this outbound evolution.
• 20:32
  SPEAKER_00: The role and effectiveness of the SDR slash BDR has evolved.
• 20:37
  SPEAKER_00: If you're still running the same playbook you were in 2020, you're a wasting time and money.
• 20:44
  SPEAKER_00: Tell me more about that statement, Patrick.
• 20:46
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, this is a fairly controversial topic, I think, but everybody's trying to figure this out.
• 20:51
  SPEAKER_01: The game has changed, the buying journey has changed, the buying process has changed.
• 20:56
  SPEAKER_01: I think we all can recognize that pre-pandemic, even to where we are now, a lot of it's virtual.
• 21:02
  SPEAKER_01: We find that customers come into the buying cycle more informed than they were previously.
• 21:07
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, I hearken back to my days at Cisco, and we were the ones that were giving product presentations.
• 21:13
  SPEAKER_01: So we were the gatekeeper of information.
• 21:15
  SPEAKER_01: Well, information's everywhere now.
• 21:17
  SPEAKER_01: So I think the buying journey has shifted.
• 21:20
  SPEAKER_01: And while the SDR BDR of the 90s and of the early 2000s in this industrial complex of BDR, AE, you know, account manager type stuff was really good, I think it's shifted.
• 21:32
  SPEAKER_01: So it can apply.
• 21:33
  SPEAKER_01: I've seen it apply and be very successful in certain areas.
• 21:36
  SPEAKER_01: Maybe it's early, it's SMB.
• 21:38
  SPEAKER_01: Getting to a cyber buyer, especially if your CISO is your is your buyer for an SDR or BDR, very difficult.
• 21:45
  SPEAKER_01: At the same time, is the the SDR and BDR are your are your first line.
• 21:49
  SPEAKER_01: And what what tends to be difficult is do you really want, with all due respect to C SDRs and BDRs, they're probably the most junior on your team, but it's a function that's out there.
• 21:59
  SPEAKER_01: Do you really want them to be the person making the first impression for your organization?
• 22:03
  SPEAKER_01: So there's a question that needs to be addressed there.
• 22:05
  SPEAKER_01: The second piece is outpound is really hard.
• 22:08
  SPEAKER_01: The technology has shifted where you know spam filters are going through the roof.
• 22:13
  SPEAKER_01: LinkedIn, I mean, you and I both know it.
• 22:16
  SPEAKER_01: We probably get 40 to 50 solicitations a week.
• 22:19
  SPEAKER_01: It's just it's just unattenable.
• 22:21
  SPEAKER_01: So I'm more of the of the lens of there is really good information that an SDR, BDR can do.
• 22:29
  SPEAKER_01: I think the first thing you need to do is you need to give them better.
• 22:32
  SPEAKER_01: Lists.
• 22:32
  SPEAKER_01: And I'm not saying that Apollo and the Zoom infos of the world aren't good lists, but I'd rather see us work on do you have a closed loss list or do you have people that have already engaged with you?
• 22:43
  SPEAKER_01: Right.
• 22:43
  SPEAKER_01: So how do you tee them up for more warm leads?
• 22:46
  SPEAKER_01: And then the second piece is I would also like to see folks really recognize that while the BDR is not is typically compensated on meetings, there's a lot of market intelligence that they can get.
• 22:59
  SPEAKER_01: So if we follow the rules that the 3% of your adjustable markets in the buying cycle with another 7% being influenced, and then all the other percentages that follow thereafter that, very hard to think that you're just going to find that three to set that 3 to 10% of individuals at the right time with your crafty email.
• 23:19
  SPEAKER_01: It's just, it's very hard.
• 23:21
  SPEAKER_01: But at the same time, they do connect and they do get information.
• 23:24
  SPEAKER_01: So where we've seen this evolution is it actually helps our nurturing campaign and some of our marketing efforts by understanding where certain customers or customer segments are in their buying journey, which influence a lot of our kind of inbound creation around marketing.
• 23:39
  SPEAKER_00: So what I'm hearing you say is be a lot more intelligent and targeted on what you have people doing so that their chance of succeeding is higher, right?
• 23:48
  SPEAKER_00: You know, I'm not saying people would still do it these days, but you don't give someone a list of a thousand names and so you know have at it, right?
• 23:54
  SPEAKER_00: You want to say, okay, here are they closed loss, here's the ones that did disengage, here's these types of people.
• 23:59
  SPEAKER_00: Let's have a very focused campaign that might be a lot more than just someone making calls or sending emails, right?
• 24:05
  SPEAKER_00: There might be more around it than just that to have a chance of success.
• 24:09
  SPEAKER_00: What else is, you know, you know, people are looking for a pipeline right now.
• 24:12
  SPEAKER_00: Um, any any specific recommendations or tips or tactics that you you've seen in the last year that uh you would recommend people at least look at or experiment with to say, go try a couple of these things because it might well work for you as it has for me.
• 24:27
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, certainly.
• 24:28
  SPEAKER_01: Good question.
• 24:28
  SPEAKER_01: I think in the cyberspace specifically, we're seeing this platform technology rationalization.
• 24:34
  SPEAKER_01: It's been coming for a while.
• 24:35
  SPEAKER_01: There's too many tools, there's too many problems to solve, you got uh workforce, labor shortages, all these, all these headwinds that just cause complexity.
• 24:45
  SPEAKER_01: So one of the things I I worked for early stage companies that have really good technology, but at the same time, as some of the uh objections are I just can't operationalize this in my tech stack.
• 24:57
  SPEAKER_01: So I think there's two things there that we can take a look at.
• 24:59
  SPEAKER_01: One is what's your better together story with those platform vendors if you can create that, right?
• 25:04
  SPEAKER_01: How do you create OEM alliances?
• 25:06
  SPEAKER_01: How do you augment something that you know is a market player?
• 25:09
  SPEAKER_01: There's a lot of big names out there, the Palo's, the CrowdStrike, the Cisco's, the RSAs, et cetera.
• 25:14
  SPEAKER_01: So if you are creating a product, what's that story look like?
• 25:18
  SPEAKER_01: What's that better together story that you can actually accompany with?
• 25:21
  SPEAKER_01: Because they've already got the brand recognition.
• 25:24
  SPEAKER_01: So one, you can draft off them.
• 25:26
  SPEAKER_01: Two, they already have the customer base.
• 25:28
  SPEAKER_01: So there's your, there, you, there's your leads.
• 25:30
  SPEAKER_01: And then three, those folks are looking for additional use cases to sell.
• 25:35
  SPEAKER_01: So if you somehow can figure out a way to get on their global price list or create some sort of revenue share, it's easier said than done.
• 25:43
  SPEAKER_01: But if you can do that, I think that's your fastest path to revenue and your fastest path to scale.
• 25:48
  SPEAKER_00: You know, it's funny you bring up this.
• 25:50
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, obviously, in the last couple of months, Paulo's getting a bit of uh news about their CEO saying, look, we want to be the platform for cyber, right?
• 25:59
  SPEAKER_00: Now, whether that really comes to light or not, I don't know.
• 26:02
  SPEAKER_00: But it does remind me, so 10, 15 years ago at McAfee, we had a platform and we had this what we call the Security Innovation Alliance, the SIA.
• 26:10
  SPEAKER_00: And what that was was essentially third parties, smaller vendors usually, but some big ones as well, would integrate into the platform that the McAfee was building.
• 26:21
  SPEAKER_00: And for some of the different levels of partner inside the SIA, but some of them would be on our price list.
• 26:25
  SPEAKER_00: So, me as a as someone who's trying to sell that stuff, I would get paid on it in some shape or form.
• 26:30
  SPEAKER_00: Some were more referral partners, but there's a lot in that, right?
• 26:33
  SPEAKER_00: And the company wanted us to go and and help our clients solve problems with partners as well as our own stuff, because it just strengthened the whole ecosystem.
• 26:43
  SPEAKER_00: And I'm wondering, you know, if you look at the Palo's and Zscalers and, you know, all the big companies out there vying for this credit strikes, you know, they they they have they all have these programs and what it would take for a smaller company or or um a company that's not one of those big ones to say, look, let's go, as you say, let's go be better together, as opposed to try and plow our own furrow in this pretty tough field out there.
• 27:03
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 27:04
  SPEAKER_01: And you can't be everything to everybody too.
• 27:06
  SPEAKER_01: So what the other thing is if you're not able to be strategic with those said vendors to either be on the price list, a lot of them have marketplaces.
• 27:13
  SPEAKER_01: So you can create your own narrative without really their approval, right?
• 27:18
  SPEAKER_01: And then be able to be facilitated through their marketplaces.
• 27:21
  SPEAKER_01: So I think that's the other piece that if you're not able to get their attention because you're small and maybe you they just can't be everything and everybody like I mentioned, there's that marketplace play.
• 27:32
  SPEAKER_01: So it's the same concept that you talked about at McAfee.
• 27:34
  SPEAKER_01: Now it's just you have a different consumption model of which these ELAs and credits and tech credits that are sitting on that are already prepaid, you can accelerate procurement deals really quickly.
• 27:45
  SPEAKER_01: Like I said, it's it's not as simple as that.
• 27:48
  SPEAKER_01: But if you look at strategies versus thinking that you're going to hire a BDR or first-time salesperson on a vendor that you've never heard of, of potentially a product or use case that you don't even know of anybody solving yet, it's very hard.
• 28:01
  SPEAKER_01: And I think there's our avenues of where people have been really effective in those tech alliances, in addition to their marketplace strategy, that allowed them to get from A to B rounds faster or B to C or hit their growth objectives that they've outlined as an organization.
• 28:17
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I would just add on one tip if people are doing the alliances uh play is that signing the deal or getting part of the marketplace of the alliance is one thing, getting traction is another.
• 28:28
  SPEAKER_00: And having sat on the platform side of this, you know, I remember we had 125 companies in the SIA.
• 28:34
  SPEAKER_00: I would say there's probably about 10 of them who were all over us as sellers.
• 28:38
  SPEAKER_00: They knew that actually what mattered was what happened at the coalface, right?
• 28:43
  SPEAKER_00: And there was an R90 who you never heard of, but you you somehow, you know, could have the list one day and realize, well, they might help me in this account.
• 28:50
  SPEAKER_00: But there was always, you know, five to 10, 15, something like that.
• 28:53
  SPEAKER_00: Everything we were at.
• 28:54
  SPEAKER_00: They we wanted to come to QBRs, they were at the conferences with us, alongside us, you know, the whole thing.
• 28:59
  SPEAKER_00: And they were the one that got the real the real traction out of the relationships, I'm sure.
• 29:03
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 29:03
  SPEAKER_01: You got to work it.
• 29:04
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I think there's it's it's easier said than done.
• 29:07
  SPEAKER_01: Deals make partnerships, right?
• 29:09
  SPEAKER_01: I I can't, you know, just on that, for anybody that's listening, I can't tell you how many times, either on the vendor side or even at Optive or the places that I've been on the partner side where you draft up these world domination strategies and how we're gonna go conquer the world and deal reg and gross margin percentage and profitability.
• 29:27
  SPEAKER_01: And you're like, yeah, well, go start with one, because inevitably you're gonna learn a lot on those first couple of deals.
• 29:33
  SPEAKER_01: So I always say, you know, think big, start small, move fast, right?
• 29:37
  SPEAKER_01: Because you're gonna iterate anyways.
• 29:39
  SPEAKER_01: So while we can go have this world domination strategy together and take all this market share, if we don't actually mobilize a strategy at pace, we'll never get there.
• 29:47
  SPEAKER_01: So I think that's the other thing is be realistic with your goals and expectations and go get quick wins that allow you to build momentum and further investment.
• 29:56
  SPEAKER_00: One last question, uh, looking forward into maybe 25, even, uh, as we think about building pipeline, we think about outbound evolution, the role of the SDR, BDR.
• 30:07
  SPEAKER_00: How do you think things are going to play out maybe in you know a year's time?
• 30:11
  SPEAKER_00: Will we have SDRs?
• 30:12
  SPEAKER_00: Will it all be AI driven?
• 30:14
  SPEAKER_00: Any any thoughts on that, Patrick?
• 30:15
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I think there will be an evolution.
• 30:17
  SPEAKER_01: I think AI will impact things.
• 30:19
  SPEAKER_01: It already is.
• 30:20
  SPEAKER_01: We're seeing more efficiency.
• 30:22
  SPEAKER_01: But I I go back to the authenticity.
• 30:25
  SPEAKER_01: I just think we're people at the end of the day that buy from people, even if it's an AI-generated message.
• 30:30
  SPEAKER_01: We can read kind of right through that.
• 30:32
  SPEAKER_01: And so I always go back to know me, like me, trust me, pay me, right?
• 30:37
  SPEAKER_01: These these concepts.
• 30:38
  SPEAKER_01: Because at the end of the day, we're we we are making a transaction, and I've got to trust you as the individual and your organization that I'm investing into because there are human elements that matter.
• 30:48
  SPEAKER_01: So, yeah, you can facilitate um through AI a lot of market research, but when it when push comes to sub, we're we're making a bet on someone and something to do what's required.
• 31:00
  SPEAKER_01: So I still think that when you take a look at building pipeline, content is is is still key.
• 31:06
  SPEAKER_01: And then the authenticity of it, you can't just dabble in certain things and then you either you either do it and you believe in it and you stay the course because you can be read right through if it's just a fly-by-night scheme.
• 31:18
  SPEAKER_01: But if you are authentic with your market value, you're authentic with your market message, and you continue to uh execute with authenticity, I think people ultimately want to be around you.
• 31:31
  SPEAKER_01: That's the first thing.
• 31:32
  SPEAKER_01: The second thing is we found that um through my research doing consulting that CEOs and co-founders as evangelists matter, right?
• 31:40
  SPEAKER_01: Yes, I buy a company, but I'm really also buying the leader of that company, right?
• 31:44
  SPEAKER_01: Elon Musk's the Steve Jobs, the et cetera's, right?
• 31:48
  SPEAKER_01: We're attracted to these individuals of who they are for what they stand for, right or wrong.
• 31:53
  SPEAKER_01: And so I think that also helps smaller companies.
• 31:56
  SPEAKER_01: Your founder needs or your executive staff need to be the evangelist, need to be out there.
• 32:01
  SPEAKER_01: And that really helps or folks determine where there might be multiple options.
• 32:06
  SPEAKER_01: I like this person or I like what they stand for, and that authentic like evaluation of individuals, I still think will reign true, despite the technology advances that will help us identify those types of things.
• 32:18
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, I'm still still very bullish on the personal connections and authenticity of uh of leadership.
• 32:23
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I mean, if I was going to join a company right now, that's one of the things I would look very carefully at.
• 32:28
  SPEAKER_00: I've been on both sides of this.
• 32:29
  SPEAKER_00: I've been somewhere where the founder just charismatic, you know, when he when he talked, people listened.
• 32:36
  SPEAKER_00: You know, even if you never knew the guy, within five, 10 seconds, you could see people starting to lean forward a little bit and how he would captivate them.
• 32:43
  SPEAKER_00: And I've been places where the CEO would talk and not even employees would listen.
• 32:48
  SPEAKER_00: And, you know, I'd rather be at the place where the the charismatic person who commands some attention.
• 32:53
  SPEAKER_00: You know, I think about um like Kevin Mandia in our world, right?
• 32:57
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, he named the company after himself, but uh, you know, when when Kevin Mandia talked 10 years ago, people stopped to listen.
• 33:03
  SPEAKER_00: He was very engaging, he was he was compelling with what he talked about.
• 33:07
  SPEAKER_00: He made a whole ton of sense, and he just seemed to have that ability as well.
• 33:10
  SPEAKER_00: I'd be looking for that if I was thinking about where I'm at and and where how we're gonna succeed.
• 33:15
  SPEAKER_00: Because it must be so difficult if if you're if you don't have that in place.
• 33:18
  SPEAKER_01: I couldn't agree more.
• 33:19
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I couldn't agree more.
• 33:21
  SPEAKER_01: It starts at the top in the culture from the belief system, and I just think now more than ever, there's a lot of options out there, and there's a lot of technology companies out there, and I think I I would echo your sentiments.
• 33:33
  SPEAKER_00: Well, Patrick, I'm gonna put your LinkedIn into the show notes of this episode.
• 33:37
  SPEAKER_00: If someone wants to get in touch with you, is that the best way, or would you have them do something else?
• 33:41
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, that'd be great.
• 33:42
  SPEAKER_01: I'm pretty active on the platform.
• 33:44
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, best way to probably get me is through LinkedIn.
• 33:47
  SPEAKER_01: So if I can spend some time and if anybody has any additional questions or wants to talk further about the concepts, we'd be happy to chat.
• 33:53
  SPEAKER_00: That's awesome.
• 33:54
  SPEAKER_00: We'll look at your best for 2024 and 2025.
• 33:57
  SPEAKER_01: Thank you very much.
• 33:58
  SPEAKER_01: Likewise.
• 33:59
  SPEAKER_01: Thanks again.