Latest / Cyber Go-To-Market Talk: The Cybersecurity Podcast About Cyber Sales, Marketing & Revenue Growth / 179: 13 sales mistakes founders make

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179: 13 sales mistakes founders make · Cyber Go-To-Market Talk: The Cybersecurity Podcast About Cyber Sales, Marketing & Revenue Growth

• 0:42
  SPEAKER_00: Welcome to the Sales Bluebird Podcast, where we help cybersecurity companies grow sales faster.
• 0:49
  SPEAKER_00: Whether you're a seller, marketer, leader, or founder, we give you tips, tricks, experiences, examples, ideas, and inspiration from people who know a thing or ten about building great cybersecurity companies.
• 1:02
  SPEAKER_00: I am your host, Andrew Monahan, and today we're talking about the mistakes that founders make when they start selling for the first time.
• 1:10
  SPEAKER_00: And here's the thing, right?
• 1:11
  SPEAKER_00: A lot of founders in cybersecurity are non-sales founders, which is a good thing.
• 1:17
  SPEAKER_00: They're technical, they come from either a technical or product background.
• 1:21
  SPEAKER_00: They've been building products, they know the market, they know the products they're making, they're solving problems that they know about.
• 1:28
  SPEAKER_00: That's their world.
• 1:29
  SPEAKER_00: And when they're in early stage, they still have to go out and start selling what they have.
• 1:35
  SPEAKER_00: They have to talk to prospects, whether they're friendlies or people they they don't know, and go and see if they can get some business wrestled up from them.
• 1:43
  SPEAKER_00: And it can put a lot of people in out of their comfort zone when they're doing that.
• 1:49
  SPEAKER_00: This is not something they've done before.
• 1:51
  SPEAKER_00: And of course, what they do is they fall back on what they believe or what they've seen from others, right?
• 1:58
  SPEAKER_00: What they believe sales is all about, or what they've seen in prior jobs or prior lives, others do in sales.
• 2:06
  SPEAKER_00: The whole picture is they often don't understand why things are happening.
• 2:09
  SPEAKER_00: So we're basically asking people who are really good at one thing to take on something else without any training whatsoever.
• 2:16
  SPEAKER_00: And that something else is actually quite important because it means we're actually getting money in the door.
• 2:21
  SPEAKER_00: Um, so this is not something that's uh unimportant or trivial.
• 2:26
  SPEAKER_00: It's actually something that is super important to the success of the company.
• 2:30
  SPEAKER_00: And unfortunately, there just isn't a whole bunch of great training to say, I'm a technical founder.
• 2:35
  SPEAKER_00: How do I go out and sell what I have?
• 2:37
  SPEAKER_00: So I'm gonna give you a list here of 13 things that I've come up with that I've either experienced or I've heard of other founders doing when it comes to selling their cybersecurity product for the first time.
• 2:49
  SPEAKER_00: So the trick is don't do these things.
• 2:52
  SPEAKER_00: There's a bit of overlap between them, but I've called them out as individual items for a reason.
• 2:57
  SPEAKER_00: And also there's variations on a theme here, but I've tried to be as specific as I possibly can.
• 3:02
  SPEAKER_00: So uh let's get going.
• 3:04
  SPEAKER_00: Number one, they believe that their job on a call is to pitch a prospect.
• 3:09
  SPEAKER_00: And what happens is that they pitch only.
• 3:11
  SPEAKER_00: They'll jump on the call and with a quick bit of introductions, they'll say, Let me tell you about company name, slot it in there, and then they go off.
• 3:20
  SPEAKER_00: And, you know, 29 minutes later if it was a half-hour call, or 44 minutes later if it was a 45-minute call, they come up for air.
• 3:28
  SPEAKER_00: So they believe that the purpose of this call and what they should be doing if they're selling is pitching their product to prospects.
• 3:35
  SPEAKER_00: And sometimes what prospects do is sit there and listen.
• 3:37
  SPEAKER_00: And sometimes what they do is sit there and listen and then fall asleep and don't pay attention.
• 3:41
  SPEAKER_00: So one thing to avoid is pitching only.
• 3:44
  SPEAKER_00: Number two is they don't ask enough or any questions.
• 3:49
  SPEAKER_00: When we're asking questions, we're in the mode of learning.
• 3:52
  SPEAKER_00: And what we need to do is learn all about our prospect, what their situation is, how mature they are in their thinking around the problems that we're we're tackling, and also what the problems that they have are.
• 4:04
  SPEAKER_00: You know, we're making a big assumption they've got the problems that we think they have.
• 4:07
  SPEAKER_00: So we need to find these things out.
• 4:09
  SPEAKER_00: So we do, you know, finders make the mistake of not asking enough questions.
• 4:14
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, number three is when they start asking questions, they don't ask great questions.
• 4:19
  SPEAKER_00: The questions are really simple, straightforward.
• 4:23
  SPEAKER_00: They almost feel like I've got to ask questions, so let me just figure some out and quickly ask them.
• 4:27
  SPEAKER_00: And that's not usually the recipe for success.
• 4:30
  SPEAKER_00: I think it's important to think about what's a really great thought-provoking question I could be asking either at the start or during the call, right?
• 4:39
  SPEAKER_00: Maybe we're doing um some slides or maybe we're doing a very simple and quick demo.
• 4:44
  SPEAKER_00: What are the great questions to ask that's going to spur a conversation and get this person thinking, as opposed to just giving me the road answer?
• 4:53
  SPEAKER_00: Classic example of this, you know, in Discovery, right at the start.
• 4:56
  SPEAKER_00: If you are asking questions, is what do you have right now?
• 5:00
  SPEAKER_00: Right.
• 5:00
  SPEAKER_00: Another great example is when you're doing the deck or you're doing a demo and you talk about something, the follow-up question is, does this make sense?
• 5:08
  SPEAKER_00: Does this resonate?
• 5:09
  SPEAKER_00: These are not great questions, right?
• 5:11
  SPEAKER_00: We want to zero in on the really important things we want to learn.
• 5:14
  SPEAKER_00: And what's the great thought-provoking question to ask to get us there?
• 5:18
  SPEAKER_00: Number four is more of a philosophy than anything else.
• 5:22
  SPEAKER_00: When they go into sales conversations, the orientation in their mind is all about us.
• 5:29
  SPEAKER_00: It's all about me.
• 5:31
  SPEAKER_00: It's all about the product that we've built.
• 5:33
  SPEAKER_00: That's their starting point.
• 5:35
  SPEAKER_00: We've got this thing, it's amazing.
• 5:37
  SPEAKER_00: We need to sell it, right?
• 5:38
  SPEAKER_00: And when you have that orientation, it actually comes out in how you approach things during the call.
• 5:44
  SPEAKER_00: The alternative orientation is to think about the prospect first, the challenges they might be having, the empathy you should have for the challenges that they have going on.
• 5:54
  SPEAKER_00: And always think about when you're talking about what you do, talking about it in the context of your prospect, not just about what we do.
• 6:03
  SPEAKER_00: Number five, when they're talking about the product, they focus on what the product does and not actually the problems that it solves.
• 6:11
  SPEAKER_00: And again, this is natural, right?
• 6:12
  SPEAKER_00: You spend a lot of time building something great and you're excited to show off what it does.
• 6:17
  SPEAKER_00: When really the orientation should be here's some problems that we solve, you know, and there's some things that we do, there's some features that we have that enables those problems to be solved.
• 6:29
  SPEAKER_00: So think about first focusing on the problems that we solve for people, and then thinking about what do we do that supports that.
• 6:37
  SPEAKER_00: Number six, trap to fall into.
• 6:40
  SPEAKER_00: You feel like you want to tell them everything that your product does, not the bits that the prospect actually cares about.
• 6:48
  SPEAKER_00: So one of the great things about really asking great questions at the start is you learn what your prospect cares about.
• 6:54
  SPEAKER_00: And when you get to talking in your deck or talking in the demo, you want to make sure you focus on those things for 90% of the time.
• 7:02
  SPEAKER_00: And unfortunately, what happens sometimes is they say, well, we need to tell them about this.
• 7:06
  SPEAKER_00: And also, this is really good.
• 7:08
  SPEAKER_00: We should tell them about that.
• 7:09
  SPEAKER_00: And this is important.
• 7:11
  SPEAKER_00: Let's talk about that.
• 7:12
  SPEAKER_00: You know, you can come with a long list of things that you your product does really well that you feel like you should be talking about.
• 7:18
  SPEAKER_00: But much more important is to think about the bits the prospect you're talking to cares about.
• 7:22
  SPEAKER_00: Focus on talking about those for 90% of the time.
• 7:26
  SPEAKER_00: Number seven, put a founder into a sales role, talking with a prospect.
• 7:31
  SPEAKER_00: What some founders do is they think they need to act like a salesperson, not instead of being themselves or being a founder.
• 7:39
  SPEAKER_00: They feel like there's some persona they need to take on to somehow be a salesperson.
• 7:45
  SPEAKER_00: And for them, for you as a founder, it's gonna feel really weird, right?
• 7:50
  SPEAKER_00: But still, some founders feel like they need to be this very different person.
• 7:54
  SPEAKER_00: When in fact, the much more interesting and much more compelling way to be is to just act like a founder, right?
• 8:00
  SPEAKER_00: With some things that you do in engaging with people.
• 8:04
  SPEAKER_00: Number eight, founders believe that they have the role of convincing a prospect they should need and buy your solution, as opposed to finding like-minded people who have the same philosophy that you do and are therefore much more likely to buy your product.
• 8:22
  SPEAKER_00: This is kind of an interesting one.
• 8:24
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and it's it may be a little bit counterintuitive, but the role on every sales call is not to convince the person they should buy, right?
• 8:31
  SPEAKER_00: We've if that happens, you feel like you're constantly kind of grabbing them, trying to say, look at us and pay attention and you should be caring about this stuff, right?
• 8:40
  SPEAKER_00: Whereas a much more effective way, a quicker way to get to a sale, is to figure out if this person has the same philosophy that you do about how to solve this problem or even has this problem in the first place.
• 8:52
  SPEAKER_00: If you have someone who's like-minded, who has the same kind of outlook on this whole area, the same philosophy, it's much easier for them to come in and buy your stuff as opposed to someone who has the polar opposite of what you do, and you feel like you've got to try and convince them that they're doing it all wrong and your way is the best way.
• 9:12
  SPEAKER_00: Number nine, and this one is a little bit tongue-in-cheek, but uh founders think that anyone cares about their founding story is a mistake.
• 9:21
  SPEAKER_00: And I see this a lot.
• 9:22
  SPEAKER_00: You know, we start off with what do we do?
• 9:24
  SPEAKER_00: What were we all about?
• 9:25
  SPEAKER_00: Well, let me explain how we started, right?
• 9:27
  SPEAKER_00: We'll go back two years, three years, whatever it was.
• 9:29
  SPEAKER_00: I was at this company, and here's what I was doing.
• 9:31
  SPEAKER_00: I was doing this and all the rest of it, and I came to a realization.
• 9:34
  SPEAKER_00: Here's the thing nine times out of ten, your founding story is pretty irrelevant and not that compelling.
• 9:39
  SPEAKER_00: I hate to break it to you.
• 9:41
  SPEAKER_00: It's usually somewhat made up, and prospects can usually tell that.
• 9:45
  SPEAKER_00: And if you start off talking about the founding story, you're starting off with the wrong foot because you're talking about yourself and the company all the time and about the prospect.
• 9:56
  SPEAKER_00: So here's the thing: sometimes it doesn't actually matter what the finding story is.
• 10:00
  SPEAKER_00: When I say nine out of ten times, people don't care.
• 10:02
  SPEAKER_00: The one time out of ten is when that founding story and what you were doing is very relevant to the problem that you're solving and the prospect that you're talking to.
• 10:13
  SPEAKER_00: So a classic example is if you've been a CISO and you experienced this problem as a CISO, and then it was so bad you founded a company that to solve that problem, then that's a relevant finding story.
• 10:26
  SPEAKER_00: But unless it's that direct, the relevance and that impactful, then you probably at the very least leave your finding story to another time in the sales process with that prospect.
• 10:38
  SPEAKER_00: If not, completely leave it at.
• 10:40
  SPEAKER_00: Number 10 is founders make the mistake of thinking about technical capabilities only and not about the business outcomes that you're driving.
• 10:50
  SPEAKER_00: The more senior the person that you're talking to, the more important it is that you talk about business outcomes that you can help them realize.
• 10:59
  SPEAKER_00: They're gonna buy your product to solve problems that have outcomes.
• 11:02
  SPEAKER_00: And these outcomes can usually be couched in business terms at the senior levels.
• 11:07
  SPEAKER_00: Does it save money?
• 11:09
  SPEAKER_00: Does it reduce risk?
• 11:10
  SPEAKER_00: Does it increase revenue?
• 11:12
  SPEAKER_00: These are the things to tie everything towards, as opposed to just thinking about the technical wizardry and magic that you're delivering.
• 11:21
  SPEAKER_00: Number 11, the mistake that some people make is that they think if you just tell someone something, they will understand it, care about it, and remember it.
• 11:31
  SPEAKER_00: And that's simply not true.
• 11:33
  SPEAKER_00: And the way this manifests itself usually is that uh there's a thinking that we need to tell them about this, we need to tell them about that.
• 11:40
  SPEAKER_00: Oh, and this bit's super important.
• 11:41
  SPEAKER_00: So let's make sure we add that in.
• 11:43
  SPEAKER_00: And a sales call becomes an exercise in how many things can we jam into this 30-minute session or 45-minute session that's gonna just be overwhelmingly amazing for the prospect that they want to continue uh talking with us.
• 11:59
  SPEAKER_00: And that's wrong.
• 12:00
  SPEAKER_00: It's simply wrong.
• 12:01
  SPEAKER_00: They're not gonna understand all of it, they're simply not gonna care about all of it, and they're not gonna remember very much of it.
• 12:07
  SPEAKER_00: And this is why it's so important to think about asking the great questions at the start so you can learn what they care about, and you can just put in the important things into the discussion and leave these other things for a second or third call, or even you know, demos or POVs, things like that.
• 12:24
  SPEAKER_00: Number 12, very similar, is um you don't figure out beforehand, you don't figure out at the start of the call what you want the prospect to remember.
• 12:35
  SPEAKER_00: And this is really important.
• 12:36
  SPEAKER_00: You know, human beings are the same the world over.
• 12:39
  SPEAKER_00: We can only really remember and latch on to round about three things.
• 12:44
  SPEAKER_00: All right.
• 12:45
  SPEAKER_00: So if we tell the prospect 25 things, we leave it completely to chance what the three things are that they will remember.
• 12:53
  SPEAKER_00: But if we only tell them three things, then we are in complete control by the three things they're gonna remember from the call.
• 13:00
  SPEAKER_00: And this is super important.
• 13:02
  SPEAKER_00: You're thinking about, you know, what is the massive impact that we can have for a prospect?
• 13:06
  SPEAKER_00: What are the wild moments they're gonna have when they look at our stuff and go, wow, you guys can actually do that?
• 13:12
  SPEAKER_00: These are things that we want to focus on because they're gonna remember those things.
• 13:17
  SPEAKER_00: You want in a week's time for them to A, remember the interaction they had with you, and B, remember, oh, that was the company that did this one thing amazingly well, right?
• 13:26
  SPEAKER_00: As opposed to losing complete control over that whole thought process.
• 13:31
  SPEAKER_00: And 13, finally, uh for very early stage companies, is the founder believes the investor deck they put together to get some seed funding is good enough to use in front of prospects.
• 13:42
  SPEAKER_00: It's not, right?
• 13:43
  SPEAKER_00: It's a whole different lens that an investor will look at your company under as opposed to a prospect.
• 13:51
  SPEAKER_00: Very different lens.
• 13:52
  SPEAKER_00: And you gotta think much more about what the prospect cares about as opposed to the investor.
• 13:57
  SPEAKER_00: Now, there may be some obviously some bits that you can take from different slides, but you know, it shouldn't just be a rip and replace from uh uh let's just change the name on the front from uh investor deck to prospect deck, right?
• 14:09
  SPEAKER_00: That's not gonna work for you.
• 14:11
  SPEAKER_00: So uh if you're doing any of these 13 things right now, the thing to do is probably the exact opposite or the advice I gave in there and stop doing what you were doing in the first place.
• 14:21
  SPEAKER_00: That will help you be much more comfortable when it comes to selling, and it's gonna help you be a lot more effective when you're talking to these prospects for the first time.
• 14:31
  SPEAKER_00: So good luck and good selling.