Latest / Cyber Go-To-Market Talk: The Cybersecurity Podcast About Cyber Sales, Marketing & Revenue Growth / How to adapt to the new cybersecurity buying landscape

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How to adapt to the new cybersecurity buying landscape · Cyber Go-To-Market Talk: The Cybersecurity Podcast About Cyber Sales, Marketing & Revenue Growth

• 0:32
  SPEAKER_00: Two things that many cybersecurity companies and their sales teams are experiencing right now are it's really hard to get noticed by people.
• 0:39
  SPEAKER_00: And secondly, it's harder to get deals done.
• 0:42
  SPEAKER_00: And if you look at it, uh one of the things that's the core of all this is the buyer's journey and how they interact with vendors has changed so much over the years.
• 0:50
  SPEAKER_00: They do more research on their own before they talk to us, but that's no good if they don't know about us and we're a startup trying to make our mark in the world.
• 0:58
  SPEAKER_00: And it's tough to get a rock solid justification together using our champions that hits the economic fire at the right time so a deal gets done.
• 1:07
  SPEAKER_00: I talk about all this and what to do about this with longtime sales leader Alan Sanderson in this episode.
• 1:13
  SPEAKER_00: So if you're looking for practical advice for yourself or for your sales team, don't go away.
• 1:50
  SPEAKER_00: Alan, welcome to the podcast.
• 1:52
  SPEAKER_01: Thank you, Andrew, and I appreciate you uh giving me the opportunity to speak today and connect with you.
• 1:56
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, this is going to be interesting.
• 1:58
  SPEAKER_00: You know, you've got a storied history, long history in this world and cybersecurity and other well-known companies.
• 2:04
  SPEAKER_00: I look at your background and I see companies I recognize, such as Absolute Software, FireEye, VMware, Liquid Machines, and then going way back, Digital Guardian, which I remember from way back in the day.
• 2:16
  SPEAKER_00: And I think it's probably been through a couple of name changes since then.
• 2:19
  SPEAKER_00: Um, but uh, yeah, these are good storied cybersecurity companies.
• 2:22
  SPEAKER_00: You've got a long history in this world.
• 2:24
  SPEAKER_01: Thank you.
• 2:25
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 2:25
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, uh, glutton for punishment or success.
• 2:28
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, been more so on the successful side, but uh, we all know security can be a challenging area, but a very valuable area in today's market overall.
• 2:36
  SPEAKER_00: You know, it is.
• 2:37
  SPEAKER_00: And we have that luxury where for most anyway, these days, cybersecurity is a need, not a want, right?
• 2:43
  SPEAKER_00: They've got to do something, they can't not do anything.
• 2:46
  SPEAKER_00: So in the current climate, our last couple of years, let's say, it's probably been a blessing that we're being in cybersecurity.
• 2:52
  SPEAKER_00: But, you know, it's it's never easy.
• 2:53
  SPEAKER_00: There's we have our unique challenges in our marketplace.
• 2:56
  SPEAKER_00: It's very crowded, it's very noisy, there's lots of people claiming things, doing things, it's all overlapping.
• 3:01
  SPEAKER_00: So we've we got our own challenges.
• 3:02
  SPEAKER_00: And actually brings me on to the the topic for our discussion today.
• 3:06
  SPEAKER_00: Um, you know, being in sales as long as we have, you know, the people that we sold to and how they acted 20 odd years ago is very different to how they do things now.
• 3:16
  SPEAKER_00: And this kind of phrase that you hear is the buyer's journey has changed.
• 3:20
  SPEAKER_00: Um, maybe slowly at times, maybe quicker at times.
• 3:23
  SPEAKER_00: And I think certainly in the last year, year and a half, the scrutiny on the buying side has changed a lot.
• 3:27
  SPEAKER_00: But yeah, when I when I say the buyer's journey has changed, what does that mean for you?
• 3:32
  SPEAKER_00: What's your experience?
• 3:34
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I mean, look, so I look at I've been in the industry long enough to see how uh buyers and companies have evolved around looking at different technologies.
• 3:43
  SPEAKER_01: And definitely the presence of the online footprint has changed that dynamic, you know, a great deal.
• 3:50
  SPEAKER_01: And when you start to look at the buying journey, and there are analysts that uh Gartner, Forrester, and others that write, you know, have written plenty of papers around this, is that you know, a lot of due diligence, a lot of research is done well before speaking to a salesperson, speaking to a vendor itself.
• 4:08
  SPEAKER_01: And, you know, with the multiple channels that are out there, you know, overall, and how companies are starting to look and how users are starting to look at you know, solving technical or business problems, they're leveraging things like websites and analyst information, social media sites, you know, blog posts.
• 4:24
  SPEAKER_01: There's this huge online presence that allows somebody to go through and research certain solution sets to maybe solve a business problem that they have internally, you know, overall.
• 4:35
  SPEAKER_01: So the buyers themselves are doing their own homework uh well before you know speaking to a salesperson or vendor.
• 4:42
  SPEAKER_01: And you know, if you look at some of the papers that have been written, that can be done, you know, up to 60% of the buying journey, you know, can be covered by themselves before talking to a vendor overall.
• 4:54
  SPEAKER_01: And so this really means that as a seller, as a seller or a company, you know, you really need to think about what you're messaging to the marketplace, you know, overall.
• 5:05
  SPEAKER_01: Uh is the content available around that message and it's it's clear and precise.
• 5:11
  SPEAKER_01: And you know, the company has a value proposition that can compel somebody to look at them further, you know, overall.
• 5:18
  SPEAKER_01: Packaging all that up uh and having an online presence, you know, around either your website, analyst website, you know, white papers, blog posts, articles, customer success stories, you know, business and technical customer success stories are a big one, also, are all very much needed to get shortlisted, you know, into an opportunity with an organization to solve their business problem with the solution set or security solution set that you're offering to the marketplace.
• 5:47
  SPEAKER_01: And so what it net net means is that you know, executives, marketing, and sales teams really need to collaborate closely and have a sync approach to offering information to the marketplace in various uh channels and the types of different content that can be available to them.
• 6:05
  SPEAKER_00: I think that's uh the concept is, you know, people talk about it a lot, right?
• 6:10
  SPEAKER_00: But I think it's the nuances around it, which is where it gets super interesting.
• 6:14
  SPEAKER_00: And what you were saying there was you know, all different channels to think about, right?
• 6:19
  SPEAKER_00: Now let's let's try and make this a little bit more real.
• 6:21
  SPEAKER_00: Um, you know, let's go to our favorite cybersecurity startup, Cyber Donut, uh Cyber Donut uh series A type company.
• 6:29
  SPEAKER_00: They've got five to eight people in their sales team, they've got an SE or two, maybe a BDR.
• 6:33
  SPEAKER_00: They got their early adopted customers on board, and now they're kind of got the next 10 or 15 as well, but they're trying to get to, let's say, 50, 75 customers and maybe get uh the ERR from a few million up to 10 million.
• 6:44
  SPEAKER_00: So they're kind of in a unique spot, right?
• 6:45
  SPEAKER_00: They they've probably somewhat found their their product market fit, but it's probably not well defined.
• 6:51
  SPEAKER_00: It's probably a little bit loose, and they're in this morass of 3,700 vendors uh trying to make their mark, right?
• 6:57
  SPEAKER_00: So this is the challenge, right?
• 6:58
  SPEAKER_00: They no one's heard of Cyber Donut, and they're just another company out there that's trying to pound the whatevers to get hold of people and and get it.
• 7:07
  SPEAKER_00: If I'm sitting there as a sales leader, let's say, inside this company, what what should I be telling my sales team they need to be doing themselves, you know, before we even get into how we collaborate with the marketing side?
• 7:17
  SPEAKER_01: Sure, sure.
• 7:19
  SPEAKER_01: So look at it as a sales leader, you know, I've always believed in you know, sales reps need to build their own pipeline.
• 7:25
  SPEAKER_01: Um and look, it there's a methodology around that, and companies need to have a strategy to help fill pipeline and lead generation through marketing efforts.
• 7:34
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, you might have a channel organization.
• 7:36
  SPEAKER_01: A lot of smaller organizations don't start on the channel side, which makes a lot of sense.
• 7:39
  SPEAKER_01: You know, you want to penetrate the market directly overall, but you need to have a sales organization that's hunting.
• 7:45
  SPEAKER_01: So, as a sales leader, you know, a company that goes to market in my sales team and I've hired hunters that are going to go build their own pipeline.
• 7:53
  SPEAKER_01: It then goes into the company itself providing some sales tools, you know, that can be leveraged around campaign gener uh around campaigning overall and leveraging those tools.
• 8:03
  SPEAKER_01: Now, I will still always go back to, if you understand the buying journey, as stated, you know, all of us today operate this way.
• 8:11
  SPEAKER_01: If I cold called you, Andrew, and you know, I left you a voicemail, the first thing you would do is probably if you're interested in talking to me, you'd probably look me up on LinkedIn.
• 8:19
  SPEAKER_01: So you initially hit social media, you know, you hit a different avenue without even calling Alan Sanderson to learn about Alan Sanderson.
• 8:27
  SPEAKER_01: Think that the same way as a seller is that if you're cold calling, you're emailing uh before you probably get a response or can actually engage with somebody directly, they're going to do some online research first.
• 8:39
  SPEAKER_01: And so it is, you know, 100% upon the sales team to build pipeline, you know, create sales opportunities.
• 8:46
  SPEAKER_01: But in today's world, in today's market, it is a necessity to have certain online information readily available to help close that gap and help pique the interest of the end user to return and engage, you know, in that sales call overall.
• 9:02
  SPEAKER_01: It's just a it's just a matter of the way it is today.
• 9:05
  SPEAKER_00: So if I'm the seller then, you know, what should I be doing though?
• 9:08
  SPEAKER_00: Right.
• 9:08
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, uh the only thing I really have direct control over is what I put in the email or the voicemail or the call that goes out and my LinkedIn profile.
• 9:17
  SPEAKER_00: I don't really control what's on the website, right?
• 9:19
  SPEAKER_00: So what what do I do with my tools that I have?
• 9:22
  SPEAKER_01: So when I was an individual contributor and I've worked for multiple startups, and I think some of the best sellers uh that are out there leverage their own network.
• 9:30
  SPEAKER_01: Uh and so, you know, I sold something to an end user six months ago.
• 9:34
  SPEAKER_01: And look, you don't have to use their name.
• 9:36
  SPEAKER_01: You can use an anonymous story, but a seller should have their own uh contact.
• 9:41
  SPEAKER_01: I was gonna say the word Rolodex, but many of the people listening to this probably have no clue what a Rolodex is.
• 9:46
  SPEAKER_01: Um, you want to have your kind of listing, you know, of your own references, value-based stories, discussions, you know, overall.
• 9:55
  SPEAKER_01: Um, the other side of that, look at as a seller, your best sellers understand who they're calling, the company they're calling, and having a crafted idea of what the value prop is going to be that impacts them directly.
• 10:08
  SPEAKER_01: You just can't generically state that, hey, I'm in the Threat Intel space.
• 10:12
  SPEAKER_01: I know you have a SOC and you, you know, Threat Intel is valuable.
• 10:15
  SPEAKER_01: You need to uncover through various resources, could be online footprint resources and reading some articles or posts from certain individuals of that company.
• 10:23
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, it could be industry stats around, you know, that kind of that uh marketplace or that industry is uh failure, has more failure than normal, or the industry uh itself is being impacted by cyber threats more than other industries.
• 10:37
  SPEAKER_01: You need to take all that information and package it up and come, you know, uh from a campaigning standpoint, really come with some on-point stories to that individual, you know, crafty email around what could impact their job function, what can impact their organization or the industry they're in.
• 10:54
  SPEAKER_01: So as personal as can be, without actually speaking to them, you got to do that homework ahead of time to make that you know impact.
• 11:01
  SPEAKER_00: Now you said something interesting there, which was you said value-based stories.
• 11:04
  SPEAKER_00: And then you talked about doing research to think you said to tune or to adapt your value prop.
• 11:11
  SPEAKER_00: Tell me more about the value element of that versus uh the non-value way that people do it sometimes.
• 11:17
  SPEAKER_01: So so I think it's critical and again the best sellers that I've worked with were have have been able to capture metrics, you know, and and outcomes, you know, from the organizations they've sold to.
• 11:28
  SPEAKER_01: So I, you know, if I've sold a solution set to a SOC, you know, there's X amount of analysts and there's X amount of uh alerts, you know, I've sold that technology, and now six months later, what's going on?
• 11:40
  SPEAKER_01: You know, the analysts per day were dealing with 100 alerts.
• 11:44
  SPEAKER_01: Now they're dealing with 50 qualified alerts.
• 11:46
  SPEAKER_01: Hey, there's you know, value presented right there.
• 11:49
  SPEAKER_01: And so, you know, not all sellers do this.
• 11:52
  SPEAKER_01: They sell, they build that relationship, they stay in contact with the account, but your best sellers go back to the account themselves or the company with the seller and you know, that reference story and get quantifiable information.
• 12:06
  SPEAKER_01: You know, what was the cost savings, what was the time savings, how did it impact operations and workflow?
• 12:13
  SPEAKER_01: All those elements are value-based discussion.
• 12:15
  SPEAKER_01: So when you then proactively call into another account, you have a good reference story to say that I took an account that had volume X down to volume Y.
• 12:25
  SPEAKER_01: This allowed them to streamline processes and save money and you know, have a higher efficiency rate around security operations, for instance.
• 12:34
  SPEAKER_01: That's the next step or the value-based discussion or value-based uh capture of information necessary for campaigning and opening up doors for new opportunities.
• 12:43
  SPEAKER_00: I'll let how specific you were there, Alan.
• 12:45
  SPEAKER_00: So um I think if you ask 100 salespeople, do you tell stories?
• 12:49
  SPEAKER_00: 95 of the percent will say yes.
• 12:51
  SPEAKER_00: And maybe all of those 95, 80 percent actually do.
• 12:54
  SPEAKER_00: I don't know, right?
• 12:55
  SPEAKER_00: We may bellish the truth a little bit.
• 12:56
  SPEAKER_00: But uh what I found is that um stories tend to be very generic, right?
• 13:01
  SPEAKER_00: It's uh we went to a Fortune 500 company in finance, and they had a problem with their alerts, and we helped them reduce their alerts.
• 13:08
  SPEAKER_00: And joining the CISO was very happy and all the rest of it.
• 13:12
  SPEAKER_00: It's like a, I don't know, a story you tell at a bar rather than say, okay, let's get into specifics.
• 13:16
  SPEAKER_00: Let's talk about the value that you were talking about there.
• 13:18
  SPEAKER_00: We went from this to this, and what that meant was some business outcome came from it, or someone got promoted, or something like that, right?
• 13:25
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, exactly.
• 13:27
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, it it your best sellers will build those relationships, you know.
• 13:31
  SPEAKER_01: Um, ultimately you have a champion within an account.
• 13:33
  SPEAKER_01: And this is something we can talk about later if it makes sense, but you need to have a champion with an account.
• 13:37
  SPEAKER_01: Nothing is ever sold without a champion within the account.
• 13:40
  SPEAKER_01: And that champion has a vested interest in using your solution and making sure the solution's valuable in the organization.
• 13:46
  SPEAKER_01: That's a great individual to build a relationship with overall.
• 13:50
  SPEAKER_01: Get them out, you know, uh he or she out for dinner, certain activities.
• 13:53
  SPEAKER_01: Hey, just ask for a phone call to kind of talk about we're three months into the project.
• 13:57
  SPEAKER_01: How's it going?
• 13:58
  SPEAKER_01: What's changed?
• 13:59
  SPEAKER_01: You know, overall, we're six months into the project.
• 14:01
  SPEAKER_01: What's changed?
• 14:02
  SPEAKER_01: All a seller needs is one or two or three of those, you know, and you have a solid foundation to pique the interest of a prospect, you know, to engage with you as an organization.
• 14:12
  SPEAKER_01: And so it doesn't matter what size the organization is, especially if you're a smaller organization with maybe some newer twist on technology, you need to have you should have that overall because you can't rely on feature function, you know, value.
• 14:24
  SPEAKER_01: You need to, you know, rely on business value overall at the end of the day.
• 14:27
  SPEAKER_01: But in large organizations, the same thing applies.
• 14:30
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 14:31
  SPEAKER_00: You know, you know what's interesting is that um what I've seen a lot is you go to work at a vendor and um you're almost surrounded by product information, right?
• 14:42
  SPEAKER_00: They the companies aligned around a product, they do P ⁇ L around products, the PMM is all about products, uh, the PM is all about products, they align their engineering teams around products, things like that.
• 14:53
  SPEAKER_00: And then what happens, of course, is what ends up in the salesperson's hands is about products, it's features, it's speeds and feeds, it's it's generic statements around value, but for, I don't know, 10% of it, and the rest of it has how awesome we are.
• 15:06
  SPEAKER_00: So, how does a, you know, let's let's go back to we got uh you know a couple of sellers in Cyber Donut here.
• 15:11
  SPEAKER_00: How do they resist that that surge of product coming at me all the time and somehow translate it into business value that you go and talk to a prospect about?
• 15:19
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, so so it it it can be challenging.
• 15:22
  SPEAKER_01: Um, a lot of this, you know, smaller organizations or startups are are, you know, driven by a technologist.
• 15:30
  SPEAKER_01: And and that's outstanding.
• 15:31
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, that's what evolves the the industry, what helps the industry overall.
• 15:35
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, and so a lot of that speak initially within a smaller company is speeds and feeds, as you stated.
• 15:41
  SPEAKER_01: Now, those are important things to understand and know.
• 15:43
  SPEAKER_01: But there's a time and place when to leverage that information.
• 15:46
  SPEAKER_01: And your sales leader, your marketing organization, and your sellers, you know, they're the ones that need to recognize when do I need the speeds and feed information and bring that into the conversation.
• 15:58
  SPEAKER_01: And look, they're hired, you know, sellers are hired to, you know, uh do discovery and qualification around problems within an organization.
• 16:07
  SPEAKER_01: It's not a technology problem.
• 16:08
  SPEAKER_01: That technology problem is causing some sort of business problem or some sort of operational business problem.
• 16:14
  SPEAKER_01: The sellers need to kind of dig into that area further.
• 16:18
  SPEAKER_01: And as a smaller organization or newer organization to the marketplace, then the next step is all those discussions.
• 16:25
  SPEAKER_01: Like you really need to have a nice circle of collaboration.
• 16:29
  SPEAKER_01: Sellers, you know, the leaders speaking to sellers about their weekly calls and what are they hearing and what are they seeing, and what are the challenges that are coming about, what information is necessary to close the gap in that kind of buying journey with the online presence.
• 16:43
  SPEAKER_01: That collaboration from the selling side needs to be brought into marketing or to product management, you know, as it's like, hey, I get it.
• 16:51
  SPEAKER_01: Speeds and feeds are great.
• 16:52
  SPEAKER_01: We need to have that information.
• 16:53
  SPEAKER_01: But I'm telling you right now, they don't care about the speed and feed because they have a hard time understanding how it impacts their business or their current business workflow, you know, overall.
• 17:02
  SPEAKER_01: And these are the questions I'm hearing, and this is what I'm saying, and it seems to be compelling.
• 17:06
  SPEAKER_01: So, as an organization and as a team, can we then drop a white paper, you know, or some sort of article around the value of our solution does this for the organization, the business outcome overall, uh, the uh and the areas that uh we're impacting that are negative within an organization overall.
• 17:23
  SPEAKER_01: That's a piece that can be a little bit of a tug and war for an early organization because there's a lot of technology technology people in place.
• 17:31
  SPEAKER_01: And that business side, you know, can be lost.
• 17:34
  SPEAKER_01: Now, I do think it's better.
• 17:35
  SPEAKER_01: I think as as companies uh come to market in today's world, and if they're doing their research around how buyers are looking at and doing their own research, it's important to have that business side also applied out there and to help fill that buying journey overall, where they're not talking to you, they're they're talking to others in the industry, they're talking to payers, they're talking to analysts, and they're doing their own online research.
• 17:58
  SPEAKER_00: That's a good point.
• 17:59
  SPEAKER_00: I like what you're saying about the different types of information, because it's not like it's all one or all the other.
• 18:05
  SPEAKER_00: If so, if someone bet to the original premise of the Bride's journey, depending on who it is, they might be looking for some more specific technical things in a white paper.
• 18:12
  SPEAKER_00: And then someone maybe further up might be thinking more about, well, you know, what about the wider impacts of of what you're doing and and how you're different?
• 18:19
  SPEAKER_00: But you what you're what you're saying is the feedback directly from the customer through the sellers into the rest of the organization is where you know we really need to be firm about what we need as opposed to feel like we're getting diluted done.
• 18:31
  SPEAKER_01: Correct.
• 18:31
  SPEAKER_01: So so obviously you need the feedback and communication, but you need the organization to be able to execute against that.
• 18:37
  SPEAKER_01: You know, and look at I I've worked for organizations and and we've had sell uh selling teams.
• 18:43
  SPEAKER_01: And as a leader, I've asked and said, hey, you know, this is the type of information in today's market or or positioning a new product set.
• 18:50
  SPEAKER_01: We need, um, there's other priorities, there's other things.
• 18:54
  SPEAKER_01: And so, you know, it goes to executing internally to write up that information.
• 18:59
  SPEAKER_01: Because a seller probably is not the best individual to write up the full, you know, uh value prop, you know, overall.
• 19:06
  SPEAKER_01: They could take a stab at it.
• 19:07
  SPEAKER_01: Look at I've had I've had sellers take a stab.
• 19:09
  SPEAKER_01: But when I was it worked for a startup, it was upon me to write something up initially, and then I stuck it worked its way through the cycles in the organization, but I jumpstarted it, you know, and so any seller, any leader, um, if you're working for a smaller organization, you're wearing multiple hats.
• 19:23
  SPEAKER_01: You know, you're a seller, but you're probably doing some PM, you're probably doing some marketing, uh, you might even be handling some tech support with your SE, you know, overall, but that's what you signed up for to work for, you know, an early stage organization.
• 19:36
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I talked to Tim Eads, who's uh general partner at Cyber Mentor Fund, and he described it, you know, those early sellers.
• 19:43
  SPEAKER_00: He said you need people that you can drop off in the in the in the field with three days of food and come back in two weeks and and get the feedback.
• 19:50
  SPEAKER_00: And they and they figured everything out, right?
• 19:52
  SPEAKER_00: They've they've they've gone and survived for the two weeks and they've they've got the feedback and they know what they're they're trying to get to, and you know, they've got that whole wherewithal about the learning and the adaptability that that uh is so important.
• 20:03
  SPEAKER_01: Agreed.
• 20:04
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, agreed.
• 20:05
  SPEAKER_01: It looked I loved it when I did it.
• 20:07
  SPEAKER_01: You know, I also didn't mind working for an organization that had a lot of supporting staff around me.
• 20:11
  SPEAKER_01: So there's give and take and uh overall, but it it is if you're going to work for early stage, anybody that's earlier in their career or looking to work at a startup, you need to understand that you're wearing multiple hats to help the company execute and to help drive your success overall.
• 20:27
  SPEAKER_00: Let's talk about the other side of this, which is on more in the marketing side, right?
• 20:31
  SPEAKER_00: So back to the premise, we've got people out there doing their own research.
• 20:34
  SPEAKER_00: They're getting, let's say, over halfway through their you know journey, their buying cycle on their own.
• 20:40
  SPEAKER_00: And yet we're one of you know 3,700 vendors, let's say one of at least 2025 in the same sort of you know, part of the market, usually.
• 20:49
  SPEAKER_00: What can someone like Cyber Donut, who no one knows from Adam, do to stand out to be noticed that uh is going to give them a chance of being on some sort of list that says, yeah, let's talk to those guys as well.
• 21:01
  SPEAKER_01: Sure.
• 21:02
  SPEAKER_01: So look at, I mean, I think search optimization is a big piece of it.
• 21:05
  SPEAKER_01: Look at there's a cost associated with that.
• 21:07
  SPEAKER_01: But if you're in a category, so that I guess that would be the number one thing, first of all.
• 21:11
  SPEAKER_01: I've I've seen organizations that have unique technology and they don't fit into a category.
• 21:16
  SPEAKER_01: That's challenging, you know, when there's not a category out there.
• 21:19
  SPEAKER_01: It doesn't mean your solution set's not valuable, uh, but you need to really think about how you're going to position yourself and what edge of a category you can kind of you know jump into.
• 21:29
  SPEAKER_00: Well, let's talk about that quickly.
• 21:30
  SPEAKER_00: So it's kind of interesting.
• 21:31
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, there's been this whole thing in the last, I don't know, what, five, eight years category design.
• 21:36
  SPEAKER_00: You know, you want to be in a category of one rather than one of many because that's where the real value is.
• 21:41
  SPEAKER_00: And yet you're right.
• 21:42
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, trying to evangelize a whole new category on your own.
• 21:45
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, there's some that do it, but uh, there's a very, very, very long list of those that have tried and failed.
• 21:51
  SPEAKER_00: So I don't know how a company balances out which way do we go on this.
• 21:54
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, so this is a little bit of a tug and war between sales and sometimes your technology leaders because they they think they're so unique and valuable.
• 22:02
  SPEAKER_01: And look at it, they can be, but you really, in my experience, you really is your best, you're you're in a best situation when you're in a category.
• 22:11
  SPEAKER_01: Um, you know, off the top of my head, I guess the analogy I would use um is that most of the country where you see a CVS, you see a Walgreens across the street.
• 22:22
  SPEAKER_01: You know, there's a lot that and people are like, why would there be two pharmacies right across the street from each other?
• 22:27
  SPEAKER_01: Well, the fact is, if you do some research, it benefits both organizations.
• 22:32
  SPEAKER_01: When a consumer sees two together, they have options.
• 22:37
  SPEAKER_01: And when those options are there, they typically buy more at the end of the day.
• 22:42
  SPEAKER_01: Don't ask me why there's people that do that type of work, but that's the same with McDonald's and Burger King, it was the same situation overall.
• 22:48
  SPEAKER_01: And so being in a category or being close to another vendor in the space that you're in typically will benefit you overall because people can envision what they're doing.
• 22:59
  SPEAKER_01: And now you might be in a category that has some big players in it, and that's fine.
• 23:03
  SPEAKER_01: Then you come to the table with, well, this is why how I'm different, you know, or and this is my uniqueness to what they do, and this is how they handle it.
• 23:11
  SPEAKER_01: And I'm not saying that's bad, but there's better ways to do it, and this is why we have a new solution set.
• 23:15
  SPEAKER_01: So I'm a firm believer that being in a category is easier.
• 23:19
  SPEAKER_01: It doesn't mean you can't be successful being a standalone.
• 23:22
  SPEAKER_01: But if you're going to be a standalone, then I will go back to some of the things we talked about already, Andrew, is that the content necessary to create that, you know, uh discussion set, the communication, the value prop to be, you know, out there in the wild, you know, on an online presence and with an analyst or the analyst community can adopt or understand what your value prop is in a different category, is the other crucial area because analysts, we, you know, you like them or you don't like them, they play a huge role in getting vendors shortlisted and communicating to you know end users and buyers as to the types of solutions that could solve a problem that they've outlined to the analyst.
• 24:05
  SPEAKER_01: And so if the analysts don't understand you, um, then that's you're even in a tougher area overall.
• 24:11
  SPEAKER_01: So fundamentally, having that kind of content and information for end users through the buying journey, but also analysts to be able to consume and kind of understand and bucket you in a certain area is another critical, critical piece of the pie to get uh opportunities created, you know, with organizations.
• 24:29
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I feel like if you're gonna go and try and be a category of one, a lot has to be aligned for that to come off.
• 24:37
  SPEAKER_00: And I think one of I think these days, and I don't know if this is the right way, the wrong way, but you could have someone in your organization with a CEO.
• 24:44
  SPEAKER_00: Someone has to be very loud, compelling.
• 24:47
  SPEAKER_00: When people, when they talk, people listen, sort of person.
• 24:50
  SPEAKER_00: Otherwise, you're just not gonna get any attention out there, right?
• 24:53
  SPEAKER_00: Even if your words are very different and you're doing all the you're saying the right things and all the rest of it, unless there's some way to actually get the attention in the first place, you're just gonna struggle to get any real traction out there.
• 25:04
  SPEAKER_01: I I completely agreed.
• 25:05
  SPEAKER_01: You need to have an evangelist in the marketplace that had that has a voice.
• 25:09
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and you need to have some of those, you know, first initial customers that you can kind of leverage the why they bought, what how they're using it, and why it's different than what they had in place.
• 25:19
  SPEAKER_01: And, you know, I guess my I'll go back to you know, Mandiant.
• 25:24
  SPEAKER_01: You know, when Mandiant was a standalone organization, you know, doing the you know, IR response work and all the cybersecurity services work, and now they're owned by Google.
• 25:32
  SPEAKER_01: You know, when I joined FireEye, it was shortly after they, you know, FireEye bought Mandiant.
• 25:36
  SPEAKER_01: But the MDR service, Managed Detection and Response Service back in 2015, knew, very unique, very different, you know, overall.
• 25:45
  SPEAKER_01: Um, everybody else was an MSSP, you know, more device-driven, you know, overall.
• 25:50
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and I think the combination of Mandian having a big name in the industry about the number, you know, being the number one instant response organization.
• 25:57
  SPEAKER_01: I think Kevin Mandia, you know, who's well known in the industry, you know, around cybersecurity attacks and all that, we're those two pieces, as we just kind of outlined, were key to how MDR became more of an adopted approach.
• 26:12
  SPEAKER_01: You know, uh, we had great success when I was there selling it.
• 26:15
  SPEAKER_01: But now if you look at all the organizations, they've adopted more MDR approaches.
• 26:19
  SPEAKER_01: You know, SecureWorks back in the day was MSSP.
• 26:22
  SPEAKER_01: Now they have an MDR service.
• 26:23
  SPEAKER_01: Verizon back in the day was an MSSP.
• 26:25
  SPEAKER_01: Now they're an MDR service.
• 26:27
  SPEAKER_01: So the market evolved based off of those initial, you know, uh success, you know, the success by Mandiant, um, the instant response work they did, and they had an evangelist that was very well known in the industry that helped carry that ball forward around messaging and the value of an MDR service over an MSSP service.
• 26:45
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, he he definitely had that uh pay attention to sort of cachet about him back then.
• 26:50
  SPEAKER_00: I don't know what he's doing now, but back then when Kevin Mandia, he was sought after to speak at conferences on stages, wherever it might be, and he would do it.
• 26:57
  SPEAKER_00: He'd be really compelling when he thought about it, right?
• 27:00
  SPEAKER_00: He'd people go, God, he he had that gift or has that gift of whatever he just said just makes perfect sense.
• 27:07
  SPEAKER_00: Some people have that, and some people have the opposite.
• 27:10
  SPEAKER_00: Some people could take something very simple and make it sound incredibly complicated.
• 27:13
  SPEAKER_00: Um, so it's funny how you see that the two in our industry uh go off each other a little bit.
• 27:18
  SPEAKER_00: Um Yeah, let's let's uh so we talked about the the getting attention in the early stage, right?
• 27:23
  SPEAKER_00: The the buyer's journey in the early stage.
• 27:25
  SPEAKER_00: And we but let's move on a little bit.
• 27:27
  SPEAKER_00: We're now into a sales cycle, right?
• 27:29
  SPEAKER_00: And especially in the last couple of years, um the buyer's journey has changed in terms of the scrutiny that goes on on deals at the moment.
• 27:36
  SPEAKER_00: I don't know what you've seen recently about what impact that's had on sales teams that you've been involved in.
• 27:42
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, no, for sure it has.
• 27:44
  SPEAKER_01: Um as a I'm a strong believer in a sales methodology.
• 27:48
  SPEAKER_01: You know, uh I've used force management, command of the message multiple times, multiple organizations.
• 27:53
  SPEAKER_01: I've brought it into my selling teams, you know, overall.
• 27:57
  SPEAKER_01: They're all valuable.
• 27:58
  SPEAKER_01: I'm not saying one's better than the other.
• 28:00
  SPEAKER_01: I happen to use this one.
• 28:01
  SPEAKER_01: But one of the key elements to this is really good qualification and discovery uh at the end of the day.
• 28:08
  SPEAKER_01: And it is qualifying and understanding, you know, I'll net it out, a current state.
• 28:13
  SPEAKER_01: What's the situation today?
• 28:14
  SPEAKER_01: You know, why are you looking?
• 28:16
  SPEAKER_01: And what's the negative consequences of what's happening?
• 28:18
  SPEAKER_01: Like what's the pain points, what's the operational issues that you're trying to solve, what anxiety do you have around cybersecurity overall that you're trying to overcome?
• 28:27
  SPEAKER_01: So, what are the negative consequences of that through discovery and qualification?
• 28:31
  SPEAKER_01: The outcome of that and capturing that information is you can get to a point of understanding what the desired state looks like.
• 28:36
  SPEAKER_01: And that desired state, you know, overall helps you build your required capabilities.
• 28:42
  SPEAKER_01: But the last piece is if we get to that point, what is the you know, business outcomes, you know, the value-based business outcomes of going to that desired state?
• 28:52
  SPEAKER_01: And this goes to our earlier conversation, Andrew, is kind of closing that gap and understanding outcomes, you know, overall.
• 28:58
  SPEAKER_01: And so doing that heavy qualification isn't is important.
• 29:01
  SPEAKER_01: So you need to understand the the motion and the needs within the organization.
• 29:05
  SPEAKER_01: The other two core areas that are, you know, critical to helping minimize uh frustration in a sales cycle and minimize the risk of losing a deal.
• 29:14
  SPEAKER_01: I called out earlier a champion.
• 29:16
  SPEAKER_01: You need to have at least an individual in the organization that has influence in the organization, their voice is heard, uh, and they want your solution set over the competitors.
• 29:28
  SPEAKER_01: The competitor probably has a different champion, you know, overall.
• 29:31
  SPEAKER_01: So in the end, the best champion that has the most influence that can help drive what the value will be to the organization, uh, will probably win.
• 29:42
  SPEAKER_01: Now, your job as a seller is to uncover the champion, not always easy, build that relationship and make sure they have all that information necessary to show what the value will be, uh, how you'll get to that positive business outcome in the end of the day overall.
• 29:59
  SPEAKER_01: And so if you can have a champion and then get access to the economic buyer, this is the individual that has the authority to spend the money and cut the PO, you know, get the PO cut overall.
• 30:13
  SPEAKER_01: Getting access to that individual earlier in the process, not late in the process.
• 30:18
  SPEAKER_01: A lot of times sellers or selling teams connect with that economic buyer in the very last stages of the selling motion.
• 30:25
  SPEAKER_01: You know, hey, we've done this, this, and this, we've done this, and will you, you know, spend the money and cut the PO?
• 30:30
  SPEAKER_01: I'm not saying that's a bad time, but if you connect with them earlier and validate certain situations, hey, this is what we've mapped out.
• 30:37
  SPEAKER_01: Your champion and your team has said this is the problem.
• 30:40
  SPEAKER_01: Do you agree this is the problem?
• 30:42
  SPEAKER_01: We also will do a validation event with you, you know, overall.
• 30:45
  SPEAKER_01: If I do the validation event and I prove this out, you know, will you, you know, take the consideration to invest in my company?
• 30:52
  SPEAKER_01: I'm not saying I'm not asking for a guarantee, but don't do, you know, a proof of concept or a POV without talking to the economic buyer to make sure that that's the time and place to do it overall, and they have access to budget and nothing's changed, you know, overall.
• 31:06
  SPEAKER_01: And so you can help minimize some of that risk by connecting with the right individuals, having the champion, building the economic buyer.
• 31:14
  SPEAKER_01: Now, what I've definitely seen over the last two years, companies have you know ratcheted down budgets.
• 31:20
  SPEAKER_01: We've talked to economic buyers and we're like covered up.
• 31:23
  SPEAKER_01: And I've had CIOs.
• 31:24
  SPEAKER_01: Yep, I get it, Alan.
• 31:26
  SPEAKER_01: We're going to look forward.
• 31:27
  SPEAKER_01: I see the value.
• 31:27
  SPEAKER_01: The team's done a great job.
• 31:29
  SPEAKER_01: I, you know, I'm going to go get the budget cut, you know, and get a PO cut.
• 31:32
  SPEAKER_01: And somebody in finance raises their hand and says, uh-oh, no, no, no, no, no.
• 31:36
  SPEAKER_01: You know, the quarter is going to be a little softer.
• 31:38
  SPEAKER_01: We got to hold off and do this.
• 31:40
  SPEAKER_01: That's the frustrating part in sales right now is that finance is stepping in, you know, further.
• 31:48
  SPEAKER_01: Um, sellers that understand this, you know, should put that as part of their qualification process.
• 31:53
  SPEAKER_01: You know, the decision process, who needs to sign off.
• 31:56
  SPEAKER_01: You know, you guys are the economic buyer, you say you have budget in your, you know, your business unit, you can spend it.
• 32:01
  SPEAKER_01: The CIO says I can do it and do it this.
• 32:03
  SPEAKER_01: Okay, Mr.
• 32:04
  SPEAKER_01: and Mrs.
• 32:05
  SPEAKER_01: CIO, get the PO cut.
• 32:07
  SPEAKER_01: Is anybody going to question getting the PO cut?
• 32:09
  SPEAKER_01: That's another question that needs to probably be asked in today's world.
• 32:12
  SPEAKER_01: And they might say, well, it has to go through financial review.
• 32:15
  SPEAKER_01: And if that's the case, okay, how can I help make sure we minimize the risk?
• 32:20
  SPEAKER_01: That's a very tough one.
• 32:21
  SPEAKER_01: As a seller, I didn't talk to too many financial people.
• 32:25
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, sometimes they're at the table.
• 32:27
  SPEAKER_01: Sometimes a CFO is part of the buying process because cybersecurity is kind of an executive decision, you know, overall.
• 32:34
  SPEAKER_01: But a lot of times finance was not at the table, and the economic buyer, you know, 99 out nine out of 10 times could get the deal done, you know, if not higher.
• 32:42
  SPEAKER_01: That's slid a little bit in today's economic times and the way companies uh have changed.
• 32:48
  SPEAKER_01: I think it's coming back.
• 32:49
  SPEAKER_01: I think it's gonna go back to business units having authority, having their budget, you know, overall.
• 32:55
  SPEAKER_01: But as a seller, the more you can understand about the players that are making the decision, who has to sign off on the process.
• 33:01
  SPEAKER_01: How does a PO get cut?
• 33:03
  SPEAKER_01: Who has to sign off?
• 33:04
  SPEAKER_01: Well, yeah, the CIO has to sign off, then it goes to the controller, then it goes to the VP of finance, then it goes to CFO.
• 33:09
  SPEAKER_01: Understanding those steps are gonna be critical to minimize any risk that you might have overall.
• 33:14
  SPEAKER_01: Not easy, but it's the market we're in today.
• 33:17
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, it's almost like you have to ask the question, not if they're gonna um scrutinize it, but how are they gonna scrutinize it?
• 33:23
  SPEAKER_00: What are they looking for?
• 33:24
  SPEAKER_00: What can we build into the POV that's gonna help shore this up?
• 33:28
  SPEAKER_00: Because we, we and them both want to be successful around this.
• 33:31
  SPEAKER_00: So let's collaborate on how best to put that together.
• 33:33
  SPEAKER_01: Right.
• 33:34
  SPEAKER_01: And so look, I'll add something else, the ROI.
• 33:36
  SPEAKER_01: This is another, and it can be a tricky one to do, but if you can, as a selling team, build out, okay, you're gonna adopt this into your SOC.
• 33:45
  SPEAKER_01: And this is what the metrics we believe are gonna change.
• 33:47
  SPEAKER_01: And the change around those metrics equals this amount of dollar savings or this amount of workflow savings.
• 33:54
  SPEAKER_01: And the workflow part's the trickier part is like an analyst, yeah, an analyst works 10 hours a day.
• 34:00
  SPEAKER_01: If I could take two hours of time and you put it somewhere else to do something else, what's the value of that?
• 34:06
  SPEAKER_01: That's a tricky one to capture, but this is where having a champion that can help uncover that type of information and work with you to build out a document around ROI and cost savings or security uh efficiency and efficacy, then yeah, you're in a better position to make sure it gets through the financial view that it's not just a spend.
• 34:29
  SPEAKER_01: There's a value to bringing it in and maybe a savings overall, either from a future savings because you're protecting from an attack of some sort or an operational savings.
• 34:39
  SPEAKER_00: How do you know you've got a champion who can really do all this and bring the buyer, the economic buyer into the equation and make it all come together?
• 34:48
  SPEAKER_01: So the easiest, so and I have a great chart on this because there's coaches, and coaches are valuable within an organization.
• 34:55
  SPEAKER_01: But the champion, and I called it out early, really has that influence.
• 34:58
  SPEAKER_01: So in discussing and going through the qualification process, how do you make decisions?
• 35:04
  SPEAKER_01: Who decides on the technology, uh, who decides on the business side of you know, going forward with the solution set we're talking about or buying technology?
• 35:11
  SPEAKER_01: And if they say, you know, it goes, this goes up to the CIO or to the VP of security or CISO or whatever it be, and that's that's the economic buyer, because they have the budget, the real easiest way to tell if you have a coach or a champion, can you get me a discussion with the economic buyer?
• 35:27
  SPEAKER_01: Can you look, look, I just want to introduce myself where both both organizations are spending time, you know, solving a need.
• 35:33
  SPEAKER_01: You know, you want to do an eval or POC, you know, executive alignment.
• 35:39
  SPEAKER_01: Hey, my boss or my CEO or my VP sales wants to talk to your CISO or your CIO.
• 35:45
  SPEAKER_01: If that individual can orchestrate, yeah, absolutely, Alan.
• 35:49
  SPEAKER_01: Let's get up a call, then you have a champion because they have power or influence to get the right people to the table.
• 35:55
  SPEAKER_01: A coach typically would be like, uh, I don't know if I can get that done.
• 35:59
  SPEAKER_01: And again, that's not saying that coach is bad, but you need to understand that that's a coach.
• 36:03
  SPEAKER_01: They're not an influencer that has their voice heard uh as strong as needed, maybe to get a deal done.
• 36:10
  SPEAKER_01: So there are certain ways to test.
• 36:13
  SPEAKER_01: One of the best ways to test in an easier way, instead of being really, you know, you can be up front the way I just said.
• 36:18
  SPEAKER_01: And that was my style.
• 36:18
  SPEAKER_01: I kind of said, hey, let's can I get a conversation?
• 36:21
  SPEAKER_01: But at some point they're in the selling motion, they're going to want to probably do a POC or a POV.
• 36:26
  SPEAKER_01: If that's the case, the best way for a seller not to look like a bad guy is, hey, I can't get an eval license issued.
• 36:35
  SPEAKER_01: My boss, my VP of sales won't issue a license for eval until we have that 15 or 10 minute introductory call with the economic buyer.
• 36:44
  SPEAKER_01: Now, it's not just I want to learn who they are or talk to them.
• 36:48
  SPEAKER_01: It's a great time to kind of outline what as a selling team you've captured.
• 36:52
  SPEAKER_01: We're gonna do this event because we've heard that you have this problem.
• 36:56
  SPEAKER_01: It's affecting your business this way, it's affecting your workflow this way.
• 37:00
  SPEAKER_01: We believe we can solve it this way, this way, this way, this way.
• 37:03
  SPEAKER_01: We're gonna test this, this, and this.
• 37:05
  SPEAKER_01: I want to run all that by the economic buyer.
• 37:07
  SPEAKER_01: And if they agree that, yep, I see what you're saying, Alan, this all makes sense.
• 37:12
  SPEAKER_01: My team's gonna invest time, your team's gonna invest time.
• 37:14
  SPEAKER_01: Let's move forward with the uh eval license.
• 37:18
  SPEAKER_01: That's a great way to get access to the economic buyer.
• 37:22
  SPEAKER_01: I have been on calls.
• 37:24
  SPEAKER_01: Sellers have done their job, teams have done their stuff.
• 37:27
  SPEAKER_01: I've talked to the economic buyer, we've outlined that all out.
• 37:30
  SPEAKER_01: And in all honesty, the economic buyer says, look, it, we do need this.
• 37:33
  SPEAKER_01: But I'll be honest with you, I have three other priorities ahead of this.
• 37:36
  SPEAKER_01: This is not the time that my team should be spending, you know, right now.
• 37:40
  SPEAKER_01: Alan, give me a month, give me two months, and let's revisit it.
• 37:44
  SPEAKER_01: Now you have better alignment and you have collaboration around a need overall, and you have access to the individual that can, you know, get his team to work, he or she's team to work on something overall.
• 37:54
  SPEAKER_01: And so I've had that kind of not backfire.
• 37:57
  SPEAKER_01: It's always good to understand where you are in a selling motion, but the last thing you want to do is put all that effort in place and it gets shot up to the economic buyer, and they're like, I can't buy this now.
• 38:06
  SPEAKER_01: This is a you know Q3 opportunity, six months away.
• 38:10
  SPEAKER_01: That's that's not a good situation for a seller to be in, to be able to talk to their leadership or to the early stage organization.
• 38:17
  SPEAKER_01: Every deal counts.
• 38:18
  SPEAKER_01: You don't want deals to be slipping like that because you have poor lack of execution around understanding buying process, uh, decision process and access to the people that can make those decisions.
• 38:29
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I love that.
• 38:30
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, one of the things that's interesting that I've come to realize over the years is that, you know, we in technology, we get very focused on the hard, the the factual things, you know, the this is what we're gonna do, and this is gonna be the benefit, this is gonna be the ROI or the economic impact or the way it's gonna be justified, things like that.
• 38:46
  SPEAKER_00: And we get very specific around these hard things.
• 38:49
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 38:49
  SPEAKER_00: And the one thing that uh we're not often not taught to or um encouraged to consider is the emotional side of buying, right?
• 38:57
  SPEAKER_00: And the old phrase that people talk about is people buy with emotion and justify with logic, right?
• 39:01
  SPEAKER_00: I I tell people all the time it's called an ROI justification for a reason.
• 39:05
  SPEAKER_00: It's not a it's not it's not anything else.
• 39:07
  SPEAKER_00: So I often think about you know, when you when you go and engage with the EB and you're working with these teams, how you meld the two, because it's not like one or the other is gonna be completely dominant, it's gonna be part of it.
• 39:18
  SPEAKER_00: And then here's someone you're meeting for the first time, and you gotta think, well, how could I make that person a hero, right?
• 39:22
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, I don't know if you've experienced any way to kind of handle that conversation.
• 39:26
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 39:26
  SPEAKER_01: So so I think you're calling out an area, and this goes to some, you know, more detailed questions that sellers need to ask.
• 39:33
  SPEAKER_01: Specifically, I mean it's across the board, but I'll call it obviously cybersecurity.
• 39:37
  SPEAKER_01: You know, I spent you know, 11 plus years in it.
• 39:39
  SPEAKER_01: My time at FireEye, uh, and the market was evolving, you know, overall, but many of the reasons why somebody wanted to buy was, you know, I don't want to be breached or I don't want to be attacked by ransomware.
• 39:52
  SPEAKER_01: That doesn't really say anything.
• 39:53
  SPEAKER_01: Like to your point, it's not really harmful.
• 39:56
  SPEAKER_01: It's harmful, but really, what does that mean to that organization?
• 40:00
  SPEAKER_01: Like, if you got attacked by ransomware, how would that impact your business, you know, overall?
• 40:06
  SPEAKER_01: Like, what would get potentially shut down?
• 40:09
  SPEAKER_01: And if you were if you lost one day of production, what would the cost be?
• 40:14
  SPEAKER_01: If you lost one day of internal operations, what does that cost look like?
• 40:19
  SPEAKER_01: From a brand standpoint, of course, you don't want to be in the news.
• 40:22
  SPEAKER_01: You know, if you're a public company, you don't want your stock to be impacted.
• 40:25
  SPEAKER_01: Those are all kind of just things we all know about.
• 40:28
  SPEAKER_01: But more specifically to the organization itself is that as asking those deeper questions if you're in cybersecurity, like you're trying to change this, or you're trying to protect from this.
• 40:39
  SPEAKER_01: I get it.
• 40:39
  SPEAKER_01: Ransomware, breaches, things of that nature, you know, malicious activity taking place.
• 40:44
  SPEAKER_01: You want on to cover that.
• 40:45
  SPEAKER_01: But the next question out is that let's let's talk about if you had an incident, what what would really happen in the organization and how it impact your organization and what would the outcome of that impact be?
• 40:56
  SPEAKER_01: This way you have, again, more compelling information when you go talk to the economic buyer or you talk to, you know, a group of individuals that are, you know, as a committee, you know, type of purchase, you can actually speak in their language that you're trying to protect from this from happening.
• 41:11
  SPEAKER_01: You know, our critical infrastructure can't go down because it affects, you know, three million customers at the end of the day.
• 41:17
  SPEAKER_01: That's the next level, you know, overall, especially in cybersecurity.
• 41:21
  SPEAKER_01: You don't want to just go with, yeah, I get it.
• 41:23
  SPEAKER_01: You don't want to be breached.
• 41:24
  SPEAKER_01: And yeah, you don't want to be, you know, hit by ransomware.
• 41:27
  SPEAKER_01: We all know that.
• 41:28
  SPEAKER_01: Ask the next, ask the deeper questions around where is their actual pain if that happened overall.
• 41:34
  SPEAKER_01: Having that information, rolling it up in your further conversations and always coming back to it as to this is why we're talking, this is why we're doing this, because you don't want this to happen is a great way to validate through the process the need uh and putting yourself in a position to solve that overall.
• 41:49
  SPEAKER_00: Going to have to wrap this up in a second, Alan.
• 41:51
  SPEAKER_00: But let me ask you one question about that.
• 41:53
  SPEAKER_00: Because uh you know, that that move from a seller to be able to talk about you know the surface level stuff and what's going on right now, what I call the situational things are going on, to then get into an impact discussion.
• 42:06
  SPEAKER_00: It's it's funny that sellers sometimes struggle with that, right?
• 42:08
  SPEAKER_00: If I if I take a cyber donut, let's say they've got five reps in the team, I bet you two or three of them will just kind of struggle to really want to have that conversation about impact and what it means for the organization, individuals.
• 42:20
  SPEAKER_00: I don't know what you've seen about that, if you've helped coach any reps to to dig into that.
• 42:24
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, so absolutely.
• 42:25
  SPEAKER_01: You know, when I look at sellers, um like there's a lot of good sellers out there.
• 42:30
  SPEAKER_01: There's a lot of good people that do great discovery, great qualification.
• 42:34
  SPEAKER_01: Your best sellers just ask more impactful questions.
• 42:38
  SPEAKER_01: They're just more curious at the end of the day.
• 42:41
  SPEAKER_01: It doesn't mean that you can't be successful without being more curious and being more impactful.
• 42:46
  SPEAKER_01: But look, you're just talking to an individual.
• 42:48
  SPEAKER_01: It's no harm asking the question.
• 42:50
  SPEAKER_01: I've preferenced it multiple times.
• 42:52
  SPEAKER_01: Hey, I'm gonna ask a question.
• 42:53
  SPEAKER_01: You know, maybe you can answer it, maybe you can't, but I'm gonna ask it.
• 42:56
  SPEAKER_01: And I ask the question, and you know, it's great, it's great when you ask a question and somebody's like, that's a great, that's a great question.
• 43:02
  SPEAKER_01: Never been asked before.
• 43:03
  SPEAKER_01: I got to think about that and this, this, and this.
• 43:06
  SPEAKER_01: So it's just going like, just take that leap of faith.
• 43:09
  SPEAKER_01: You're not gonna lose a deal by asking a question that somebody got a, you know, couldn't answer or maybe got a little offended at.
• 43:16
  SPEAKER_01: Um, it's just not gonna happen.
• 43:18
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, so you might as well ask the question, take that leap of faith, see what the answers are.
• 43:23
  SPEAKER_01: You do it a few times, it's just gonna become part of your routine to be more successful overall.
• 43:27
  SPEAKER_01: So, you know, I I've often told sellers to be disruptive.
• 43:31
  SPEAKER_01: And I don't think disruptive is a bad word.
• 43:33
  SPEAKER_01: You can be disruptive internally in an organization as well as disruptive externally in an organization, as long as it's being professional, you know, overall and asking the questions, being different.
• 43:45
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, I think when you're disruptive, you're slightly different also.
• 43:48
  SPEAKER_01: And you're gonna gain credibility by asking some hard questions overall.
• 43:52
  SPEAKER_01: Because in my years of selling, I was very transparent and very straightforward.
• 43:57
  SPEAKER_01: And I gained credibility because people understood that if they asked me a question, they're gonna get an answer.
• 44:02
  SPEAKER_01: They might like the answer, they might not like the answer.
• 44:04
  SPEAKER_01: Vice versa, if I asked them questions, it was to help them overall.
• 44:07
  SPEAKER_01: And so that was the relationships that I built.
• 44:09
  SPEAKER_01: And I think a lot of sellers can do that.
• 44:11
  SPEAKER_01: Don't worry about asking a tough question.
• 44:13
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, and even if you get a negative response, you're not gonna lose anything crazy.
• 44:17
  SPEAKER_01: You have plenty of time through a selling motion, which takes months, weeks, you know, overall to still be successful in the end.
• 44:25
  SPEAKER_00: I'll I'll go wrap up with that because I think that's such a powerful point.
• 44:28
  SPEAKER_00: I love that framing, you know, be disruptive.
• 44:30
  SPEAKER_00: Doesn't mean you have to be rude or or unprofessional, but but ask ask tough questions.
• 44:35
  SPEAKER_00: Ask questions maybe everyone else is not asking, right?
• 44:37
  SPEAKER_00: And see what you learn.
• 44:38
  SPEAKER_00: What nothing bad's gonna come of it.
• 44:39
  SPEAKER_00: It might just not be able to answer them, which is fine.
• 44:42
  SPEAKER_00: Um, but I think if you have that mentality of, first of all, there's no reason why I shouldn't ask this question.
• 44:47
  SPEAKER_00: And secondly, I do want to be different and remembered.
• 44:51
  SPEAKER_00: You know, 3,700 vendors in our world right now, if you all, if you ask the same questions everyone else does, you're not gonna stand out.
• 44:57
  SPEAKER_00: Uh simple as that.
• 44:58
  SPEAKER_00: Absolutely.
• 44:59
  SPEAKER_00: I completely agree, Andrew.
• 45:00
  SPEAKER_00: Well, listen, Alan, I've I've really enjoyed this conversation.
• 45:03
  SPEAKER_00: I bet uh Cyber Donut is gonna flourish.
• 45:05
  SPEAKER_00: Uh the sales team at Cyber Donut is gonna flourish based on the learnings they'll have from our conversation.
• 45:10
  SPEAKER_00: Um, if someone wants to get in touch with you and and and keep going and and connect with you, what's the best way to do that?
• 45:16
  SPEAKER_01: Sure.
• 45:16
  SPEAKER_01: So I mean my LinkedIn profile is out there, so it's it's pretty simple that way.
• 45:20
  SPEAKER_01: Um, you know, last name, you know, Sanderson Allen at Outlook.com, you know, is is my email address.
• 45:26
  SPEAKER_01: Uh I have an LLC go to market uh group uh that's uh out there on LinkedIn also.
• 45:31
  SPEAKER_01: So there's there's plenty of ways to find me.
• 45:33
  SPEAKER_01: There's not too many Alan Sandersons out there, so hopefully you can uh hopefully Andrew, if they reach out to you, you can just pass my contact information out.
• 45:40
  SPEAKER_00: Absolutely will be well enjoyed the conversation next to you.
• 45:43
  SPEAKER_00: Thank you very much.
• 45:43
  SPEAKER_00: I enjoyed it also.