Latest / Cyber Go-To-Market Talk: The Cybersecurity Podcast About Cyber Sales, Marketing & Revenue Growth / 143: How to answer the “What does your company do?” question without being boring or using buzzwords

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143: How to answer the “What does your company do?” question without being boring or using buzzwords · Cyber Go-To-Market Talk: The Cybersecurity Podcast About Cyber Sales, Marketing & Revenue Growth

• 0:32
  SPEAKER_00: Your prospect asks you the question: So, what does your company do?
• 0:36
  SPEAKER_00: How you answer it is actually really important to shaping how they view you and your ability to help them.
• 0:41
  SPEAKER_00: Way too many of us are not that good at this and it's holding us back.
• 0:45
  SPEAKER_00: Find out how to do it properly in this episode.
• 0:57
  SPEAKER_00: Welcome to the Sales Bluebird podcast, which exists because at cybersecurity companies it's hard to get consistent traction and scale the sales team.
• 1:07
  SPEAKER_00: Sales Bluebird provides you with tips, tricks, experiences, examples, ideas, and inspiration from people who know a thing or 10 about selling and also building great cybersecurity companies.
• 1:19
  SPEAKER_00: I am your host, Andrew Monahan, and today we're going to talk about how to answer the question: so what do you do?
• 1:26
  SPEAKER_00: You know, if you think about it, it's our chance to capture our prospects' attention right from the start, capture their head and also their heart, make them want to lean in and want to learn more as opposed to lean out and want to forget about you and also be memorable in a good way rather than be memorably bad.
• 1:45
  SPEAKER_00: Unfortunately, our industry, like many, is ravaged by boring, confusing, buzzword-laden answers to this simple question.
• 1:54
  SPEAKER_00: You know, I just spent three days at RSA a few weeks ago, and I can assure you, going from booth to booth, that we are no further forward about how to do this properly than we were perhaps just a few years ago.
• 2:06
  SPEAKER_00: And the trouble is that we're so damn proud as startups, as cybersecurity companies, of the products that we have that we're building that are just so amazing that our companies want to talk about them.
• 2:18
  SPEAKER_00: We want to hype them up and sell them, you know, in quotes, right?
• 2:22
  SPEAKER_00: Sell them.
• 2:23
  SPEAKER_00: And often this push comes from founders, it comes from the exec team, it comes from marketing.
• 2:28
  SPEAKER_00: And we as sellers just kind of follow along and or get pushed along or dragged along, believing our own BS about how awesome that we are.
• 2:36
  SPEAKER_00: You know, I get it that we're building something great, right?
• 2:39
  SPEAKER_00: We don't want to be at companies where this stuff sucks and it's not that important.
• 2:43
  SPEAKER_00: I get that it's advanced, I get that it's potentially groundbreaking.
• 2:47
  SPEAKER_00: It's definitely different.
• 2:48
  SPEAKER_00: And, you know, there's lots of good reasons why we want to tell people about it.
• 2:52
  SPEAKER_00: And we better clearly explain the amazing things it does, otherwise, we are accused of underselling it.
• 2:59
  SPEAKER_00: Who here, listening to this, has been told by someone who's not in sales, usually a founder, a CEO, exec team, marketing, head of product, you should have talked more about X.
• 3:10
  SPEAKER_00: You should have sold this bit more.
• 3:12
  SPEAKER_00: You know, why didn't you do that?
• 3:13
  SPEAKER_00: And you get accused of not going into everything that's so amazing about the product.
• 3:18
  SPEAKER_00: But answering the question, what do you do by simply telling them what your product does is actually a really poor way to answer the question.
• 3:26
  SPEAKER_00: It's just not that effective.
• 3:27
  SPEAKER_00: So I'm kicking off a series here of episodes about how to do this.
• 3:31
  SPEAKER_00: It's gonna be over the next uh four to six weeks.
• 3:34
  SPEAKER_00: This first episode, I'm gonna give you a basic checklist to use.
• 3:37
  SPEAKER_00: You know, are you doing these things when you're answering the question?
• 3:40
  SPEAKER_00: So what do you do?
• 3:41
  SPEAKER_00: And then in following weeks, I'm actually gonna get real live examples of real cybersecurity companies and how their leadership are answering the question.
• 3:51
  SPEAKER_00: I'm gonna take apart a little bit how they're doing it, talk about what they're doing really well, the areas that they could do with improvement to make it really much more effective.
• 3:59
  SPEAKER_00: And you know, by doing this, I guarantee you you will be at least three times as effective as most people you're competing against.
• 4:06
  SPEAKER_00: So take the concepts, take the checklist, take the ideas that are in these episodes and see how you can adapt what you're doing.
• 4:13
  SPEAKER_00: By the way, it is not a coincidence that this series will go out in the run-up to Black Hat and DEF CON this year.
• 4:19
  SPEAKER_00: I just love it if companies who are going to Black Hat just get more pipeline because they're doing a much better job at answering this simple question than they did at RSA.
• 4:30
  SPEAKER_00: And if you listen to any of these episodes around how to do this in this series and think, you know, I'd really love for us as a team to go deeper into this and get some help, book some time with me at talktoandy.com and we can talk about how best to do that.
• 4:46
  SPEAKER_00: This will be a strategy session, more than anything, just 30 minutes, talk about what situation you're in and how, if and how I can help.
• 4:52
  SPEAKER_00: So go to talktoandy.com if you want to do that.
• 4:55
  SPEAKER_00: So listen, when people answer this question, lots of people bring the unique style, their way of doing things, the words they're comfortable using, and that's great, right?
• 5:03
  SPEAKER_00: Anytime that we're doing something where we're trying to shape things and give frameworks, it's always good to remember that we want to bring our own personalities and things like that to answer this question.
• 5:13
  SPEAKER_00: But we need a framework to do it in so that there is maximum impact.
• 5:16
  SPEAKER_00: And this is what it's all about.
• 5:17
  SPEAKER_00: This is a simple checklist.
• 5:19
  SPEAKER_00: And remember, the goal behind answering the question is not to explain everything that you do, it's to get them intrigued and want to lean in, want to be asking the question, tell me more about how you do that, or tell me more about that, and you know, want them to have follow-on conversations from this.
• 5:37
  SPEAKER_00: It's not designed to give the encyclopedia answer to the question, what do we actually do?
• 5:42
  SPEAKER_00: So the first item on the checklist is orient everything around the people that you solve the problem for.
• 5:48
  SPEAKER_00: And here's the deal, right?
• 5:49
  SPEAKER_00: When you're talking to someone, they're either going to be your ideal customer profile or they're not, right?
• 5:55
  SPEAKER_00: It's good to know that as you're talking to them.
• 5:57
  SPEAKER_00: If they're a security leader, if that's who you sell to or a SOC leader or an EDR type person, you know, know who you're talking to.
• 6:03
  SPEAKER_00: If it's someone that is your ICP, you can answer it by saying, you know, other heads of a SOC like you, often, and then you kind of go from there.
• 6:12
  SPEAKER_00: If it's not an ICP, let's say it's someone completely different, other end of the stream, right?
• 6:17
  SPEAKER_00: Just your buddy in the pub saying, hey, you join this new company, what do they do?
• 6:21
  SPEAKER_00: Right?
• 6:21
  SPEAKER_00: You start off by saying, you may not know this, but heads of cybersecurity of big companies, and then you kind of go into this thing, right?
• 6:28
  SPEAKER_00: So orientated it around there, around the ICP that you're going after.
• 6:32
  SPEAKER_00: The second thing is you want to immediately get into the problem that you solve.
• 6:37
  SPEAKER_00: And this isn't all 45 potential, maybe, you know, little things that you do to solve problems.
• 6:43
  SPEAKER_00: What are the ones that people latch onto?
• 6:45
  SPEAKER_00: What are the ones that are more prevalent out there that people are experiencing, your ICP is experiencing?
• 6:51
  SPEAKER_00: That's what you want to be able to do, right?
• 6:53
  SPEAKER_00: You want to list one, maybe two high-level kind of challenges that people usually come to you with and describe that very clearly and very succinctly.
• 7:02
  SPEAKER_00: And use some emotional words when you're doing it, right?
• 7:05
  SPEAKER_00: Don't just say it's super slow, right?
• 7:07
  SPEAKER_00: I don't know, the remediation process is super slow.
• 7:10
  SPEAKER_00: Just say, you know, heads of socks are frustrated the remediation process is so slow, right?
• 7:16
  SPEAKER_00: And then once you've done that, so you got the heads of our example in this one, right?
• 7:21
  SPEAKER_00: A head of a sock is often frustrated that the remediation process in an instant is so slow or whatever it might be, right?
• 7:28
  SPEAKER_00: Then go into describing what you do in simple words, right?
• 7:31
  SPEAKER_00: And this is the you got to boil this down to almost like a one-liner, right?
• 7:35
  SPEAKER_00: Not a weird, you know, buzzwordy wordsmith crazy stuff with words that no one understands and things like that, right?
• 7:42
  SPEAKER_00: This has got to be simple English, uh, words of one syllable, no buzzwords.
• 7:47
  SPEAKER_00: This is what we do, right?
• 7:49
  SPEAKER_00: And I'll come on to an example in a minute.
• 7:50
  SPEAKER_00: What to add in this point is the outcome that your ICP gets from using what you have, right?
• 7:57
  SPEAKER_00: So it's almost like completes the loop.
• 7:59
  SPEAKER_00: So you've talked about the problem they have, talked about how we solve it, and then when you say the outcome is, and usually it's a business outcome you want to stick to, right?
• 8:06
  SPEAKER_00: If you're talking to senior people, they save money is faster or whatever it might be, right?
• 8:10
  SPEAKER_00: And then finally, what you want to do is ask them a question.
• 8:13
  SPEAKER_00: So don't leave it flat and shut up and just, you know, I don't know, hope they ask something or whatever.
• 8:19
  SPEAKER_00: But ask a telling question.
• 8:20
  SPEAKER_00: Don't ask a BS question like, what do you think?
• 8:23
  SPEAKER_00: Or does that make sense?
• 8:24
  SPEAKER_00: That's a don't ask those BS questions, right?
• 8:26
  SPEAKER_00: Ask them, well, you know, if they are your ICP, I'm curious when I say that, is that the type of problems that you're experiencing right now?
• 8:34
  SPEAKER_00: Or are you experiencing these problems right now?
• 8:38
  SPEAKER_00: Do you have challenges in these areas or how are you doing things in these areas, this area we just talked about right now?
• 8:43
  SPEAKER_00: Have a question that's designed to get a thoughtful answer that's pertinent to what you just talked about.
• 8:49
  SPEAKER_00: Don't leave it to a BS kind of, you know, does that make sense?
• 8:52
  SPEAKER_00: Or what do you think?
• 8:54
  SPEAKER_00: Things like that, right?
• 8:55
  SPEAKER_00: So this is a very thoughtful way to go through how to describe this as a mini structure, a lot of variations, right?
• 9:02
  SPEAKER_00: And as we get into the examples I'm going to go through in the coming weeks, you're gonna see that there's lots of variations to this, right?
• 9:08
  SPEAKER_00: So sometimes it's a really good idea to maybe put in some differentiation, sometimes it's not.
• 9:13
  SPEAKER_00: Sometimes it's worthwhile going into a customer story, you know, different ways to do it, right?
• 9:18
  SPEAKER_00: And you'll know as you're really thoughtful and thinking about how your way of doing it is being received by your prospect where it needs to change a little bit or maybe something added in.
• 9:27
  SPEAKER_00: But this is a very basic structure.
• 9:29
  SPEAKER_00: And as I said, you know, if you can get this structure nailed, this basic structure nailed, then you're in a position to say, well, how do we adapt it or add more things or maybe take something out?
• 9:39
  SPEAKER_00: It's the old, old thing that many of you will have heard me say before.
• 9:42
  SPEAKER_00: You know, jazz pianists, you know, they do a lot of things that are wrong, but they only know to do that because they're so skilled at playing the piano, right?
• 9:51
  SPEAKER_00: It's when you master something, that's when you're able to make it sound different and do all the things that people tell you not to do as you're learning, right?
• 9:58
  SPEAKER_00: So this is what this is all about.
• 9:59
  SPEAKER_00: Now, what I thought I would do, rather than picking a cybersecurity example to go through, I thought, well, what if I give you an example of what I do?
• 10:07
  SPEAKER_00: Right.
• 10:07
  SPEAKER_00: So many will know I love doing these podcasts, they're awesome.
• 10:10
  SPEAKER_00: But my main way of making money is I do a lot of consulting and training with earlier stage cybersecurity companies and their sales teams, helping them with all go-to-market stuff, right?
• 10:19
  SPEAKER_00: So that's who I go after.
• 10:20
  SPEAKER_00: So think about it, right?
• 10:21
  SPEAKER_00: I work with CROs and CEOs.
• 10:23
  SPEAKER_00: There's they've got problems and they're trying to do various things, and we'll come into this in a second.
• 10:27
  SPEAKER_00: And I want to kind of hit pretty hard with them where I can help them, right?
• 10:31
  SPEAKER_00: So here's how my one might go, right?
• 10:33
  SPEAKER_00: It might go something like this.
• 10:34
  SPEAKER_00: So, Andrew, what do you do?
• 10:35
  SPEAKER_00: Say, well, I help CEOs and CROs at cybersecurity companies who are frustrated it's so hard to get to repeatable sales motion and hit the milestones needed for the next funding run.
• 10:47
  SPEAKER_00: I help them through some consulting and training to bring best practices to what they do and say.
• 10:53
  SPEAKER_00: They get a tried and tested framework that just works.
• 10:57
  SPEAKER_00: Clients who have their team follow a best practice process are able to adapt to new go-to-market strategies easier and ultimately build revenue quicker.
• 11:08
  SPEAKER_00: I'm curious though, uh, when you think about how you're working on your sales process and strategies, how are you building that out today?
• 11:16
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, that's how mine might sound, right?
• 11:19
  SPEAKER_00: So I help CEOs and CROs at cybersecurity companies.
• 11:22
  SPEAKER_00: So if you're a CEO and a CRO, I'm talking to you as my audience.
• 11:26
  SPEAKER_00: If I was talking to my buddy, I might say, you hear all about these startups.
• 11:30
  SPEAKER_00: Well, in the cybersecurity world, I help CEOs and chief revenue officers of cybersecurity companies, right?
• 11:36
  SPEAKER_00: I would do it something like that.
• 11:38
  SPEAKER_00: I put it in the problem statement.
• 11:39
  SPEAKER_00: So I start off with who are frustrated, right?
• 11:42
  SPEAKER_00: So I put the emotional word.
• 11:43
  SPEAKER_00: They're frustrated.
• 11:44
  SPEAKER_00: It's so hard to get to a repeatable sales process.
• 11:48
  SPEAKER_00: And why that's a problem is they're not going to hit the milestones needed for the next funding run, right?
• 11:53
  SPEAKER_00: So kind of double whammy in there.
• 11:55
  SPEAKER_00: And that's a common thing, right?
• 11:57
  SPEAKER_00: You know, working, those of you that are not working in uh the you know, private ABC RAN type companies, you may not know this, but that's where they spend a lot of their time.
• 12:06
  SPEAKER_00: Like, how do we sell this?
• 12:07
  SPEAKER_00: How do we get things going so that we can confidently scale the business, add more heads in so that we can then show the progress needed to get the next next funding run, right?
• 12:17
  SPEAKER_00: Uh in terms of what I said I did, it was pretty black and white.
• 12:20
  SPEAKER_00: I don't think I had any buzzwords in there.
• 12:22
  SPEAKER_00: I said, look, I helped them through consulting and training, right?
• 12:25
  SPEAKER_00: So they know what I do.
• 12:26
  SPEAKER_00: It's not software or something else, right?
• 12:29
  SPEAKER_00: I'm not, I don't have a community or one of these things.
• 12:32
  SPEAKER_00: I helped them through consulting and training to bring best practices to what they do and what they say, right?
• 12:37
  SPEAKER_00: So that that's the kind of very black and white explanation.
• 12:40
  SPEAKER_00: And then what they get is a tried and tested framework that just works, right?
• 12:44
  SPEAKER_00: Something a bit more tangible.
• 12:46
  SPEAKER_00: So sometimes, you know, in my world, consulting and training is a little bit, it's a lot that could encompass, right?
• 12:51
  SPEAKER_00: So that's why I want to put in there the tried and tested framework.
• 12:54
  SPEAKER_00: Um, so that makes sense.
• 12:55
  SPEAKER_00: And then I put something in terms of the outcome, I did it a certain way, right?
• 12:59
  SPEAKER_00: I didn't say they get, I just made the kind of statement, which this kind of structure does work quite well in general.
• 13:05
  SPEAKER_00: You know, clients who have their team following the same process or their best practice process are able to adapt to new go-to-market strategies easier and ultimately build revenue quicker.
• 13:17
  SPEAKER_00: So it's kind of a thing, you know, when you have something like this, then life is a lot better, right?
• 13:23
  SPEAKER_00: When you have, I don't know, um, if you look in the security orchestration space, when you have a no-code SOR product, as a SOC leader, you're able to, right?
• 13:35
  SPEAKER_00: So it's just a statement of truth that you're giving there, that then gets to the outcome, which is it's easier to adapt and ultimately build revenue quicker, right?
• 13:45
  SPEAKER_00: So that's what their business outcome is.
• 13:47
  SPEAKER_00: And then I finished off with a question, not like does it make sense?
• 13:50
  SPEAKER_00: I said, I'm curious though.
• 13:51
  SPEAKER_00: You know, when you think about your go-to-market motions, how are you building your sales process today?
• 13:56
  SPEAKER_00: So I'm going back to well, what's happening right now in your organization.
• 14:01
  SPEAKER_00: So that's how it might work in my world.
• 14:03
  SPEAKER_00: And you know, maybe, maybe some of you will listen to what I say and have different or better ways to do it.
• 14:07
  SPEAKER_00: I'm open to any suggestions.
• 14:09
  SPEAKER_00: But that is a structure that I talked about.
• 14:11
  SPEAKER_00: Who's it for?
• 14:12
  SPEAKER_00: The problem you're solving, describe what you do in simple words, outcome, and then a telling question at the end.
• 14:18
  SPEAKER_00: One important thing, especially this is important in cybersecurity, when I got to what I did, if I was you, I'm not putting there, well, we got an AI synergistic next gen thing that, you know, saves the world, right?
• 14:31
  SPEAKER_00: I'm not trying to throw in all my buzzwords there that I might have heard from other people in my company.
• 14:37
  SPEAKER_00: I've not thrown in a wordsmith, you know, let's 15 of us get around a table for two days trying to figure out do we put that word in front of the other word, things like that.
• 14:45
  SPEAKER_00: That's not what this is, right?
• 14:47
  SPEAKER_00: It's very matter of fact, it's plain English.
• 14:49
  SPEAKER_00: You don't want to get into that.
• 14:50
  SPEAKER_00: It honestly just puts people off, right?
• 14:52
  SPEAKER_00: So if you're encouraged to do that internally, resist it, right?
• 14:55
  SPEAKER_00: And figure out how can I do this as if I was talking to my buddy, as if I was talking to my parents, right?
• 15:01
  SPEAKER_00: Or in my case, you know, my 13-year-old daughter.
• 15:03
  SPEAKER_00: How would I explain it to her?
• 15:04
  SPEAKER_00: And that'll give you the lens to say, well, how do I avoid all the crap that we talk sometimes about trying to explain what we do?
• 15:11
  SPEAKER_00: So that's that.
• 15:12
  SPEAKER_00: This is a super simple framework to use.
• 15:14
  SPEAKER_00: I highly encourage you to take this and apply it to what you sell.
• 15:17
  SPEAKER_00: Do it now, right?
• 15:18
  SPEAKER_00: And then if you are going to Black Hat or DEF CON, you know, you've got something to use when you're there.
• 15:22
  SPEAKER_00: And as I say, next time I'll be taking you through some real live examples of company leaders on audio explaining what they do.
• 15:30
  SPEAKER_00: And uh, we'll be able to kind of break it down and see what they're doing well and where perhaps they can improve.
• 15:35
  SPEAKER_00: And remember, if you want to get hold of me and say, hey, let's strategize on whether I can come in and help your team, just go to talktoandy.com, just as it sounds, no hyphens, all one word, talktoandy.com and book a 30-minute session with me, and we'll just talk through whether it's appropriate and how I can help.
• 15:52
  SPEAKER_00: And the real thing is, you know, all this is you know, when you explain this clearly in a compelling way, you vastly increase the chances of your prospect understanding it and also remembering it.
• 16:06
  SPEAKER_00: See you next time.