With high-profile data breaches filling the news, one would assume selling customers on cybersecurity upgrades would be an easy pitch. But unfortunately, while most companies enthusiastically state their grand intentions for strengthening their cybersecurity profile, few are willing to actually put their money where their mouth is unless the immediate benefits are made extremely clear. If your sales team doesn’t have an in-depth understanding of the security solutions they sell and can’t talk knowledgeably about how they’ll make an impact, positive results will be very hard to come by. Since it’s impossible to turn your entire sales team into cybersecurity experts overnight, here are the essential elements they’ll need to comprehend to connect the dots for your customers.
PROBLEMS AND SOLUTIONS
The security market is overflowing with a massive amount of fancy-sounding solutions with hefty price tags. And because cyber threats are constantly evolving, your customers are probably not up on the latest sophisticated hacking methods. So, your sales efforts must revolve around identifying and offering solutions for problems they are currently attempting to solve. Whenever your salesperson pitches a new product, they must understand both the problem it is designed to solve and how it solves that problem exactly. Then, they can then direct customers towards the most suitable solutions and help them understand precisely how they will benefit from the technologies they’re purchasing. If your salespeople simply memorize a few security buzzwords and some scary statistics, they might gather the random sale here or there, but when your salesperson can engage customers by acting as a trusted advisor who understands the security challenges they face, they will find much more success.
VERTICALS
Every industry and vertical has its own unique relationship to security. And many specific verticals have a complex web of regulatory requirements they must sort through and comply with to stay in business: a healthcare provider has different needs than an accounting firm when it comes to security and compliance. There is no one-size-fits-all sales approach to selling cybersecurity solutions. Training your sales team to understand the relevant laws, regulations, and security profiles for different verticals gives them the ability to be truly useful to their customer. If your salespeople can speak knowledgeably about how a particular group of upgrades can help a healthcare company comply with HIPAA or how a specific solution could help a financial company protect against fraud, they will immediately build trust. By directing these companies towards products that make their lives easier, they’ll provide real value instead of merely fearmongering about the latest cybercrime trends.
WHEN TO CALL FOR BACK-UP
Regular training sessions, industry research, and product demonstrations can all drastically assist your sales team in its quest to connect to customers. But the point of these isn’t just to make them sound smarter in conversation; it’s to build trust and give customers confidence in their guidance. You mustn’t place so much pressure on your employees to be knowledgeable that they start to exaggerate their expertise. In the end, they are salespeople and not IT experts and should be allowed to double-check details with experts whenever they are unsure. Make sure to let them know there’s nothing wrong with saying something like, “I’ll need to check in with one of our engineers to get the exact data for you. I can have that information to you in a day or so” if they need some back-up. They should understand that they can potentially undo all their previous positive gains and irreparably damage the trust they’ve built by speaking out of turn when they reach the limits of their new knowledge.
If you’re wondering how to find the time and resources to train your sales staff on all the latest cybersecurity trends, threats, verticals, and industry compliance requirements, consider reaching out to OSR Manage. Our expert IT sales professionals can provide your salespeople with the education and sales management needed to approach any sales pitch with supreme confidence.