In some niches, a more transactional approach to sales can work. In the field of cybersecurity, however, you need something different.
Since cybersecurity is such a serious business — with your products ensuring the safety, reputation, and even continued existence of your clients’ companies — trust and reliability are incredibly important.
Your sales process, then, needs to look a little different than most others. In this article, we’ll look at why understanding and education are two critical components in cybersecurity sales, and how to infuse both of them into your process.
The Way Most Sellers Sell
There are some common trends that run through most sales activities, based on age-old principles that can, in some cases and some industries, work spectacularly well. These include:
Persuasion — Presenting information and making your case in a way that carefully convinces the prospect that they absolutely need to buy your product.
Manipulation — Using psychological tricks and techniques, like deadlines, discounts, and social proof to further compel your prospect to buy.
FOMO — Filling your prospect’s head with the idea that they’ll be missing out and fall behind the crowd if they don’t make a purchase.
Scarcity tactics — Playing to a prospect’s scarcity mindset by using language such as “limited numbers only at this price!” to instill fear.
Pushy follow-ups — Doing everything you can after the initial contact to nudge your prospect off the fence and into the “buy” button.
In cybersecurity, these kinds of sales tactics aren’t the best way to operate. Let’s look at what you should do instead.
The Key to Successful Cybersecurity Sales
To understand the key to cybersecurity sales, we first need to understand the biggest barriers your customers are facing.
With cybersecurity products, one of the biggest barriers is a lack of certainty. Customers want to feel absolutely sure that your product is the best fit for their safety because there’s so much at stake. Even a shred of doubt or uncertainty can deter them from buying.
Your job, then, is to eradicate that uncertainty. Be a source of knowledge so reliable and trustworthy that you almost seem all-knowing. Be equipped to answer any of their questions at any time in a confident and informed way.
Over time, this will build rock-solid trust and position your company as the best choice for your customer’s cybersecurity needs. However, it’s not easy — you’ll need to educate yourself to an extremely high level in order for this to work. The more you understand what you’re selling, the more success you’ll achieve here.
How to Educate Your Buyer
So how do you go about educating your buyers and positioning yourself as a deep well of knowledge and wisdom?
Open a dialogue. Begin the sales process not with the intention of pushing a quick sale, but with the goal of starting a conversation with your prospect. This is a long-term process.
Welcome and encourage questions. Let your prospect know from the start that you are there to answer their questions. Make it clear that they can ask you anything related to the product and your company and you’ll do your best to answer.
Give thorough, accurate answers. This isn’t just an opportunity to answer your prospect’s questions, it’s also an opportunity to show off your knowledge. Stay on topic, but don’t be afraid to give comprehensive answers backed up with data.
At the same time, don’t be afraid to admit you don’t know. It’s best to be honest. If you aren’t sure of something, don’t pretend you are — simply tell your prospect that you’ll get back to them with an answer. Do your research — this is a great opportunity to learn — and follow up on what you promised.
Have resources on hand to share. You should always be armed with a wealth of resources for further research to give to your prospect so they can continue their education.
Use assignment selling. This is a tactic where you’ll request your prospects look at a few pieces of your company’s content before a call (or between calls). It’s a great way to help educate them further, and has shown to significantly increase closing rates.
The DYOPATH Way
At DYOPATH, education is a core part of what we do. We see it as part of our duty to educate everyone on the ins and outs of cybersecurity and managed services, and we do this in multiple ways — our blog, eBooks, podcast, videos, and much more.
We can help you do the same for your own clients — building up a reputation as a formidable source of knowledge and expertise throughout the cybersecurity sales process, so it’s always a no-brainer for your prospects when deciding who to work with.