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28: 7 steps to talent, cybersecurity in 2022, discovery tool

7 steps to talent, cybersecurity in 2022, discovery tool

March 04, 2022

Support this free email by forwarding it to one person who would enjoy it too Enjoy this week’s email….because who doesn’t want a bluebird every week…

#1 - Chris Smith, CRO at Aqua Security, on 7 steps to hiring great sales talent

Chris Smith, CRO at Aqua, shares 7 tips to help you with your recruiting process and bringing in great talent to join your growing sales team.

Chris has been in the cyber sales industry for 30 years and has stayed within the industry for multiple reasons, one of them being how within this career, you're doing something meaningful. Now, as he’s building out his team at Aqua, a cloud native application protection platform, he shares with us his approach he’s taking to ensure he’s making great hires.

  1. Know the profile of who you are going after

  2. Focus on the importance of the alignment to culture

  3. PR the opportunity

  4. Augment company searches with agencies

  5. Prepare questions

  6. Go the extra mile

  7. Be thorough - reference LinkedIn, check references, etc.

Get in touch with Chris ([email protected])

  #2 - 5 key takeaways from Momentum Cyber’s Cybersecurity Almanac 2022

Momentum Cyber is an investment bank that deals with only cybersecurity companies and is headed by Dave DeWalt.

If you’d like to read the Almanac yourself, it is available for download on their website (momentumcyber.com), but today, I will be giving you my 5 key takeaways.

  1. The cybersecurity space is more crowded than ever

  2. There's a huge growth in financing activity right now

  3. Public markets value growth over margins, by quite a lot

  4. The Almanac includes interesting facts such as amount of money going into companies and stock

  5. Product Lead Growth is growing and continually getting established

There were also some other interesting discussion points, such as how ransomware isn’t going away anytime soon, the skills shortage continues to be a problem, and how in a world where things are interconnected - 3rd party risk is a big thing.

Tune into Episode #106 where we expand more on these 5 takeaways as well as go more into detail about the interesting facts found within this year’s Almanac!

  #3 - Simple framework for a value oriented discovery

How should we be thinking about discovery when it comes to 1st meetings and what should we avoid?

3 common mistakes:

  • We’re tempted to rush the discovery

  • We don’t ask great questions, we keep it too light

  • We’re asking the right questions to the wrong people

These are the things getting in the way of your sessions, so I’ve come up with this 4 Box Framework, that allows you to execute great discoveries.

 

#1 Current situation and current problem

This is where we start in the discovery process. Think of it as the high-level information of what's going on. This is the part of the conversation where they tell you what's happening and expand on their problem or you uncover this with good questions.

Ask yourself:

  • How many people are involved?

  • How many employees?

  • Where are they based?

#2 Impact of the problem

This is the “so what?”

You should be finding out why this is something worth working on and who/what is impacted and if there is a way to measure the impact. Understand your priorities.

Ask yourself:

  • Why should they and why should we spend time and effort fixing this problem?

  • Who’s upset the most and where's the real impact of the problem?

#3 Ideal Future

This is the place they want to get to.

You have to find out what it would look like if they were to solve the problem. We want to understand if they are looking for guidance from us and we want to understand what their view is of this ideal future, so we can help get them there.

#4 Positive Impact

Who’s the happiest and why? Who’s getting that promotion and what’s going to work faster now?

We want to understand what the real impact is going to be.

One thing I've observed over the years is that we over-index our time on the current situation and the current problem. So, we spend too much time on the left-hand side of the box and not enough on the right side. If you imagine these 4 boxes - they aren't usually evenly distributed across the page and they should be!

TIP: Be ready with question prompts for each box so that if and when you have questions you're able to look at the sheet of paper and look at the question prompts to take the conversation to that area!

“You aren’t losing sales because you can’t sell. You’re losing them because you don’t understand how to diagnose your customer problem and how the problems drive the sale.” Keenan, Gap Selling

You Might Also Like...

 

Website exclusively for cybersecurity sales jobs

  • If you are a hiring manager and struggle to find great cyber security sales talent OR are looking and are fed up having to check out a bunch of sites to see what’s out there…then head on over to cybersalesjobs.com to change your life.

1:1 coaching with me

  • Are you an AE or SDR at a cyber security company? Want to practice your craft in a safe zone? And get candid and actionable feedback?

  • Bring something specific to practice

  • Only 2 slots every Friday

   Dad joke of the week

What’s green and has wheels?Grass. I lied about the wheels.

We want to hear from you! If you have any ideas, questions, or topic suggestion for future newsletters, please send them to [email protected] or send us a voice/video message at https://zipmessage.com/unstoppable.Oh, and feel free to add me ([email protected]) to your subscriber list.Rooting for you as well!

Wishing you growth and accomplishment next week,

Andrew MonaghanChief [email protected]

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