Kate Healy [00:00:00]:
If you have a great customer and you know that they’re very happy with your services, ask for an introduction. That’s going to be one of the quickest ways you’re going to be able to almost leapfrog some of that trust building that’s required when you first meet someone.

Karissa Breen [00:00:30]:
Joining me today is Kate Healy, founder from Empowered Cyber. And today we’re discussing how to successfully engage and sell to the Sizo. So, Kate, thanks for joining me and welcome.

Kate Healy [00:00:40]:
Thanks, Carissa. It’s really great to be here with you today.

Karissa Breen [00:00:43]:
I know I’ve been talking about you coming on the show for years, which is true, but that’s also stemmed from I’ve known you for a while. We used to formally work together in the bank. You’ve obviously got a lot of experience. You’ve worked on multiple sides of the coin in terms of client consulting, a vendor. So I think it’s really important for people to hear. Hear your point of view around Sisos and how people are selling to them at the moment. So I’m keen to maybe start with, give us a little bit of lay of the land. How are you seeing salespeople out there in the market selling to sizes? And I also want to caveat this with, by saying that this is around helping people to sell better, not about us complaining about how people are selling.

Kate Healy [00:01:21]:
I think that last point you just made, Chris, is really important because I think one of the problems we have in the industry is when you look at cyber security professionals, we’re very black and white. You know, we look at red teams, blue teams, attackers, defenders, good guys, bad guys. And unfortunately, there’s a prevailing impression that a lot of security professionals have around salespeople, and unfortunately, they have put them in the bad guy category. And I think that’s a real shame, actually, because we need salespeople. The reality is, as cybersecurity professionals, we rely on the tools that they sell, and we need them to help us understand how those tools can help us solve our problems, how they can make life easier for us. But what is happening in the sales community and how they’re approaching CISOs is unfortunately, a lot of things they’re doing, it’s getting us off site. And I think a lot of the reasons that’s happening is these are, you know, these tried and tested approaches, such as Things like cold calling, cold emails, cold LinkedIn pictures, things like that.

Karissa Breen [00:02:17]:
Okay, so, Kate, I really want to ask you a couple of questions. You said tried and tested approaches. You mentioned cold calls, you know, emails, LinkedIn. The LinkedIn pitch, that’s another big one. So I think the big question that people will probably have out there is like, yeah, okay, I’ve got to sell my product. But if these people, meaning sisos, aren’t responding to cold emails and all these sort of things, how do I get in front of them? How do I get to the point where I open the conversation, Someone’s willing to have a chat with me?

Kate Healy [00:02:41]:
It sounds really cliched, but you have to be that trusted partner. And the reason I say that is that you do really need to work with the CISO and with the CISO security team. That’s also important as well, to work with the whole team. And how do you do that? Right, it’s easy to say those words. Well, first thing is, don’t come to me with a solution to the problem. One of my pet peeves is when people come in and go, I’ve got the solution to your problem. It’s like, well, you don’t actually know what my problem is. You don’t know if I’m experiencing that problem.

Kate Healy [00:03:09]:
Ask me what is going on in my world. Ask me what challenges I’m facing. I always say to people, when I used to coach all the sales teams on this, I say, think of it as like going on a date. Now, what makes a really great date is when someone asks you a lot of questions. Well, do the same thing when you’re meeting with the CISO and the security team. The second thing is think about, how can you help me as a ciso? You know, we have one of the most challenging roles out there in technology, and we operate with very tight budgets. We’re often the last team to be considered for things like training. But as a vendor, you probably have training that you include as part of your sales or you have training available.

Kate Healy [00:03:42]:
So help me provide that to my team by offering me training in regards to your products. In fact, actually, when I was preparing this a talk for a vendor I was presenting to their channel partners, I actually wanted to survey. I asked about 50 different CISOs on their opinion on how they’re being approached by different sales professionals and their experience. And when I asked them how do they want to be approached? On the very first meeting they have, over 70% of them said that they want the salesperson to get to know them.

Karissa Breen [00:04:11]:
So get to know them. But then this is the problem. It’s like, well, if I reach out, okay, this is where it gets super interesting, right? So it’s like I worked at a bank with you, and you know what was really interesting? When I went on the other side and then I became a consultant. Then you have to, like, you know, meet people. And then I remember, like, going to my contacts and then, like, everyone barred me because they probably knew I was trying to sell it. I mean, Look, I was 24 years old. I’d never done sales. I’d worked in a client where at a very prestigious bank, as you know, and everyone wanted to know you.

Karissa Breen [00:04:37]:
And then you go on the other side, and then everyone’s like, well, you’re dead to me now. Kb I’ve obviously got a very unique approach to this, but I’m really keen to get into how do people get to the point where they meet the person to get to know them. And the reason why I asked that is because they’re probably sitting there going, oh, but so and so is only getting to know me because they want to sell me something. And I mean, like, I’m listening to these sort of folks out here, right around the world that saying, saying these things to me around, you know, that person’s always interested in hitting their number and going on their European holiday because they’ve hit their number. And there’s a lot of these sort of things that come up. But how do you get to the point where you’re in a position where you can build the relationship? Because a lot of them say they’re bus, don’t have time of day, couldn’t be bothered, don’t like that vendor. The country manager sucks. So therefore, I’m not even bothering with the sales people.

Karissa Breen [00:05:22]:
Like, how do you get past all these. All these objections?

Kate Healy [00:05:25]:
So I think one of my favorite quotes is that everybody likes to buy, but nobody likes to be sold to. And that’s absolutely true of anybody. And you know, Chris, I love what you talked about when you first moved into a sales role, even as a consultant. I found that would happen as well. You know, when you’re in the security teams, they’re very trusted environments. They talk to each other. They often share their own problems within those trusted circles. But as soon as you are no longer within those operational security teams, you do become a little bit of an outsider.

Kate Healy [00:05:53]:
So it’s definitely a difficult thing to break into. So I think there’s a couple of ways that you can do that. If you have a great customer and you know that they’re very happy with your services. Ask for an introduction. That’s going to be one of the quickest ways you’re going to be able to almost leapfrog some of that trust building that’s required when you first meet someone. The second thing is you’re just going to have to turn up to events. You’re just going to have to go to different conferences. But don’t go there to sell.

Kate Healy [00:06:19]:
Go there to learn. Go there to meet customers and make sure you’re having conversations about them and what they are doing rather than trying to pitch your product. Because as soon as you start to pitch, that’s going to instantly turn us off.

Karissa Breen [00:06:31]:
Yeah, totally. I see that a lot. I think the other thing is that you make great point, like going to events and all that. Like, when I’m speaking to some of my clients, I’m like, look, if we do this event, like, you may not see a return on this 12, 18, 24 months. Why? Because you’re not selling Pepsi or Coke where people are willing to go, you know, forgo five bucks. These are big products that are complicated, that cost a lot, that have multiple decision makers, not just one person making a decision. It’s going to take time. And, And I understand it’s getting harder.

Karissa Breen [00:06:59]:
I’m speaking to salespeople out there and they’re like, okay, I’m struggling. I, you know, I’m trying to do the best thing. I don’t want to become like, I’m trying to sell to people. But I’m getting so much pressure from my manager and the managers got some person, the US that’s sitting in their ivory tower, you know, commanding these crazy numbers, and it just doesn’t help the industry then at all. So I do. I’m seeing it from both sides. I’m seeing the friction from the size from the salespeople. I’m seeing it even from the PR people that have then got pressure to be like, oh, we’ve got to get all these media things happening.

Karissa Breen [00:07:31]:
Like, everyone’s got a part to play in this sort of conundrum. But where. Where do you think people need to sort of sit back and think, actually, how I’m going about this just isn’t right. And as a result, it’s actually damaging me, my brand, my, like, my personal brand, the company’s brand, et cetera. Like, I want to unpack this a little bit more because I think that this is a big problem. I’m constantly hearing it and also, like, I don’t have all the answers. So that’s why I’m hoping you have the answers here, Kate.

Kate Healy [00:07:55]:
That’s a, you know, big ask, but I can perhaps give some suggestions or at least point out some areas that should definitely be considered. So if you look at how a sales cycle operates versus how salespeople are commissioned, that’s where we immediately have conflict. The problem is, as you pointed out, a lot of buying cycles, they can take up to two years. Like, if you sell into some of the larger organizations, it could take that long for you to get a product in. Now, for a salesperson, though, they’re targeted on quarterly, and they’re also given an end of year number that they need to meet. If they don’t meet that number, their job is literally on the line. So you can already see where we’re getting that friction starting to occur. But the reality is, if I put my siso or my security hat on, the salesperson’s target is not my problem.

Kate Healy [00:08:38]:
But at the end of the day, that person’s also a human. So what I like to advocate for is actually in the security community, we can help them. We should be trying to help our salespeople. We should be talking to them about when we actually think things are going to come through. Be honest with them if something is not. If you’re not interested, don’t drag them on. Be very clear with your communication. Allow them to move on to that next deal.

Kate Healy [00:08:59]:
Allow them to move on to helping the next customer. And I think also be really clear with them and communicate on, you know, when is your sales target? Is there something you can do to help your salesperson? Because that can also help that relationship, and that really builds trust. I think if we just learn to treat each other as humans and as partners, then that can actually help things be a lot smoother and we can all be much more successful.

Karissa Breen [00:09:22]:
So I’m hearing what you’re saying, Kate, is being a little bit more upfront about it. So perhaps it’s like, okay, you’re a size, I’m a salesperson. Like, it’s kind of clear what their objectives are, but I don’t think it needs to be bad. Right? Like, at the end of the day, a sizo’s got to then sell the stuff internally. As you and I have both faced ourselves, right? Like, we’ve got to justify our jobs around, you know, we’re not effectively in some respects, making money for the business, right? So then we have to justify, well, we’re spending all this money on all these cybersecurity Vendors and tools and all these things, we internally then have to justify that to somebody else. So it’s sort of like it’s cyclical. So do you think if people just understand their positions around. I’m a salesperson, yes.

Karissa Breen [00:10:02]:
My job is to do sales and make money for the vendor or whoever. Do you think it sort of then disarms people a bit more? Then there’s no ulterior motive because you know the motive.

Kate Healy [00:10:12]:
Yeah, I think there is a lot of value in being honest. And I mean, obviously you don’t walk in straight away saying, hey, I need to sell. Here’s my target. You know, are you going to buy from me? You do still need to put that work, and you definitely need to do a lot of that pre sales. Understand that there really is an opportunity there. But I think that’s an important point you brought out too, though. I find that there’s a real tendency for security for salespeople to target the siso, but they’re not always the right person. And quite often I see salespeople get frustrated because they think, oh, the siso is not coming back to me.

Kate Healy [00:10:42]:
They’re not giving me the okay. But they might not hold the budget, or if they have a budget, they may not hold the budget for that particular product or that particular service that you’re trying to sell into. And that’s where it comes back to. Again, get to know your customer first. Understand who is it that actually is going to be giving these approvals. And I think if you’re a security person, be clear about that. I know there is a tendency for some people in the community to enjoy the free lunches and enjoy the drinks, but you’re not doing the right thing by the salesperson. Be really clear about what your role is.

Kate Healy [00:11:14]:
Are you an influencer or you’re a buyer or use something else?

Karissa Breen [00:11:18]:
Yeah. Okay, this is interesting. Okay, so going back to the influence, then, internally, would you say that businesses, vendors, et cetera, companies that are trying to sell their products and services into these clients, do you think they’re not doing a good job at, like, mapping all the stuff out? And to your point earlier, like, yes, people are targeted quarterly. And it’s like. And I’m saying to these businesses, like, you know, it used to be sort of 12 months. Now we’re looking 18, 24 months, as you said. So there’s an extra year that’s been added on even in the last sort of, you know, five to 10 years, because things are way more complicated now. So why aren’t These businesses adjusting with how the buying cycles are operating here in Australia.

Karissa Breen [00:11:58]:
If we can just focus on this part of the world for a moment, how can people sit there and say, well, you know, were your quarters this and that when it’s like, well, some of these things might not even close for, you know, 12 to 18 months?

Kate Healy [00:12:09]:
I think part of it is a lack of understanding by the vendor themselves. And look, there’s always going to be that natural conflict, to be honest. They’re always going to be pushing targets. That’s how sales cycles work. But I think there is a lack of understanding that you can’t necessarily force customers into certain buying patterns just because they meet what your business targets are.

Karissa Breen [00:12:31]:
Are people aware of it? So it’s like if you’re in a vendor and you’ve got all these sales reps out here and then you’re hearing from your reps, hey, X bank, X Insurance Company isn’t buying. And they likely close in 18, 24 months. Like, I think they start to really need to adjust how they approach the market here in Australia. If they’re hearing that, they’re probably telling the truth. Like, a salesperson has every intention to sell as much stuff as they can because they get commission and all those sort of things, right? So they are incentivized. So that’s the part that’s getting me a little bit here. It’s like we need to start to change the thinking towards it because this is the reality of how the market is and it doesn’t care about if you disagree with it. It’s just how it is at the moment.

Kate Healy [00:13:12]:
I think if you asked any salesperson, would they like to have their cadence run differently, they’d all say yes. But at the end of the day, it’s unfortunately driven by their organization they work for. They’ve obviously got their own targets. I mean, even their customers are obviously trying. Most of them are making money. That’s their. Their target. Well, that’s what vendors are usually setting out to do ultimately, is they’re trying to make money, trying to be a successful business.

Kate Healy [00:13:34]:
So there is always going to be that conflict. I do think, though, sometimes that the targets that are being set are very unrealistic and that puts a lot of pressure on the salespeople. And I think that drives a lot of bad behaviors. So I think the organizations that do it well, they recognize that and they adjust. But there’s a lot that are still very stuck in traditional ways of working. And I actually would like to talk a little bit about that. If that’s okay. I would like to talk about things like cold pitches.

Kate Healy [00:14:00]:
So if we talk about things like cold emails, cold pitching, and I’ll talk a little bit more about the LinkedIn connections in a second. These types of selling, they actually have a really negative impact on the relationship with the ciso. So if you think about how a CISO works, right. We or a security team work. We operate on trust. Our job is to protect information. So when someone calls us out of the blue, the first thing that we ask is, where did you get our number? And in fact, honestly, if you hit me up, if it happens to be me that you call, you’re probably going to get a bit of a grilling. I’m going to really want to know, or I’ll threaten you with reporting you to the Privacy ombudsman, especially if it’s on my personal number.

Kate Healy [00:14:38]:
Now, we know if we go to, like, an event or we download a white paper, you’re probably going to collect information. We don’t feel so great about that. But when it comes completely out of the blue, that really puts us off site. So the survey that I conducted around, over, around 50 CISOs, one of the really interesting insights around that was when they received a cold email, over a third of them actually blocked that particular sender. So depending how things are set up in an organization, you can actually lose contact to the entire organization. Your email address might get blocked. And we talk about things like phone calls. A lot of sources have to answer phone calls because it could be an incident, it could be someone trying to contact them.

Kate Healy [00:15:16]:
So when you call them, they have to answer and you’ve just taken them time out of potentially even taking them out of their day or potentially even taking them out of an e, out of a meeting. And then we look at things like the cold pitches that we get via LinkedIn, they’re actually so hated. You know, you mentioned that when you change roles that you found that people are less likely to connect to you. I know most people now, if they see even a slight hint of a sales title in someone’s LinkedIn profile, they won’t connect because they’ll often get hit with what? That’s my favorite term. It’s called a pitch slap, which is where basically you connect to someone in good faith, and the next thing you know, you’re actually getting hit with a sales proposal. And for me personally, I’ll instantly block that person. And again, you can see there’s a, a lot of evidence that shows that people are actually blocking these sorts of approaches, yet we still see vendors and marketing teams pushing these approaches. I think the reason this is happening, though, is it’s survivorous theory, and it’s where we think because we get a positive outcome out of something, we think it works.

Kate Healy [00:16:17]:
So, you know, you might get one or two responses from those cold pitches, but I think what a lot of companies aren’t seeing is the damage they’re actually doing behind the scenes.

Karissa Breen [00:16:25]:
I love this. I love this. I think, okay, I want to go into this more because this is something that I’ve been sort of advocating for years to build your brand, especially these vendors that are new in Australia, you’re going to have time and have to build it up. And I’m always very honest with clients. And I’m saying, look, if you’re new here and no one knows you, stuff isn’t going to happen overnight. And if people are saying that to you, they’re lying. And the second thing is that things aren’t just going to miraculously, you know, start working for you. You just gotta have to put in the effort.

Karissa Breen [00:16:52]:
You’re gonna have to, like you said, show up to the events. You’re gonna have to go to meetups and just take the time. Because if it was that easy, no one would probably be here working anymore. So I want to go into a couple of examples. So you mentioned the pitch slap. One thing that you and I spoke about offline is. And one thing that I get a lot too, and in my sort of role now is people say, like, hey, Charissa, do you want to catch up for a coffee? Look, I’m all about making connections, but I think the thing that perhaps salespeople aren’t doing is being clear in what they want. I have also heard from sizos and senior executives saying, hey, if Kate Healy, I’m just using you as an example.

Karissa Breen [00:17:28]:
So I’m not picking on anyone would be, hey, Kate Healy hit me up. But she was really clear in her intention. I was more likely to take the meeting versus this. I have to decrypt what you say. A coffee. I’m pretty busy. And if I do have a coffee, I’d rather go out with my wife because I never see her anyway. Like, how do you sit with people being direct in their communication style? I personally prefer it because it might be something of value and I may have missed an opportunity because someone wasn’t clear in their ask of me.

Karissa Breen [00:17:54]:
What are your thoughts then on that?

Kate Healy [00:17:56]:
I completely agree. I am a big advocate of being clear in your communication and being direct. But I Think there’s also another important part to that, which is it’s not about you. Quite often I see approaches. I’d like to have a coffee with you. I’d like to talk about this. I it’s not about you, it’s about the other person. So I think, think about that when you’re actually framing your initial outreach as well.

Kate Healy [00:18:18]:
But I get the same thing. I get so many requests on LinkedIn, email, even the odd phone call, you know, can we catch up for a coffee? And I’m busy. And often or if I don’t know that person, I don’t know what that meeting request is about. Now I run my own company. I don’t know if they’re looking for me as a prospective partner, if they want to sell to me, or they perhaps want to be a customer. So without any context, I don’t know if that is something I should be spending my time on. And I think that’s where a lot of these cold pitches are falling flat as well, is if you’re not taking the time to understand who you’re even reaching out to, then you’re really wasting everybody’s time. I mean, I can remember actually, even when I was working at Google, it was quite hilarious.

Kate Healy [00:19:02]:
I’d get vendors pitching to me products that we sold. I mean that not only just it’s a waste of time, but also it’s actually quite embarrassing. And depending on my mood, I may actually block them. And again, that means that person’s now lost contact to me forever. So I think there’s a lot of value in putting time upfront to get this messaging right. I know everyone’s busy, including salespeople, but I think they really need to spend that time thinking about the message, being clear on what the ask is, but also being clear that they’re asking the right person.

Karissa Breen [00:19:33]:
So I want to build on that a little bit more. So what I’ve often see and I can just use myself, for example, because again, I want to pick on myself. People have tried to personalize and I get it, but then it just comes across like you’ve definitely used some form of tool to pull something from my LinkedIn where it just doesn’t. I know and I’m looking at this stuff every day, so it’s not like I’m there once a week. Like I’m seeing what people are sending to me each day and dissecting perhaps where they’ve gone wrong or curious to see what they’re doing in terms of their approach. But that’s the Other thing. So people can try to be like, okay, I’m going to do some rudimentary research and then I’ll give you an example. Like, someone hit me up the other day saying, hi, Kariza, because of your role at KBI Media cyber security company, we have this tool.

Karissa Breen [00:20:15]:
It’s like, well, probably not your right buyer. Like we’re subscripting media company. Right. So I think that the maybe is that laziness. Do you think that they thought, well, I’ll try to inject a little bit of personalization, but it didn’t kind of work. Like, I’m seeing that too. So it’s not completely where it’s off the mark that does happen. But then people have tried to personalize it, which still feels so contrived.

Kate Healy [00:20:38]:
Well, I think it is contrived and it possibly even is AI generated because it’s not hard to scrape your profile. You know, there’s a lot of tools out there where people can get access to your information and databases where they can find out basic information around you about to and try and make it look a little bit personalized. But yes, I think it’s. Honestly, it’s only a slight step above a anonymous or a generic email. I can understand the scattergun approach to try and get feeds or try and get leads, I should say. But at the end of the day, we know it’s not as successful as I think people like to think it is. So I think, again, they’re just wasting time.

Karissa Breen [00:21:16]:
Okay, there’s another example I want to put forward to you. And I heard this recently. So on the show, I’ve interviewed a lot of people like yourself, I interviewed a SIZO senior executive. And now obviously people follow the show. They listen to it or they see it in social media. And what I found out was this siso, when I spoke to them, they said that and I got the number wrong because I thought they said like four people had outreached off the back of the interview. They were like more than 40, 50. But the interesting thing that they said was it was so generic, it’s like they didn’t listen to the interview or they didn’t listen properly or they said generic, generic stuff or they weren’t clear in their intention and then as a result, nothing transacted.

Karissa Breen [00:22:00]:
If someone actually, and look, I, as a media person, I would say that can be a good approach, provided you’re actually listening to it and you’re doing your research properly. Going to someone senior like that, you got one shot. So if you mess it up, they’re more likely to be like, well, forget that person and forget that company. They, they, they weren’t clear in their intention. But that’s something that I wanted to raise with you, that I’m seeing that people, their intentions there, but they executed it poorly and therefore they’ve missed the mark.

Kate Healy [00:22:28]:
Well, I think, yeah, there’s that quote. You only get one chance to make a first impression and, you know, if you haven’t listened to it properly and you’ve reached out without really understanding what that person was saying or asking questions they’d already answered, then you’re not going to make a great impression. And I’ve mentioned a lot today, but you really are wasting everybody’s time by behaving that way. Like, why did you go to that trouble in the first place if you didn’t respect the person you’d heard well enough to actually put thought into the email and to the outreach and to make sure that you weren’t asking something that they had already answered? It’s interesting you said that he got 50, you know, emails or around 50 emails or outreaches, because I think that’s something that we also see happen quite commonly. So when someone starts as a CISO or a new senior role, you know, we always post it on LinkedIn and that generates lots of traffic and gets lots of attention. What I think a lot of people aren’t conscious of, though, is what happens behind the scenes. So as a ciso, when you first started a new company, the amount of outreach you get in your LinkedIn inbox or even your company email is quite overwhelming. And I get really frustrated by this because it’s the wrong time to be trying to reach out to somebody who’s just started a new role.

Kate Healy [00:23:41]:
I understand that you want to make the connections, you want to get in early. At the end of the day, that person is trying to understand their team. They’re trying to understand their budgets, they’re trying to understand where their risk is, trying to understand the company. They’re really trying to focus on understanding the lay of the land. So if you start reaching out, especially these generic emails, asking for coffee meetings or asking for time in their calendar, it’s not going to fall. Well, it’s not the time to do it. I think the exception to that is if you already have a relationship with that company and that security team, like there’s a contract in place. Absolutely.

Kate Healy [00:24:17]:
Reach out and say, hey, I’m your point of contact for this. But if you don’t already have it, this is not the time to be trying to reach out to a new prospect.

Karissa Breen [00:24:25]:
Yeah, that is a good point. I have seen that a lot. Okay, so I now want to sort of switch gears to start talking about stuff that people can really start doing. And I know we sort of touched on it before, but I want to give maybe some examples. So I’m a new salesperson. I don’t know anyone. What would you say they should start doing to start to build up their reputation, build up their relationships? As we know, for people who are listening to this outside of Australia, it’s very relationship driven. So you don’t know someone or, you know, you don’t have someone in common.

Karissa Breen [00:24:52]:
It’s very, very hard to get in there. So, Kate, what would you recommend for new sort of sales people coming up the ranks that are trying to do the right thing? Just don’t quite have the relationships yet.

Kate Healy [00:25:01]:
There’s a couple of different areas that you can look at. And I think really just starting with that first point you made though, about it being relationship driven. It really is in Australia. I think that’s one of the things that makes the Australian market quite unique. You know, I previously worked in Singapore for five years and, you know, I speak to people from different parts of around the world. Australia is very, very much driven by relationships. And especially when you look at like the big banks and some of the other industry verticals, we often work across multiple different banks. So for myself, for example, I’ve worked out of three of the top four banks in Australia and the fourth one was my customer.

Kate Healy [00:25:36]:
So we tend to move around quite a lot, but within those verticals. So if someone uses a product in one space, we tend to recommend it across other products. So it’s really important to understand that’s how the landscape works here. But in terms of someone new, when they come into the industry or into Australia or they have a new product anywhere in the world, I would say is add value. So what do I mean by that? Well, to get yourself known, start posting things on LinkedIn. But don’t just regurgitate your product marketing. Actually give insights as to what you’re seeing in the market. If your product somehow helps with that.

Kate Healy [00:26:12]:
Absolutely. Make a note, a mention of it. But that’s not the point of the post. The post is to actually talk about what you’re seeing and the problems in the industry. So you start to get recognized as someone who actually has an opinion. It might be someone interesting to have a conversation with. We already talked about the events. Absolutely do those.

Kate Healy [00:26:29]:
Those are really important. And we’re quite lucky. In Australia, actually, we have multiple different events probably every week of the month. You could go to a cybersecurity meetup and they’re great. You have everyone there, from graduates, students through to engineers, all the way through up to CISOs. So there are really great opportunities to network and get to know people and to get your reputation out there. Because at the end of the day, we buy from people. We don’t just buy the product, the company, we buy from individuals.

Kate Healy [00:26:57]:
So it’s a great way to build those relationships. But then if I think about it from a marketing perspective and if I was a new organization and I do a lot of work actually with vendors, whether it’s talking about this sort of stuff, I do actually speak to this particular subject. But also doing things like running events for customers such as roundtables, I find those events are really good because they’re quite an intimate setting. Don’t do them again for the immediate sales lead. You know, you mentioned earlier that the things you invest in might take some time to see a return. You’re there to help strengthen the community. You’re there to give security professionals opportunity to meet each other and to perhaps hear from somebody such as a speaker that can talk about things they’re seeing in the industry or to talk about a particular topic. So for me, they’re a really great way, especially if you want to get into some of the more senior leaders, to really build your reputation and to really get your company profile out there in the industry.

Karissa Breen [00:27:55]:
Yeah, those are great points. And I think this is really how I sort of started when I first flipped over to the other side. One thing I’m curious then to know, we speak a lot about marketing. So obviously marketing’s role or PR and marketing role is to fuel salespeople. I do believe that there is a bit of a disconnect on where marketing and PR’s mind go versus salesperson. Now the reason why I say that is one, I’m dealing with these people all around the world, so I’m hearing various opinions. The other thing is a salesperson’s got a number on their head that they need to meet marketing. PR people have yes, KPIs and metrics, but it’s not the same as what a salesperson has.

Karissa Breen [00:28:31]:
And I think the pressure would be probably greater than a marketing, an internal marketing person or a PR person as well. So how do you think that these business units can align and sing from the proverbial hymn book with the intent of we’re doing great marketing and PR to generate the right type of sales opportunities for our salespeople to close them.

Kate Healy [00:28:54]:
Well, I think sometimes what I’ve seen anyway is that there is often a disconnect because I often see the PR and marketing team working in a bit of a vacuum. And what I mean by that is they’re not spending time with their sales teams to get their feedback, but more importantly, they’re not spending enough time with their target customers. So they make a lot of assumptions. One of the worst assumptions I see them make is that they think they understand the problem the customers are experiencing, so they try to push their product to fit a particular problem. And that doesn’t always work. So I think one of the ways we can fix that is you see a lot of vendors now have advisory boards and this is where they actually call on professionals in the industry and they seek their feedback. They get advice on new product development, they get advice on what sort of problems the customer’s experiencing so they can know what products to build and how to better solve those problems. And I also think that speaking to your customers or doing surveys or getting feedback, seeking that constant feedback from them around what’s working, what’s not working.

Kate Healy [00:29:55]:
Because at the end of the day, as I mentioned, customers are going to reference or refer your product to other people. Now, quite often they can’t actually say, hey, you should buy this specific product. That would be against a lot of Australian trading laws. But what they can do, though, is if someone asks for an opinion, what do you think of this particular vendor? What do you think it’s particular product? People within the community will ask each other that question and they’ll get that feedback. So why aren’t you asking that question as a PR person or a marketing person, to understand what your customers actually think about you? I think the other thing is, though, if you look at the sales teams themselves, they’ve also got really valuable insights. So the marketing team and the PR team really need to be listening to them and hearing what they’re seeing and what sort of responses they’re getting from their customers. So I think just getting that better alignment, working better together within those internal teams is going to see a much better outcome for everybody as well.

Karissa Breen [00:30:43]:
The other thing I want to ask you about too, Kate, is language. Now, you and I both know if you just look at marketing folks, for example, what I’ve often heard, and you would have seen this as well, is all of these, like, buzzwords. And as soon as people start hearing buzzwords, they switch off their eyes glaze over their board, because everyone’s sort of saying the same thing. How should people start to change the discourse in which they are speaking to an executive, for example, and what sort of language should they be using? And the reason why I asked you that question is, and I’m always saying to my clients as well, like, don’t talk at these people. These people know this stuff that you, you’re going to say. So we can’t be under the impression that the person you’re speaking to doesn’t have a clue in what you’re talking about. So that’s the other thing. Even from a media point of view, like, people tell me things and I’m like, yeah, I’m kind of interviewing really great people all over the world.

Karissa Breen [00:31:31]:
Like, I’ve, I’ve kind of heard that before. So I think sometimes people’s intention isn’t to maybe patronize, but it can come across a little bit like that in terms of their language. Do you have any sort of thoughts around that?

Kate Healy [00:31:42]:
Yeah. So start with the language bit you mentioned there and the patronization. I think it is a challenging problem though. I think you got to think about who you’re targeting. Are you targeting large organizations or are you targeting smaller or medium sized organizations? Because the maturity is going to differ. But I do think that you’re right. There needs to be a level of respect too about who you’re speaking to. You are speaking to a cyber security professional.

Kate Healy [00:32:03]:
These are things, this is their job, this is what they have spent years training for and what they live and breathe. But then I think also when you talk about buzzwords, that actually really frustrates me. I won’t lie. I’m saying zero trust is a great example. And zero trust is probably one of the most misused terms I’ve heard in the last five to 10 years. And I’ve seen all sorts of claims around it and the whole premise around it and the whole, without getting too technical around it, it’s the premise behind it is kind of been lost now because of the way it’s been marketed. I’ve seen technology that, yes, it’s a contributor to a zero trust outcome, but I’ve seen it being marketed as the solution. Now I think that’s a really bad way to approach it personally because we’re smart, we understand that that’s not actually what your product does.

Kate Healy [00:32:50]:
So you’re already starting to lose credibility because we’re looking at it going, well, it’s not a zero trust solution. It’s part of a zero trust solution. I’VE even seen vendors claim that they invented it, which is even worse, really, because you’ve now made a claim that I know is not true, but unfortunately, I think it’s the marketing or the PR teams taking. Probably the marketing team has, you know, gotten a hold of this term, and they’ve. They’ve really tried to leverage as much as possible, but they’ve actually created a lot of damage on the brand through the process of having done that.

Karissa Breen [00:33:18]:
Yeah, I hear exactly what you’re saying, and I have heard a few arguments online around who actually really invented Zero Trust or who came up with it first. So wouldn’t you then say, and I hear what you’re saying, because of course it’s damaging, especially these outrageous claims that people do make. Wouldn’t someone internally say, well, hang on a second, this is actually not doing any. This not doing any favors. Our sales people are getting, you know, hit with backlash around, well, we weren’t the first person, for example, to have coined the term, et cetera. Wouldn’t they take that as feedback to then make changes internally with the intent of let the ego go? Your job is to help people sell your product to, you know, generate revenue for your business. So if things need to change for whatever reason, maybe they just need to change.

Kate Healy [00:34:05]:
I think you and I might be referring to the same argument. You may have seen the same one online. I think there was a quite a public one that happened, and you would like to hope that people would take the feedback. It was quite surprising to see what happened because, you know, there was a lot of feedback from people in industry saying, this isn’t correct. Why are you making this claim? And it was being defended by multiple different senior people. And it would have just been much more graceful if they had said, oh, okay, we’ll take your feedback there. Yeah, really listen and be more graceful in their acceptance of what the community was telling them. But we didn’t see that happen in that case.

Kate Healy [00:34:39]:
So I do think, yes, if a vendor makes a claim and they are called out by the community that that claim is not correct, or they’re getting. The salespeople are getting feedback from their customers that the claim is not correct or accurate, they need to listen, they need to adjust appropriately.

Karissa Breen [00:34:55]:
And so, Kate, to sort of summarise, is there any sort of key points you’d like to leave our audience today? Final thoughts? Closing.

Kate Healy [00:35:03]:
Yeah, I would actually like to talk about the CISO themselves. I mean, I think there’s a real tendency to think that the CISO as being this supreme being or unapproachable person. And you know, in some ways they are because they, they have a really high responsibility in the organization. But at the end of the day they’re a human being and they’re a human being who has to deal with incidents, their team and they have to manage a team that has to deal with incidents. They can’t ever really relax. They are a very high stress job and it’s a very lonely world when you think about what a CISO’s role is because they have a very unique role in the organization. They don’t quite fit in technology, they don’t quite fit into the business area, they don’t quite fit into risk and they suffer a lot of stress as a result of it. So I think when you’re talking to a siso, just remember that you’re talking to a human being at the end of the day.

Kate Healy [00:35:52]:
And I think if we can show a little bit more empathy to towards each other then I think we’re all going to see much better outcomes when it comes to trying to do business together.