Deal Surfacing is a process and platform that addresses the problems related to high and rising costs of outreach and pipeline building. Talk to any salesperson – productive or unproductive – and they will tell you that once past the rolodex getting meetings is harder than ever; and engaging with prospects is even worse. Sales managers often attribute the problem to lazy rep’s who aren’t adequately following up on the leads they are given. But the problem is not so simple. A new pipeline growth and forecasting model is needed: one which provides value from beginning to end, facilitating the buyers’ journey and penetrating the noise. We call it Deal Surfacing.
Sales leaders often attribute this lack of customer access to a failure on the part of sellers to deliver enough value as part of a typical sales interaction.
Gartner, 2023
Burn rates are high
Security leaders and influencers in companies large and small are bombarded with information all the time through practically every channel from 1000s of vendors. Unless you have a proprietary channel of communication the cost to get around the noise and create a solid pipeline is high and rising. Few companies have such a mechanism at their disposal (e.g. communities of open-source users contacted in a “fremium” model, or through support or training programs; Microsoft uses Teams to directly communicate with customers; etc.) Instead, they rely on costly, and quite risky event marketing, inside sales and other forms of outreach. Again, not everyone has the wherewithal to throw gobs of money at the problem; and when they do the result is a high burn rate and low or falling gross margins.
Traditional Channels are Costly and Inefficient
Nothing is free. Channel partners, the so-called “Value Added Resellers”, are actually quite costly.
- A new channel partner can take 9-18 months to get up and running
- Often you have to give, before you get deals
- In the meantime, it may take an investment in MDF or Co-operative marketing funds
- Larger VARs often require costly sponsorhip of their events – or you have no representation there – while a competing solution might
- They often represent competing or overlapping solutions to reduce their risks – at the cost of increasing yours
- Productive channel relationships require a lot of attention from channel sales representatives – who often must do the selling for them.
Gross Margins are Down
Security innovators and investors are facing high and increasing costs of sales. Marketing and sales noise has resulted in both intentional and unintentional “ghosting” as prospects do their best to filter volumes of useless information while still securing their enterprises. Sales organizations, as a consequence are losing the initiative. The reins have been handed over to the buyer, who decides when and how their teams will review solutions. Leads which originally looked qualified – and likely were – go cold, or worse – are lost due to lack of engagement. But, this is NOT due to lack of effort from Sales. It just takes many times more effort from Sales to engage with prospects than ever before.
Circumventing the Problem
Paying for leads through corporate matchmaking, costly dinners and lunches with executives and so on are unscalable activities that rely on a static list executives and managers who may or may not want or need your solution. This sort of activity is designed to short cut the relationship development process and, thereby, the sales cycle, towards quickly increasing the sales pipeline. Such events and activities can work, but they are costly, not scalable, and sometimes result in no real leads at all.
A Scalable Channel is Needed
We provide
- a growing team of professionals with existing relationships and engagements
- supported by a coherent process and service offering
- A carefully curated selection of security solutions, organized into pods to facilitate cross-selling and upselling
- the connections and opportunities that put your solutions in front of enterprise decision makers
- Advisory capabilities needed to take the guesswork out of our customer’s buying process, prioritizing and addressing real business risks.
In other words, we’ll get your solution in front of the right people at the right time – regularly, through a scalable process and growing audience of enterprise decision makers.
