Speaker 1Welcome to the Revenue Builders podcast, a weekly show featuring B2B sales leaders and executives. Hosted by five-time CRO John McMahon and Force Management co-founder John Kaplan, the show goes behind the scenes with the people who have been there, done that, and seen the results. If you enjoy our content, please subscribe, rate, and review the show to help us reach more people. Revenue Builders is brought to you by Force Management. We help companies improve sales performance, executing the growth strategy at the point of sale. Find us at ForceManagement.com. Enjoy today's episode. Hello, welcome to the Revenue Builders podcast. Today we talk selling to the economic buyer. Joining the team for the conversation is Carl Froggatt. Carl is currently the CIO at Deep Instinct. Prior to that, he spent. He spent 17 years as the head of global infrastructure defense and the CISO of cybersecurity services at Citi. He's been the economic buyer for some of the biggest deals in tech history. Also joining the show is Joe Lynch, who's the sales director for the East at Deep Instinct. Joe sold to Carl at Citi prior to being his colleague. So in this episode, the two of them sit down with John McMahon and John Kaplan, and they talk through what works, what doesn't, and how you effectively sell. To the economic buyer. It's a great conversation. Here we go.
Speaker 2So, Johnny, I'd like you to say hello, and Carl and Joe, I'd like to introduce you to John McMahon. Thanks for coming.
Speaker 3Hey, Carl. Hey, Joe. How are you today? Hey. So, Carl, so much is on the line when an account executive first meets with you and your company. And when you first meet an account executive, like, how do you decide if that account executive understands your business, isn't wasting your time, and they're just, you know, throwing out features and functions of their product?
Speaker 4Well, I think you summed it up there, Mac, right? They're too generic. So an immediate thing that I look for is not the vendor bashing, which is, especially in the tech space, not just cyber. That's where they start. And that's just a turnoff for me. Why? That's my job, right? And my job is to ultimately evaluate. What is best for my company at that point in time. So let me come to that conclusion. But the number of times, Mac, I've had an account executive, first of all, get a meeting with me, especially somebody who I don't know, or it's easier if it's a vendor that I do know, or I have a prior relationship with, obviously, but somebody new is very hard. So that initial meeting, the number of times I have people kind of start with the threat landscape of cyber and how it's bad. And I'm sitting there and I'm like, this is literally what I'm paid to do, right? Like get, get to the point. And sometimes I remember one time I kind of gave a gentle nudge of, yeah, I've got this. Yeah. Can we, can we get to the value prop? And they didn't take it. They had a script and I could tell they were following the script and it's just a turnoff. So, um, yeah, I think for me, it's about doing a bit of research. Who am I right. And it's totally fine to ask me questions, right? So for example, if you're on the threat landscape, which is normally where cyber companies start, you know, is this good? Or do you want me to skip, right? That's totally fine. Don't, don't waste my time. I don't want to waste yours. Uh, and, and you can see that straight into the, you mentioned the product sale. It's a product. What's the value. What does it mean to me? What does it mean to my business? How is it going to support what I need to do for my. My company is more what I'm interested in initially more than the tech even because the tech eventually we'll get into the detail.
Speaker 3And how many times do they come in Carl with a compelling viewpoint? If they haven't, if they don't have a champion and they got in to meet with you first, how many times have they done enough homework on your business that they come in with a compelling viewpoint?
Speaker 4Right? Rarely. Right. Right. Yeah. No, man. And you, you kind of that, um, there's usually a competitive kind of piece, you know, you've got a firewall vendor and there's 10 of the firewall vendors, maybe they've done their research, for example, in, in who I already have pretty easy to do, even though we're not, you know, we're generally not disclosing who we do business with, uh, but you know, LinkedIn and whatever is a great source. Um, but, but rarely, and like I say, it's very generic, um, which is just a turnoff because I feel. From my perspective, I see vendors as partners, let, let's start there. I could not be successful in my job without vendors. I cannot protect my company without cyber vendors, without analytics vendors. So this is how I, I always view my success is built, uh, in a large part with, with choosing the right vendors and therefore it's a partnership. So you coming in and just not even bothering. And, and just being generic and, and like I say, not asking me questions, you know, uh, it, it's just an immediate, I can read it. I can Google it. Right. Why, why are you here? You know, I can do this at any time.
Speaker 3And in those rare instances where somebody did come in with a compelling viewpoint, what information were they armed with that kind of differentiated them from the thousand of other salespeople that came into your office?
Speaker 4Yes, we have. We have Joe here and, and Joe and I have a bit of a history, so I'd welcome his perspective. Brace yourself, Joe, brace yourself. It's coming, but yeah, and I, I want to let Joe kind of talk a little bit because he, he did some, uh, some good research, but he, he came in, he understood my priorities, which was interesting because it was the first meeting and I clearly could see even in that first meeting that. Uh, and I'll actually, Joe, you need me to give me some names, right? He had information that he necessarily shouldn't have had about what our problems were, what our business priorities were, and then how his company could help address those. And I want to be clear there. It was how his company could help address them. It wasn't his company versus, you know, the, all the competitors. It was the value that they could bring and they weren't demeaning to other companies. To other vendors, right? They were just telling their story and how as a partner, they could actually help me be successful and therefore my company be successful. Right? So I'll pass it over to Joe. So I'm sure he has a totally different recollection of how easy it was to get a meeting with me.
Speaker 3A couple of gatekeepers and Joe.
Speaker 5Oh yeah. Well, when I got recruited back to my previous company, um, by Mike Ernest and big good Mark and co taught me this really solidified. Value-based sales process and approach. Uh, they let me know that Carl's previous company was the only global financial. It didn't have any current spent with us. So roll your sleeves up, follow the process that we've built here and let's go get some new business meetings through discovery. So I leveraged our tech partnerships with the crowd strikes the world, Microsoft, Accenture, Avanade, and I probably had 20 to 30 external and internal discovery meetings on how we can best position ourselves for what Carl private cares about because every feedback I got from those vendors. There's is that everything in cyber at this bank starts and stops with Carl project. And if you don't make a great impression in that first meeting, you may not get time with him again for the next 12 months. So the, the four pillars that we knew that this company cared about in the network and user security and cloud, I did my homework on those people with their priorities were had a few internal discovery calls at city. And when we met with Carl, we were able to position how this will be successful or all four of those pillars, right? If they were to go to, through our micro. My previous company and what problems we can solve for them.
Speaker 2Hey, so I want to just, I want to just kind of level set us on a couple of things that are being said. And Joe, I think we can, Joe and Carl, I think we can keep using this relationship that you guys built over time and why it was valuable and what you learned from each other, which is awesome. A couple of things I'm hearing, vendor bashing, save it like Carl has no interest in you telling him that his dog is ugly. If his dog's ugly, he knows his dog's ugly, or he doesn't think his dog's ugly. So telling them his dog's ugly is probably a big turnoff right off the bat. And it is with everybody. We all have that same feeling. The other thing I'm hearing there is, you know, we're forcing people to be loyal to those not present. When you throw a jab out there on a competitor, you are forcing your customer to either defend them or to dog them. And it's not really human nature for people to dog people. So you're forcing them to all of a sudden defend a partner or a vendor that maybe they're not, maybe they wouldn't have defended in different circumstances. The other one is, I love this. I hear reps say, okay, how are we going to start off this meeting with this economic buyer? And after about five minutes, I'm like, okay, are you trying to lecture the economic buyer on their industry? 'cause you just told them what the landscape is, what the industry looks like, and you think you're trying to show them and demonstrate your value by your knowledge of the industry, that's actually a turnoff is what Carl's telling us is, look, I already know about my industry. Share with me how you might know something about what we're doing in our industry and how you might be able to help us. So I thought that was really powerful. When you think about your next economic buyer meeting, and if you're starting off with, hey, let's just kind of show them what we know, show them what we know about the landscape, it's probably not going to hit right. Did I get that right, Carl?
Speaker 4Yeah, you did, Cap. And what's the value? What is the use case? And again, as the economic buyer, I'm both an executive, but quite technical too. So in my 30 years, I like to say I can smell through most things straight off the bat, right? So it's interesting. What you say about vendor bashing, not even that for me, it's part of our process is we're going to go and assess, right? Just because you tell me you're great, there's a process. And you all know that. I'm sure your audience knows that. So it's just an instant. You know what it is, Cap? It's desperation. It was always a desperate starting point. It's not positive in any way, right? It's not helping me. And you mentioned about knowing, I call it putting lipstick on a pig, right? When you know you've got something. And especially in cyber, there's evolutions and generations of tech, right? And things decline and new things come up. Yeah, I know that. So ride the positive wave initially with me, right? Let me figure out the pigs and the dogs or whatever analogy you're using there, right?
Speaker 2Yeah. Well done.
Speaker 3So Joe, you went and did a bunch of homework. It sounds like you talked to a number of vendors that also called on Carl's company. And when did you feel like you reached the point that you had enough information to take a compelling viewpoint to Carl to start to discuss the issues that you thought his company had and try to get some feedback?
Speaker 5Yeah, I wanted to make sure I had an accurate value pyramid built out, right? That calls out the business initiatives and what tech underlie those business initiatives to drive them home and drive the value. We knew right away we were going to have to speak with a dozen and a half people before we even have a relevant message for Carl because his initiatives are so much different than any of the other customers that we had had. He was supporting 300,000 users, a million endpoints. So it was a very, very big undertaking. But once I felt we had a solidified value pyramid at three Ys that we were able to get from the tech ecosystem, right? It was a compelling case for Carl. That wasn't your vanilla and bland first meeting deck, right? It's like, this is what Citi's talking about in security, network, end user, cloud. This is why we think we can help solve for those
Speaker 2problems. And Johnny, he went pretty quick through that. Would you just, for the audience, a lot of people hear about value pyramid. You threw the three Ys in there. Could you just do what you mean by that? What is a value pyramid? What are the three Ys? We talk about it a lot, but I'd like it in this context, please.
Speaker 5Yeah, absolutely. So you want to take it, just re-answer the question and dive into the value pyramid a
Speaker 2little bit? No, no, just kind of at the top level, you said a value pyramid, just like at the top level, what is it? How do you use it? And then you threw in there the three Ys, just like there's some people that might not know what that means.
Speaker 5Yeah, absolutely. So I think a value pyramid is a way to show a unique differentiator that you've actually done your homework and know what executives and the business care about for what the security team and network team are building behind. If you're not making a conversation about the prospect and what they're focused on, you're just going to sound like another vendor walking in, positioning their product instead of positioning as a way to solve for the problems and help accelerate the business for what they focused on. We made sure we built out a solid three Ys, which was why change? Why is the current infrastructure set or solution set causing challenges to the business? Why my previous company, how we were unique in the market? As opposed to our other vendors without batching them, but calling out our unique differentiators, and why now? What is the ROI? What is the value you guys will see on day one with this company?
Speaker 3Okay. So Carl, Joe walks in, he's got a value pyramid talking about your corporate objectives, strategic initiatives, how his product might work in a specific use case, how it might solve some of your particular pains, how he's uniquely differentiated. You start to realize, hey, this account executive is differentiating himself from the rest of the salespeople that come in here. Now, what type of questions are you going to get ready to ask Joe about his product and his company? And also as part of that, because you said he was armed with information he shouldn't have had. I'm sure you're curious as to how he did so much homework. Yeah. And I'm sure you're curious as to how he did so much homework.
Speaker 4Yeah. And at the time, I didn't know how, to be honest. So remember, at the start, it's a very professional relationship, I would call, right? Friendships build over time. So that would be another kind of element of, I'm not your friend initially. We're building something. So what Joe had managed to do, though, through obviously reaching out and gathering his intel is. is a couple of things. One, and I like how he just put it, what makes us unique? You don't need to bash the other vendors. I'll figure that out, right? But yeah, what makes you unique, number one. Number two, he clearly articulated how that uniqueness would pivot into some of the initiatives that we had going on across all of the businesses in the city. So very big. But I was going to ask Joe, what are some of the things that he had done that he was ultimately key accountable for? But the third thing that they had done in that initial meeting, where they had helped, sorry, they had shown that they had an understanding of the multi-discipline, multi-team. Joe mentioned it. Networks, end user, server, internet, cyber, right? So I'm kind of one pillar, but ultimately, it was a cyber-driven project. But one of the key things, whether it was by accident, or I like to think it was through a methodology, Joe, but he was the only one who talked about the end user experience. So often in cyber, I hear it all the time, certainly in my career, of too many agents on the endpoint, too much overhead, get out of the way, we got to do business, cyber people, you're in the way. And he would manage to articulate the advantages to each of those, kind of, big other stakeholders that I could use internally. So in other words, even in that initial meeting, he was starting to help me articulate the why internally. I need you all to remember, what I've realized since leaving Citi, I was an internal salesperson. I had multi-business, you know, trading, fixed income, equity, consumer, private bank. I mean, global in over 150 countries. I had to get buy-in through the CISO kind of organization for any initiative we were doing. So the fact that he had managed to do that and articulate how I would go about, you know, getting the buy-in, certainly from some of the key tech stakeholders was quite unique. And I've often said it was one of the best engagements I've had in my career from the
Speaker 3start. So that differentiation that Joe brought to the table initially, you started to look at him, not as an account executive at some software company, but you started to look at him as a potential partner, number one. And what I'm hearing is he was starting to give you information as to, which was starting to get your wheels turning. This sounds like a pretty good idea. And if I'm going to sell it, this person's also giving me some of the ammunition I'm going to need to sell this internally. Yeah.
Speaker 4Yes, absolutely. Absolutely, Mac. But what I would say is, is from the get-go, because of that prep and the approach, remember, it comes back to a partnership. So immediately, there's a, I was starting to feel a trust. And I want to kind of get into that. I didn't feel at the time that Joe was trying to sell me anything. And I know that's weird because I took a meeting from, for a particular vendor. But what I mean by that is he was playing the long game. Right. He wasn't playing the, oh, let me, let me get a quarter. Yeah. The next quarter, I've got to hit my quota or whatever. That, I'd never felt that at all. Certainly, initially, it was all about what value could his company bring to me and my company. And here's how.
Speaker 3He was educating you, it sounds like. He wasn't trying to sell you. He was trying to educate you on why they were uniquely differentiated and what type of value, if you struck up a partnership with him and his company, what type of value they could bring to you and your company?
Speaker 4And I want to be clear. I think think by i can't remember which the order was but but we looked at over my team looked at over 30 different vendors in this space three zero okay so when i put let me ask the question then carl getting into the preaching thing and not you know the value selling or whatever you want to call it um i've heard it all i heard it from 30 other vendors so what's what's different right so
Speaker 2i gotta i gotta take one up for the peeps right now i'm sitting there listening to this and i'm saying you you just said it you've seen 30 different vendors and but yet you're looking for a partnership you can't have a partnership conversation with 30 different vendors so like what is it that i can do to let me just ask it a different way are you unique in the sense that you're trying to build a partnership how many people out there are sitting there listening to this going man i'm working my butt off and they don't see me as a partner i'm sitting there listening to this going man i'm working my butt off and seem like they want to be partners it's like it's like they're treating me like a shoe salesman nothing against shoe salesman people but they're treating me like something you know and how would you how would you answer that because you have a great disposition you're like if you if you dance with me i'll dance with you but what advice would you give people that like they don't get that right away it's like you you're the vendor i'm the customer get in
Speaker 4line yeah i think that's a maybe an experience question of are you just trying to tell me that's just me bringing that out no as i i'm just kidding no but i've seen it but over my career um it's very apparent i can't be successful without vendors and there's a whole bunch of reasons why and it's not just the product uh one thing i always say to my accountant that you know what it's not how you are when the times are good it's how you are when the times are bad there's not a piece of software or hardware ever built or developed that doesn't have bugs and issues how do we deal with those when my when my trading floor is experiencing outages right how do we deal with the bad that's partnership right and and so i i think there's a culture thing here as well cap you know in case your audience hasn't picked it up i'm i'm a brick um i do see different cultural kind of things uh in in kind of different parts of europe and certainly in the u.s where you i've seen the arrogance right i've i've seen that i don't understand how you deal with those things and i think it's a culture thing and i think it's it because my success ultimately is based on on vendors and I can't you know there's a cost of ownership I can't keep swapping vendors year after year or say three years are probably the average subscription cycle it's too much cost for me um so to me it's building that two-way two-way street and all I can say it must be really hard um you know for your audience to try and convey that it's a partnership but if you're only going in trying to sell a product and you're only chasing your next check or your next commission that's not a partnership yeah you
Speaker 2don't have a prayer
Speaker 3good point yeah and if you're looking at a partnership Carl we usually think at least from a sales perspective that the customer is evaluating not only Joe who's the account executive and what value has been lost right now
Speaker 4but also you're
Speaker 2evaluating because you want a partnership
Speaker 3you want to make sure that it's going to be successful if you implement this you start you need to understand what value you're going to get from the product and then what value you're going to get from that company that's backing Joe yep can you talk a little bit about you know evaluating you know the AE the company and the and the product
Speaker 4yeah so with the I think we've talked about the AE a little bit right and on first of all there's a there's got to be a trust um I've had AEs just lie to me um you know blatant lies um yeah the most common and and I don't understand why I'm gonna figure it out that you that you have truth lie well I'm eventually I'm gonna figure it out and there's no coming back from that um I don't have time for that you've had I've had scenarios of AEs saying oh I met with name drop right some senior whatever right I met with I met with you know what I do I phone them I'm not scared did you and most of the time the answers I have no idea what you're talking about Paul wow right and and in one term this is a true story I emailed the CEO of the company and I said I'm sorry I can't do business with your company if this is how your sales and your you want me to spend millions with your company and this is the approach and I forwarded the email chain to be fair the CEO did the right thing and fired the account executive but uh to this day never done business wow um so that's number one I think number two with with a with a Joe and obviously you start to meet yeah the the product and the support and you you start to get get a feel um of of how this is going to go um I I they and then start to kind of and again partnership is two-way street is a joint success so in my role and it was very big role obviously I was able uh with my team to have big influence into features and and things like that which are great for me because it means I get I'm successful and I get what I need for my company to be successful and I get it first but then what it means to a a Joe and their company is they can pretty much turn around and resell all of that certainly in the same vertical because everybody's chasing the same thing in a particular vertical usually be it regulatory or the next thing or the next challenge we're not that different it's just some of us are maybe ahead and some of us are a bit behind so it enabled them to then outpace their competition because they would go in and say oh we already have all these feature sets for financial um and the competition didn't because they didn't have the value of working with us and working through the challenges right so it's a joint success uh there from that perspective
Speaker 3yeah now as a CIO that you got to have hundreds and hundreds of issues that you could address right and then how do you and your team one prioritize which issues to address and then maybe after you address them you come up with a plan for next year or a plan for the quarter whatever you came up with you get someone like Joe to walks in your office and says I think there's a there's another issue here that wasn't in the plan can you talk a little bit about one how you go through the process of prioritizing and then two what happens if you need to make a change to that original plan because a good salesperson like Joe walked in your office and addresses you know an issue that your organization has and
Speaker 4that's one of the best days but um so on your first first part there I think any any any company of any size small medium enterprise global um as a CIO or a C-suite you're supporting the business strategy you it's not it's not Carl's cyber engineering team right it's the company's engineering team and what am I doing to support the the line of business and what they need so ultimately that's a prioritization from a what I would call net new investment right of um and if you think I mean it's been an amazing journey uh from you know data centers to cloud to mobile or internet first right and then you know so you know as the business would pivot to uh you know consumer experience customer experience you know having it on mobile and that right loads of cyber challenges there um but that's generally what it is the second part of you as a CIO is what I I refer to as IT hygiene so you have to prioritize your end of life your patching your asset management right it's the boring stuff but it takes time and effort and and money uh to get it right and then the third thing um you're certainly in a regulated industry uh like I was is uh you're looking ahead at the regulators so what do you need to do right they're almost setting the timeline for you uh um I often heard that the um a bank is is is really a technology company with a banking license yeah great way to think about it yeah yes yes no bank on this earth is going to exist without tech um so that's a great way to think about it and the regulators um certainly again in the cyberspace uh uh initially uh not not great at looking ahead but certainly uh in the last few years have been driving regulations that you probably need to think about and and and and and and and and and and and and two or three years to plan and break out so they're they're really your pillars uh priority and then the the the side the curveball that you just threw in um which for me been a bit of a tech person as well is when you find that that new thing that thing that nobody thought about that new approach that new thing like we have here a deep instinct where yeah you know what you and again it comes back to how does it align how does it fit um you know within the business strategy but generally cybers underpinning most businesses these days as a foundational layer so you you You figure it out because you generally have a bunch of money that you can move around. And at least having worked with startups for almost 20 years now, right, you don't need a lot of investment in these smaller things to prove them out initially. So what I would call a production pilot. So it's not a full purchase. It's a great way of cheaply kind of getting something in, proving it in the environment. And then guess what? Everybody gets excited about it internally, and then it becomes a priority for the next year. And this comes back to account executives playing the long game, right? I don't always have money quarter to quarter because I've already got my priorities for the year. But you play the long game, it's much more reward. Do you have examples, Carl?
Speaker 3It's the product, the account executive, and the company at the same time when you go into like what you call a production pilot. Yeah. Yeah. We could. Yeah. We could get to test all three of the values that they're going to bring before you decide to go big.
Speaker 4Yeah. And what I would say, you know, the account executive relationship is key. I'll give you a great little story. I had an account executive at a company that got acquired by one of the big boys and where it went to die. And he ended up getting a job at a company I'd never heard of. We had been researching this space for three years. And he phoned me up one day and we'd done great work together. He's like, "Carl, got a new gig. Can you just help me? Would you mind taking a call with the founder and the head of sales?" Or, you know, I'm like, "Sure, Sam, why not?" Right? I did that because we had the relationship and the trust and the partnership for years. And so, yeah, he turns up, you know, wheels him out. You know what, that was a small startup. We ended up spending a lot of money. We ended up spending about $30 million with that startup. Wow. They had that unique thing that, and I remember saying to the founder, I'm like, "Your marketing sucks." Because we'd been researching this space, like I say, and we'd never found or heard of them. But it's a great example of how that trust and partnership of one, you know, they move over, I'm willing to help, right? You scratch my back, I scratch yours, that joint success. Right? And it's just a great story because it turns the relationship, the innovative tech, and the a-ha, and, you know, again, that, you know, pre-production pilot is what we did first, and eventually we rolled it out globally.
Speaker 2Do you have any examples, Carl, of you didn't have time to do a pre-production pilot? Do you have any examples where you had enough information at what it was doing at other companies, similar to an environment like yours? Because what I'm hearing a little bit is get it in pre-production, you get it next year. And I know everybody on listening is like, they're looking at their forecast right now, and they're going, "I'm screwed." There's Joe, you with me? Joe's shaking his head down there. So do you have examples of where you looked at something and you said, "Okay, we can pre-produce it and do all that stuff, but I'm telling you, based upon what I see, we're not going to be able to do it." What I see in the marketplace now that I understand this problem and what others have done with it, I think we've got to roll. Can you tell us a little bit about where do those things meet?
Speaker 4And this comes back to, and I've said it, joint success and partnership, right, and the trust. So what I want to say about the trust from the AE side, from the Joe side, right, tell me what's going on in your company. I know it's not all roses. Tell me what challenges you have. Hey, Cartier. Help me manage your CRO, right? I'll manage them for you. Hey, I don't have money for XYZ. This is what I'm looking at. I'm willing to make those calls and help. But yeah, I think of one example, and again, try not to mention names specifically, but let's just say that the deployment would have been in line, so it would have been very disruptive, a lot of change control, a lot of testing needs to be done. And this particular technology, it was an IPS, right, and in line, you know, back in the day, and so it was really frustrating for me that people couldn't see the value, so you know what I did? I made it out of line, right, but that was a joint thing with the AE and a couple of the engineers, and I'm like, hey, if I can avoid the business disruption by just feeding it, so even if it breaks and we make a mistake, we're going to have to do something about it, right? And so I can say the business carries on, but I can now go in with the value, so. Oh, you built your proof points. We built, yeah, but it was a pivot, right? Yeah. The other thing, and I'll give another example, network admission control, I'm sure it's a very hard technology to deploy because it's, if you deploy it correctly, it's in line, and it's very disruptive to your business, and if you want to do a whole other podcast on that, I can tell you why. So we had an aha moment. I remember it clearly over, literally over a coffee, and I'm like, you know what? Let's just deploy it globally, but let's not have it do anything. Let's just gather data as to what we would have prevented and what it would have found. So that whole pivot around trying not to be disruptive to the business, but getting the value.
Speaker 2So did the vendor give you the solution, Carl, or did you have to buy it? How did that work? You're skipping out. Good points. Everybody at home is going, did somebody buy something?
Speaker 4No, and it's a great point. So I was very keen on the, there was a smaller company at the time, very keen that they need to make some money, right? So it was, again, a, hey, we did a deal of I bought X, I can't remember how much it was, and if I then went and deployed it globally, that would have been discounted off the price, right? That's ultimately how we did it. But they gave me enough to prove. They gave me enough to prove out the data. And as soon as I had the data points, it was a nirvana. The other thing was, was if you're going to deploy something in line, that deployment is very slow because it can break. And it's very slow. Now, what does that mean to me and to a Joe is I buy it and now I've got to go and deploy it. And it's going to take me 18 months in a big company, certainly. Right now, you've got to give me some incentives around. Yeah, I need another 18 months. Because I'm not getting value out of your product until it's deployed. Right. So being able to pivot and maybe do a visibility approach, the deployment is so much easier. Why? Because if the product doesn't work, remember, bugs and issues always exist. Right. It doesn't matter. It falls over. The business carries on. Nobody's complaining. Right. But I'm getting data that supports a sales motion internally. And I'm getting data that supports a sales motion internally as to the value prop of your device technology and how it fits into my overall strategy.
Speaker 2And Joe, how do you let's bring Joe and John and John Mac in. OK, now we're going back to our companies and we understand when you say in line, you're like that's going in production. It's going to affect people in their jobs. Like that's how I'm taking that away. Out of line means we're going to have too much disruption to the business. We can feed it and get some proof points. So, Joe, now I'm sure that you have some examples of, you know, and for me, this is always it's always pipeline discussion. Like these are great ideas unless you don't have pipeline, Joe. Right. And you're like, I can I'm in it for the long game, bro. I'm with you. But if you don't have pipeline, then this is a kind of a mute point from from a seller's perspective. But, Joe, how do you go back to your company? You've worked out this partnership. And let's say you got your company telling you, Joe, you got to go get that deal. Joe, you're not tough enough to ask for that deal. Now, I'm not saying that that's out there, but let's just say by chance it is. And, you know, we need this deal, Joe. And you got to go do this and do that. How do you play the long game, Joe? How do you how do you bring it back to your company? And then maybe, Carl, how do you help Joe? You see Joe needing that. How do you help him? So, Joe, you go first and then Carl fill it in.
Speaker 5Yeah, I think there needs to be transparency internally at a company about how a large global bank operates. You know, our product is fantastic, but they do have their procedures and their policies for how they evaluate new tech and onboard new tech and understanding what those timelines realistically look like. I don't want to, you know, mislead anybody internally to, you know, add extra heat on me from a forecast perspective. I want to understand almost like I'm an extension of the prospect we're selling to. So I know how they operate and how I can forecast that internally. But I think it goes back to trust and building trust. You know, we were fortunate in my previous company to avoid the production pilot. And why was that? When, you know, tensions heightened with Russia and Ukraine, I don't want to violate any NDAs, but Citi needed some additional support from us at the time. So we had our C-suite on the horn working weekends, ensuring that we were able to assist them, right, to build that trust and ensure that we can provide value for their org. And once we were able to make that deposit, you know, we knew I felt that I had enough. Sweat equity built up to ask for that withdrawal, right, for a large global. deal. And, you know, again, great mentors internally that I've mentioned before, you know, Dolly, Mike, Ernest, David, Mark were on the horn almost every day supporting that and ensuring they knew what Citi was trying to accomplish. So yeah, it's all about transparency and trust.
Speaker 2And then Carl, for economic buyers that are listening, you know, you've said it a couple times and I think it's awesome. I don't run into it all that much, but like somebody who's willing to put the seller's hat on and say, okay, I know this is probably going to be difficult. Let me help you. Let me help you help me kind of like, could you kind of fill that the gap in on
Speaker 4that? Well, you mean from a Joe perspective of helping? Yeah, you know, Joe's
Speaker 2going to have to go back to his company and do something maybe different than they do it. How do you help the seller do that? Or what are some things that you ask the seller to contemplate to help them build their story? So,
Speaker 4again, I think it depends on the company a little bit and their size, right? Smaller companies are more sensitive to delays, for example, than larger companies. So yeah, that's number one. Number two is really working and making sure because as Joe mentioned, their internals, we've got all the procurement and we have all the formality around that, right? So this is, again, that coming together and you build a trust over that. And then you're a bit more transparent. And then, to be honest, Cap, maybe start getting creative. Like I gave a couple of examples of how, right, I could foresee blockers. I could see delays. I could see it's going to take me a year to roll it out. So that's going to have a negative. So yeah, brainstorming on those kind of things to get creative and come up with, and I'll be honest, the formality sometimes. So yeah, brainstorming on those kind of things to get creative and come up with, and I'll be honest, they didn't like the approaches of, you know, purchase a little bit and then it gets applied to a discount. But, you know, there was a few times, I don't always get it right, Cap, right? There was definitely a couple, I remember one example, probably spent about $5 million on something that we rolled out into North America, but not the rest of the world. And then ultimately, we didn't see the value. We probably spent three years on that. But did purchase, I think it was five, you know, four or $5 million worth to roll it out. Yeah, and everything looked great. We were kind of surprised that ultimately, and again, no need to get into detail, but didn't add value. So it doesn't always work. There is a, from my perspective, internally, I, as Joe's kind of lining up and doing the research, I would line up stakeholders. So depending on the situation, I would line up stakeholders. So I would line up stakeholders. So depending on what the value prop and whatever it was, before I, you know, before I went in and made a pitch to change a strategy or to add a strategy or to remove a vendor or whatever, I already knew at least half of the stakeholders were on board, at least in principle with the idea and stepping forward. The last thing I want to do as an economic buyer is go into a, I'll call it a procurement meeting, right? Or a strategy meeting. And you've got, I don't know, 10, 20, it's a death by committee in big companies, right? You got 10, 20 people around the table, but you know what, for the particular thing you're doing, there's probably only two or three that you need on side and the rest of the room will follow. So that was my homework with the help of people like Joe, right? Hey, how, how would you in other companies, right? So I worked at Citi. What did you do at JP? What did you do at Ernst & Young? What did you do at, you know, Schneider, right? So they can give me their experience to help me be successful internally as well. And again, it comes back to that partnership. It's a joint success, right? If I, if I just want to buy a product, I don't need to talk to anybody. Google's my friend, right? That's not what this is about. If you're just chasing the next commission, right? I don't need that. I have subscription services that I can turn off with a month's notice, right? That's not the role of an account executive, right?
Speaker 3Hey, Joe, you went in, as Carl said, in the rare circumstance where you got a meeting with Carl without a champion. Can you, when you talk about why you didn't use an internal champion to Carl to get the meeting with Carl, and then Carl, can you talk a little bit about the types of people that you might rely on inside your organization to bring you a vendor with a solution to a problem? Trust them and rely on them.
Speaker 5Yeah. So Citi's very, very close to the chest, right? When it comes to all technology initiatives and honestly discussing pain, right? And challenges and what they're focused on. Luckily for me, we had great alliance partnerships in the tech world that had been successful at Citi. I didn't know about one tech alliance where I believe Citi made a non-figure investment in, right? And there were value adds that, you know, Zscaler, my previous company could bring to that investment. So working with their teams and just really doing the research on how deployments are going and, you know, ensuring we educate the partnership because they're meeting with Carl once every two weeks, right? Ensuring those vendors are going, you know, to pretty, you know, evangelize for us and make deposits for us, building them up as champions. You have to really build champions in external parties that weren't even Citi before you felt you were ready to position yourself to Citi. So again, probably 20 to 30 different discussions across tech ecosystems before I had my first meeting with Carl.
Speaker 3And then how did you get that meeting with Carl if he did not have a champion sponsor?
Speaker 5Tell the true story, Joe. Tell the true story, man.
Speaker 3Well, no, I mean, I have to ask the question because the audience is going to be curious as to how he did that.
Speaker 5So it was funny, obviously he was on my radar and I know he gets hundreds of calls a day from vendors. I was fortunate enough to catch Carl on a cold call and he didn't know Joe Lynch from a home call. And he says, yeah, I know Zscaler. I know the CEO, Jay. I'm going to reach out to him when I'm ready. And then actually two weeks later, right, after sending Carl some documentation, Carl reached out to Jay, who was the founder and the CEO that Carl met probably 10 years ago, right, when Zscaler was a Series B or Series C company. And then Jay looped me in and we had kind of our first discovery session together.
Speaker 2Okay, gotcha. So you had the patience, Joe, where the economic, that was a win for you. When the economic buyer says, hey, I know your boss, I'll reach out to him. And then how many people would not be patient enough and think that that would be like a bad thing? How did you stay patient enough? Like, how did you prepare your CEO? What did you send to Carl after that conversation to add value to kind of keep it on Carl's radar?
Speaker 5Yep. So there were three big business drivers that Steve was looking to implement and accomplish. So I had data sheets on where Zscaler can provide value in those initiatives and business drivers, for example, a thing like cloud adoption, cloud migration, et cetera. So having him ensure that he has some documentation on Zscaler and where we can assist his efforts. And also I'm communicating with my team about, you know, internally presenting the value pyramid to, you know, my CEO at the time, right, what we've learned from all those discovery sessions. So we're having a very, very, very tailored discussion to Carl Froggatt about his global bank instead of all about Zscaler.
Speaker 2Did you know he was going to call him or were you thinking he's not going to call?
Speaker 5Well, I was hopelessly optimistic at that point. Once I saw that email come in, I was like, okay, it's, I think it's go time. And then we had a, you know, a bit of a, a bit of a sales cycle under us, but it was, it was a great start. I mean, there was a lot of sweat equity built in, you know, prior to that first discussion to see the kind of hard work come to fruition where Carl was even impressed. It was, it was all worth it. And again, I owe that all to my mentors that have taught me that process that you guys built. No, I want to weigh in there a
Speaker 4little bit, right. Cause, uh, funny, I thought I hung upon Joe initially, but apparently not. Uh, that was my recollection anyway, Joe. Um, I think, I think this comes back to understanding who you're selling to. There was a timing element here that, that was a little bit fortuitous, even though Joe will say took far too long. Um, I, I had a problem. We had a strategy. Um, a strategy gap, right. I had a, I had a gap in what I could do. Funnily enough. Um, yeah, we, we had a solution, uh, from another vendor that they promised all those stakeholders internally would work and it clearly didn't. So, um, so, but there was a timing element here of, of Joe doing the right thing. They obviously did all this research that I did. I had no clue about, but it with my priorities at the time. Right. And, and, and I think you just said it or Max said, right. He was, he was patient. Yeah. Right. So one of the worst things for me as a, as a EB is if you go try, try and do the run around, right. You know, calling people, I call it, can, can you, can you, and actually I had somebody say, can you do a campaign on call? Right. We, we got our like, right. So I'm like, if you, if you, as a, as an AE can't have a conversation with me and kind of get things across then what do you think all of this kind of shenanigans is actually going to help your cause no johnny dig in there a little
Speaker 2bit johnny well yeah
Speaker 3i just because i so carl most of the times um sales people are let's say sponsored into your office through people that we call champions people that have either like deep technical domain knowledge in the area that we're trying to sell to or they the past decisions that they made inside your company has you know they've earned your trust through that through purchase decisions good implementations and now they bring a problem to you with uh and they're sponsoring a meeting with this salesperson are there champions that you depend upon to get your job done not only one to understand issues that might need to be resolved in your company and number two in an implementation you can't run the implementation so don't you need champions in your organization to help you ensure that there's a successful implementation of the product
Speaker 4yeah i was i was responsible for everything from innovation and and and look in the innovation lots of failures right the whole point is is fail quickly all the way through to operations so somewhere in the middle there is is implementation um so like that i think the short answer is yes um there are plenty of people internally and externally that that i'll say were champions and that i really valued their opinion and trusted their opinion um i think as the eb so what i would generally say and it is a bit of a generalization is what is the what is their motivation right so there could be other motivations at play um what i generally see for example um if if you're talking to somebody who deals with endpoints and servers they have a slanted view of endpoints and servers and you can solve everything with endpoint products you have a champion in networks guess what everything can be sold by the network right so um you know and if you have a champion in i don't know api security or identity well guess what right uh we can so we don't need networks we can solve everything with identity and zero trust so so as my kind of role it was also getting a broad viewpoint and trying to understand the motivations because we all have bias we all have blind spots and and whatever um and but yeah i think hopefully that kind of helps answer your question a little bit mac right but it's not necessarily one person and and i'm
Speaker 3but it's also not every but it's also not everybody that reports you can knock on your door
Speaker 4yeah no no not at all and look most things especially in the in the tech world they're not isolated to one group right and certainly in cyber but almost everything's collaborative
Speaker 2in the tech world
Speaker 4right i would say inside every cyber touched everything identity endpoint servers network cloud right like the cyber touches everything networks touch everything right um so so again there's a motivation thing and and there's a timing piece if the champion came to me and said hey i need that i saw this thing and and you know there's this guy called joe right and and it would be maybe it's a priority for them because that's what they need and i have a slightly different priority but you know what it's somewhere on my list well maybe we can work together and and figure it out um but i i would generally say i think it's a priority for me but i i would challenge my champions to the people that i trust right uh what's their motivation why now is it is it something they need that i can help with um but yeah i will always pivot back to where does it where's the value prop for my business and my company ultimately right and like i say timing is part of it i hate to say it i buy a hardware seven seven depreciation on the asset seven years right so if i just bought a whole bunch of stuff it's really difficult just for even if even if i think your thing is the best thing ever financially and and from the accounting but it's really hard to to make a you know it's just a timing thing but this is where you start to get creative with how can i at least introduce a little bit right to start feeding uh you know a change in uh in thought internally as the economic buy yeah
Speaker 3what's that go ahead john i was gonna say
Speaker 2we're not even close to scratching the surface here bro like i'm just i wrote down some notes we're talking about before you get engaged in the discovery and then we got to talk about like during so during the pilot or the offline or the online you know validation how do we communicate with the economic buyer then we got to talk about afterwards and you know how do you utilize that relationship to go deeper into the account and and then use carl to reference so i'm just we have to have these guys back because we're not even scratching the surface on the first one but johnny i would be i'll let you kind of wrap up on what you want to talk about but i want to let them talk about deep instinct because i'd be remiss if we didn't you know here's a couple of people that are killing it out in the marketplace and they all wind up at this place called deep instinct and my buddy eddie carter and there's a lot of cool people there so we got to hear about what's going on deep instinct so carl and joe there's obviously so much more that we want to talk to you back and talk to you about and we we've already just kind of agreed through our eyesight here on zoom that we're gonna we're gonna bring you back and make a little series out of this because i think it's just awesome but i want to talk to you about like i know we have a lot of you know a lot of friends that have gone over this company called deep instinct there's you know carl this big powerful in the industry he winds up at deep instinct joe you're at z scale you wind up at deep instinct and i'm going to start with deep instinct where you guys kind of you uh you can start carl you know like what's going on at deep instinct where you jump in over there
Speaker 4no i'll go first and then uh because i think joe followed me uh so like as part of my role we used to test a lot of innovative technologies um yeah ahead of their time uh examples palo alto networks for scout yeah they were tiny startups and then they went ipo so i'm going to start with deep instinct and i'm going to that's probably the exciting uh part of my role and we tested deep instinct at city for a good two or three years and deep instinct is the next evolution of threat prevention so malware ransomware prevention um we saw ahead and we're seeing in the news and the headlines every day so we saw ahead about how the bad actors are just getting better and better generative ai and the tools that they use to create phishing to create deep fakes to create malware and ransomware these tools are like we've never seen such tools in the hands of bad actors before so they used to have frameworks and whatever and they were with the current technology out there's okay against these kind of things but now the bad actors have got this new generative tool set uh based on ai and it's crazy so we we saw that uh that trend if you like coming years ago and and we were testing uh various innovative companies and deep instincts i had in my threat lab uh along with all the other kind of main uh vendors in the space and this comes back to the value prop right of i continuously tested to see if if the things that i were buying were actually doing the the things that i expected them to do which was to protect my company and uh the results were quite shocking and i think that's a really important over time you would see a big fluctuation in how good they were at stopping threats and that fluctuation came down to two things how new and unknown the ransomware was and how it was delivered and deep instinct was just this solid flat line at the 99 point whatever percent and I'll be honest it took me a little while I was died some of the priorities going on and I was like how can this be like I I've got all the other things and I see them fluctuating wildly and it's really based on our technology deep learning and it's we're the only company that does it and this is the reason I left my career to to join deep instinct and help them grow and take this amazing technology and now we have a platform so it can be embedded in cloud applications storage endpoint it can be embedded anywhere in the defense in-depth stack to mitigate all known and new and unknown and unknown threats and nobody else can say that they do that today
Speaker 2awesome Joe how'd you get him out of there Joe because I'm assuming you recruited him you recruited him you were first oh okay wow Joe that says a lot about you dude he recruited you
Speaker 5there yeah exactly so I'm a firm believer in people product and process right and you know from a people perspective you know the most important piece you know am I going to go learn am I going to go learn from people who have been successful in their roles in the past I'm not going to repeat that success so for me it starts with the c-suite our CEO Lane best has a you know very distinctive eye for disruptive and innovative technology he was the CEO of Palo Alto back in when they had 15 employees, scaled that to IPO and tremendous success. He was a COO at Zscaler when we were a Series C company, right? Scaled that to tremendous success. He actually retired for five years and did his own investing when he discovered Deep Instinct. And he was so blown away by technology, he decided to, as he'll call it, get off his couch or his mega yacht and get back in the seat to scale us to be the next great cyber company. Carl, right? His background with Citi Ventures, you know, Citi was the first global financial to adopt Palo Alto in 2008 through that relationship with Blaine. I know he's always got an eye for disruptive and innovative technology. So, you know, from those two, I could learn a lot. Our CRO, Ed Carter, right? His success at BCE speaks for itself. His success at Zimperium speaks for itself. So from a people and product perspective, I was sold, right? And then from a process, Ed's done a great job in building out a value-based framework that we're now seeing a lot of success with a lot of global financials. So it's three Ps and it's working out pretty well.
Speaker 3Well, thanks, Carl. And thanks, Joe. Thanks, Cap. And we're going to have a second episode on economic buyer, determining value on the implementation and what other post-sales things you need to do with the economic buyer. So thank you, Carl. Thank you, Joe. And thanks to everyone for listening to another episode of the Revenue Builders Podcast.
Speaker 1Thanks for listening to today's episode. Be sure to check us out at forcemanagement.com.
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