Selling email security to business decision-makers requires a nuanced approach, emphasizing the importance of safeguarding sensitive information and maintaining operational integrity.
In fact, the B2B buying process for sophisticated software solutions like cybersecurity typically entails selling into a complex buying-committee consisting of not just one decision-maker, but several key stakeholders. Gartner suggests that the “typical buying group for a complex B2B solution involves six to 10 decision-makers.”
So, to help your team sharpen their pitch, here are six tips to boost their sales effectiveness when it comes to pitching an email security solution like MailGuard:
1. Highlight the Risks:
Begin by outlining the potential risks associated with inadequate email security. Emphasise the prevalence of phishing attacks, data breaches, ransomware, and other cyber threats targeting email systems.
Use real-world examples and statistics to underscore the financial and reputational damages that businesses could face without robust email security measures in place.
Sadly, there is a plethora to choose from. There are the incidents that we see in the news headlines like Medibank, OPTUS, HWL Ebsworth, Latitude Financial, Nissan Australia, Yakult, the Victorian court system, or Eagers Automotive, to name but a few. Or you can use personal anecdotes from within your own business network of peers or even customers, but of course anonymising the information to protect the business’s privacy, while still explaining the situation and the outcomes.
Relaying the experience of others makes for irrefutable evidence that the risks are very real, and they can be significant for the organisation, its customers and the individuals involved.
2. Demonstrate Compliance:
Many industries and geographies have stringent regulatory requirements regarding data protection and privacy. Illustrate how the solution helps their business to achieve compliance with regulations such as GDPR, HIPAA, PCI DSS, or other industry-specific standards or regulations.
Show how the solution, in this case MailGuard and other solutions in its suite, offer features like encryption, access controls, reporting and auditing capabilities to meet the business’s regulatory mandates.
And, highlight MailGuard's commitment to its own security compliance, as one of very few vendors in the category that is ISO/IEC 27001:2022 certified.
3. Focus on ROI:
Present a compelling case for the return on investment (ROI) that your email solution delivers. In the case of MailGuard, the per seat licensing cost is less than the price of a cup of coffee. The downside consequences of an incident are potentially devastating though, with some cyberattacks posing an existential threat to businesses.
And even if an incident doesn’t threaten the ongoing operation of the business, reputational damages, penalties for legal and regulatory breaches, ransoms and other financial losses, or simple mitigations and remediation costs, will far outweigh the cost of investing in the software.
To avoid perceived scaremongering, highlight the rudimentary cost savings achieved through fewer incidents and disruptions that cost teams time, money and morale, and the benefits that streamlined security operations will bring to other aspects of the business’s operations and productivity.
By contrast, the costs associated with remediating a data breach, the downtime caused by compromised networks and assets, and streamlined incident response processes, will Illustrate how investing in proactive email security measures now can prevent costly repercussions later down the track.
4. Tailor your Pitch to Specific Needs:
Recognise that different businesses have unique email security requirements based on factors like the industry, size, and existing infrastructure. For example, sectors that handle highly sensitive customer data like healthcare, education, financial services or government departments and agencies, generally have more stringent requirements for data management and protection due the nature of their operations.
Other businesses may present different challenges, like a highly transitory workforce, an unskilled or widely distributed workforce, outdated operations like legacy infrastructure or a predominance of manual and offline processes.
Learning about the customer’s workforce and operations presents an opportunity for you to demonstrate your insights and expertise, and to empathise with the unique nature and challenges facing the organisation and the decision makers that you’re engaged with. In this way, you’re able to customize your pitch to address the specific pain points and priorities of each prospective client, and to offer solutions that can adapt to evolving threats and organisational needs over time.
5. Provide Proof of Effectiveness:
Back up your pitch with evidence of the solution's effectiveness. Share case studies, testimonials, and success stories from satisfied customers who have benefited from your product or service.
Provide data on metrics such as MailGuard’s speed to detect threats up to 48 hours faster than Microsoft 365, with examples of threats stopped and time stamping.
Plus, suggest other measures like improved employee awareness and training as a complement to boosting the core email security stack of the organisation.
6. Avoid ‘Sameness’ and a mere Feature Comparison in Sales Conversations
When you’re selling to a prospect, consider how much of an overlap there might be between what you’re pitching and the value proposition that’s being put forward by competitors? In this article by Corporate Visions, they refer to it as the ‘parity trap’.
They say that ‘Most B2B salespeople admit that overlap is 70 percent or higher. In competitive categories, many companies can feasibly do the job with similar capabilities and pricing. And if your buyers don’t see enough differentiation between you and other choices, they’re more likely to run a side-by-side bake-off based on price.
That’s the last place you want to be.
Salespeople fail to articulate value when they commit the three deadly sins of sales messaging:
- Providing too much information
- Not describing value from the buyer’s perspective
- Failing to identify what’s different about them.’
Instead of focussing on what’s the same, explain the key competitive differences to customers and why they make your solution the best fit based on your deep understanding of their organisation’s needs.
Corporate Visions refer to it as the ‘Value Wedge’ and they argue that it must ‘meet three essential criteria:
- It’s unique to you. Communicate a message that’s completely different than your competitors.
- It’s important to the customer. Provide value by highlighting gaps and opportunities in the way your prospect is doing things today, and then show how your approach will resolve those issues.
- It’s defensible. Document proof points to demonstrate how other companies overcame similar challenges by adopting your proposed solution.’
If you can nail those three, then you’ve created ‘a solution story’ with a ‘distinct point of view that sets your solution apart from the competition and communicates real value to your prospect.’
By effectively conveying the risks, compliance benefits, ROI potential, customisation options, and proven effectiveness of your email security solution, MailGuard, you can successfully sell businesses on the importance of investing in robust, defense-in-depth, email protection measures.
Keeping Businesses Safe and Secure
Prevention is always better than a cure, and one of the best defences is to encourage businesses to proactively boost their company’s cyber resilience levels to avoid threats landing in inboxes in the first place. The fact that a staggering 94% of malware attacks are delivered by email, makes email an extremely important vector for businesses to fortify.
No one vendor can stop all email threats, so it’s crucial to remind customers that if they are using Microsoft 365, they should also have a third-party email security specialist in place to mitigate their risk. For example, using a third-party cloud email solution like MailGuard.
MailGuard provides a range of solutions to keep businesses safe, from email filtering to email continuity and archiving solutions. Speak to your customers today to ensure they’re prepared, and get in touch with our team to discuss strengthening your customer’s email security stack.
Talk to us
MailGuard's partner blog is a forum to share information; we want it to be a dialogue. Reach out to us and tell us what your customers need so we can serve you better. You can connect with us on social media or call us and speak to one of our consultants.
Australian partners, please call us on 1300 30 65 10
US partners call 1888 848 2822
UK partners call 0 800 404 8993
We’re on Facebook, X (formerly Twitter) and LinkedIn.
