Looking at cybersecurity marketing, how it works, what can be done better, why the time to change is now, and how to do it without impacting the company's bottom line
I found your article on the need for change in cybersecurity marketing very insightful. With over 15 years of experience in assisting companies with the procurement of cybersecurity products and services, I've reached a similar conclusion: the current engagement model between buyers and sellers is fundamentally flawed.
We have also written a blog on this topic with a bit of a different focus. We looked at it from the perspective of how buyers and sellers became so misaligned in the first place. We argue that the rapid evolution of the cybersecurity market over the past 15 years has rendered the existing solution reselling model obsolete. Yet, in the absence of a viable alternative, the industry has resorted to makeshift fixes on this outdated model, only exacerbating the trust deficit (mentioned in your article).
As you rightly pointed out, trust is crucial in shaping future engagement models. To achieve this effectively, I propose building these models on peer-driven insights, offering actionable, prescriptive guidance for users. Your observation about channel partners' involvement in 90% of projects suggests they are ideally positioned to facilitate this data exchange among customers. This strategy could significantly counterbalance the dominant vendor-driven narratives, realigning with the genuine needs and experiences of customers.
Having applied this methodology with our clients for over five years, we've seen remarkable results.
This is a good post, but it is missing the most important change that we need to see happening in Cyber Security (and other's) companies GTM (Go To Market) strategy.
We need to change the current commercial model of sales and engagements of innovative companies (selling in the commercial space) from:
- annual (ARR driven) models
- that reward one time sales efforts (driven by 'discounts' not ''value')
- that require evaluations/PoC/Due-Diligence cycles
- and (worse of all) 'lock-in' both the customer and vendor to specific contract and usage
... to an
- AWS (and most Cloud providers) 'pay per usage' model
- ... that's it :)
We are working on a model that we are starting to share with our current and future suppliers, that is based on a simple model of non-channel 'pay-per-use':
- PO (Purchase Order) with a 'max spend' value
- start at £0
- price list shared by supplier
- consumption based on hourly or daily use (should be by second, but let's start with hours/days)
- internal teams empowered to use it on real-world projects and given 'max spend' budget (aligned with internal yearly budgets)
- API access to billing data
- Monthly invoices up to 'max spend' value
- LLM Bot to 'talk' to new vendors, explain this model to them and give them a 'next level' code to continue the conversation (if they are happy to work on this model)
The plan is to write more about this, to learn from other teams and to make this a really easy and smooth process for all involved
I found your article on the need for change in cybersecurity marketing very insightful. With over 15 years of experience in assisting companies with the procurement of cybersecurity products and services, I've reached a similar conclusion: the current engagement model between buyers and sellers is fundamentally flawed.
We have also written a blog on this topic with a bit of a different focus. We looked at it from the perspective of how buyers and sellers became so misaligned in the first place. We argue that the rapid evolution of the cybersecurity market over the past 15 years has rendered the existing solution reselling model obsolete. Yet, in the absence of a viable alternative, the industry has resorted to makeshift fixes on this outdated model, only exacerbating the trust deficit (mentioned in your article).
You can check out our blog at: https://bit.ly/46QNYOO
As you rightly pointed out, trust is crucial in shaping future engagement models. To achieve this effectively, I propose building these models on peer-driven insights, offering actionable, prescriptive guidance for users. Your observation about channel partners' involvement in 90% of projects suggests they are ideally positioned to facilitate this data exchange among customers. This strategy could significantly counterbalance the dominant vendor-driven narratives, realigning with the genuine needs and experiences of customers.
Having applied this methodology with our clients for over five years, we've seen remarkable results.
This is a good post, but it is missing the most important change that we need to see happening in Cyber Security (and other's) companies GTM (Go To Market) strategy.
We need to change the current commercial model of sales and engagements of innovative companies (selling in the commercial space) from:
- annual (ARR driven) models
- that reward one time sales efforts (driven by 'discounts' not ''value')
- that require evaluations/PoC/Due-Diligence cycles
- and (worse of all) 'lock-in' both the customer and vendor to specific contract and usage
... to an
- AWS (and most Cloud providers) 'pay per usage' model
- ... that's it :)
We are working on a model that we are starting to share with our current and future suppliers, that is based on a simple model of non-channel 'pay-per-use':
- PO (Purchase Order) with a 'max spend' value
- start at £0
- price list shared by supplier
- consumption based on hourly or daily use (should be by second, but let's start with hours/days)
- internal teams empowered to use it on real-world projects and given 'max spend' budget (aligned with internal yearly budgets)
- API access to billing data
- Monthly invoices up to 'max spend' value
- LLM Bot to 'talk' to new vendors, explain this model to them and give them a 'next level' code to continue the conversation (if they are happy to work on this model)
The plan is to write more about this, to learn from other teams and to make this a really easy and smooth process for all involved