By Patrick Chen, Solutions Engineer – Southwest Region
Identify the dependencies
Doctors ask us all kinds of questions. Some of them seem irrelevant. Some deeply personal. Some are embarrassing but we understand why.
The lesson: You can’t get a comprehensive assessment without asking challenging and even uncomfortable questions.
That’s the mentality you need to bring to your next IT discovery call with your customer. They already trust you enough to get on the phone with you. Don’t be scared to ask discovery questions that could secure your next big cybersecurity opportunity.
If you haven’t already, be sure to check out the new Cybersecurity Partner Journey page on Intelisys University (iU) HERE.
Don’t know what discovery questions to ask?
Let’s keep playing out our doctor/patient hypothetical.
Recently my five-year-old brought home a virus from school that took me out. Computer viruses are named viruses because they spread, replicate and infect like real viruses. Just like real viruses, they come in all shapes and sizes.
- Resident viruses set up shop with the RAM on your computer and attach themselves to your anti-virus solutions causing other viruses to go undetected.
- Multipartite viruses spread throughout your environment performing unauthorized actions.
- Browser hijackers redirect you to websites with other viruses like web scripting viruses that disguise themselves in links, ads, images, videos, etc.
- Boot sector viruses hit in an email attachment or USB drives and install themselves.
In 2020, an average of 360,000 new malicious files were detected per day by Kaspersky. That’s an increase of 5.2 percent compared to the previous year. And that number continues to grow.
Scary stuff. You get the idea but does your customer? All the precautions in the world will not protect you from getting infected.
I’m not a doctor but I do know what’s important. Here are five cybersecurity discovery questions to ask your prospects:
- How are you protecting your business today?
- How quickly can you spot and isolate an infection?
- How quickly can you mobilize an action plan to reverse the symptoms?
- How does your business remain agile during a breach?
- How do you know when you are fully recovered?
What are other discovery questions you can ask to uncover cybersecurity opportunities? Visit the Cybersecurity Sales Journey on iU for our “Questions to Ask” and “Demystifying Security” resources. And don’t sleep on the Security-related sessions that were presented in our iU Education Series, available for playback HERE.
Beyond Cybersecurity
In many ways, performing a medical checkup is like performing an IT discovery call. Similar to the way various parts of the body interact to make the entire body whole, the various aspects in an IT environment interact r to make the business and the systems run properly.
If you were the doctor, would you go along with your patient and prescribe a treatment based on their self-diagnosis? Similarly, would you diagnose your patient based on a single symptom without exploring the other areas of the body? Of course not! All of us want an expert who will ask the right questions and make recommendations based on a comprehensive assessment.
Because there are often dependencies between the technologies, we often want to understand the other areas. This is how you secure your hero status with your customer. Let’s explore a hypothetical UCaaS discovery session:
Your customer said XYZ UCaaS provider is terrible, and they want a new provider because the call quality is too inconsistent or terrible.
You inquire about other applications in their environment and begin exploring.
You ask about the performance of those applications and find those applications are inconsistent as well – but not as noticeable.
You uncover the fact that remote workers don’t complain about UCaaS; it’s primarily the users in the office that are experiencing issues.
You ask your customer if there appears to be a pattern as to WHEN the users are complaining.
You find it’s typically in the morning when employees are coming in, during lunch hours and in the afternoon right before they clock out.
Circling back – identifying the dependencies
By identifying the dependencies, you’ve identified a network congestion issue. You may have uncovered a network issue that arises during times when network traffic is at the highest:
- In the morning when people are all logging on at the same time
- During lunch when employees may be browsing, watching YouTube and listening to music
- At the end of the day when they are trying to get all their reports/work in right before they clock out.
The fact that none of the remote workers are complaining further solidifies your theory.
Viruses can do the same thing. Some cause ongoing crashes on your system, others slow down the performance of your computer. Some delete and hide files, or even fill up your storage. Others can be constantly sending proprietary information in the background to an unknown source – perhaps even bogging down the network.
For a deeper dive into network click HERE to check out the playback of our SE Webinar on the topic of SD-WAN.
Support for your sales cycle
Here’s the net of it: many of the symptoms exhibit themselves in a manner similar to other IT problems. Not only do companies need a way to protect themselves, they need resources that can help diagnose the infection if and when it does happen.
The Cybersecurity Sales Journey provides practical guidance for every step of the sales process. All of the content and tools that iU and MyIntelisys have to offer are on a single landing page, making it easy to source the resources you need.
Resources to Help You Sell Cybersecurity
In an era when more and more people work virtually, cybersecurity has never been more valuable for businesses.
Global cybercrime costs are expected to grow 15 percent per year over the next five years, reaching $10.5 trillion annually by 2025.
Cybercrime costs are usually associated with damage and destruction of data, stolen money, theft of intellectual property, and theft of personal and financial information. Businesses also need to factor in lost productivity, disruption to normal operations, restoration of data and systems, and reputational harm.
Your customers and prospects can’t afford not to invest in cybersecurity to protect their businesses.
Ready to build and scale your business? Visit the Cybersecurity Sales Journey page in iU for coaching, education and marketing resources that will support you through each phase of the sales cycle and get started today.
