Welcome to the Sales Bluebird podcast, where we help cybersecurity startups grow sales faster. I am your host, Andrew Monaghan, and today we're talking about how do you get that balance right between selling what your product can do right now and what your big vision is, and what it might do in a year or two time. 
It's a hard one to get right. It's really tough. I've seen sellers get very reluctant to get too far over their skis, and talk about too many things that are different, let's say, to what the product does at the moment.

There's that kind of reluctance, I guess, on two fronts. One is I don't want to lie to anyone, I don't want to mislead anyone, it's just not the right thing to do to talk about things which are in the future and somehow give the impression to the prospect that they can get them right now. That's one very natural reluctance that salespeople have. The second one is practicality if you start talking about things that are in the future, it's going to come back to bite you, right? Ah, a demo or a POC and they're going to say, I want to see that thing that you talked about in the first meeting.

You go, oh, yeah, yeah, but that's in the future, right? And you lose all credibility at that point when they start wondering, well, what does this thing actually do right now? The tough thing, though, is that at an early stage startup, it's not like your product does too much in those early days, right? You've got this grand vision, you've got the roadmap you're working on and in a while it's going to be fully featured and do all sorts of things. But maybe right now it just doesn't do very much, right?

And if all you're going to do is talk about what it does right now, you're not going to really get to the heart of the problems that people are having. And many people are just going to think that you've got a very narrow focus in terms of what you're planning and what you're doing. And that's just not for me. So somewhere in there is the idea that you do have to talk about a bit more than what you do right now, but you're going to do it in a way that is not misleading. When you get it right, you could really inspire the right people to want to work with you, no matter what the current limitations might be and with complete transparency, with what you can deliver for them right now.

So let's play this out a little bit. Imagine you have a first meeting with a prospect in cybersecurity, let's say someone pretty senior in an organization. How might this play out? Right? So you go through the discovery, the introductions, you figure out they tell you what's going on and you figure out what it is and you figure out whether there might be a fit between what they are looking to do and what you might be thinking about doing for them.

And then at some point in the conversation it transitions into, OK, what do you guys do that might help me with these problems that we just been talking about? And you have to kind of explain that, right? The way that I would recommend you do it is, first of all, you talk about the philosophy that you have, right? This is the company philosophy. This is the beliefs you have starting the company talking about not necessarily visions, but more beliefs.

We just think this and we think that and we think this other way is not working for you or for the industry, things like that, right? So you started that philosophy idea about what's underpinning the whole company and then you can get into the vision, right? So to support that philosophy, what we're doing is building something that is like this and you lay out what the vision is. We see a world where every single device is going to be able to do this, this, and this, or every single whatever it might be, type of data or type of traffic. You kind of say we see this world, right?

We see the future like this. We want to solve the problems you have based on philosophies you have by having this thing that does something that's got a big vision about it, right? And then what you want to do though, is once you've got the interest of them and you can see that there's excitement there, right? You have to start doing what my good friend Mike Rogers, the CRO at Noetic Cyber, is narrowing the aperture. So you think about the conversation you've had, it's a very wide aperture, right?

You're looking big, big picture. But you now want to narrow it right down, right? You want to be able to say this big vision is what we're working on, but we started down here, we started with just this type of traffic, we started with this type of data or the location of this type of data. We started with these cloud environments, whatever they might be, right? And that's where you could talk big vision, but then you bring it back to reality right now.

And then the thing you want to get to is this is where we're strong at the moment and this is where we want to start our journey with you. That's the kind of tone of the conversation. So you do paint the big picture, but you're very clear that right now in terms of that big vision, this bit down here that you can actually deliver on right now. And you're strong and you believe you're strong and that's where you want to start. And a great phrase to use is that's where our starting use cases are with our customers at the moment.

So we want to figure out the starting use cases with you so that you can join us on this journey as well. So there's a kind of balance there to have about opening wide and then narrowing it right down, but being very clear about it. So there's no misunderstandings that they think somehow the big vision is being delivered. And the reality is that if you're working with the right sort of people who are used to working with early-stage companies, they get it right. They know that in one year you're not going to deliver something that's just so massively fully featured that it's going to change their world.

They get that right. And one of the things that they're thinking in their mind is where are the boundaries? Where are the boundaries right now of what they can deliver for me? And when you do it like that, you can actually answer their question, help them, inspire them to join you in the journey, but answer that question by saying, here's what we do at the moment, you're just helping them understand what they want to know. Now you get some people that don't kind of get that and they'll be put off by that, but that's fine, they're not ready for you yet.

They're probably going to be ready for you when you got 50 or 100 customers and they're used to having conversations about, well, all we care about is what you're doing right now. Right, that's fine, they'll come later. But for the right sort of early stage, early adopter type customers, they're the ones that are just going to get what you're talking about. I was thinking about a way to make this real for you and I was sitting at my desk here and my neighbor actually gave me one of these ember mugs. I don't know if you've come across them, but in a world where everything is bluetooth or WiFi connected, this is a usual coffee mug or tea mug size thing that's got a built in heater, I guess, at the bottom of it and is connected to an app.

So you could say, I want my mug, my tea or my coffee kept at 140 degrees. No matter how long after it is since I poured my coffee, it's going to be kept at 140 degrees to me. I like it, but it's kind of stupid. We really don't need WiFi connected mugs. But anyway, I was thinking that there's an example.

I was wondering if I could put this in the real world of an ember mug, how might this conversation go to beer? Wish me a little bit and it's a strange example, but I think this might bring it home for you. So what I would do is I would do discovery about how temperatures like their team coffee and the problems of, I don't know, they're getting cold and you're wasting all this tea. I would do all that stuff. And then the conversation went transitions as well.

How can we help? So I would go something like this. Remember, we inspire first. I would say something like we just believe it's plain wrong in the have to put up with cold coffee just because you didn't drink it, cook enough, just because you weren't fast enough. Having poured it to then drink it.

It's kind of ridiculous that you can't drink your coffee at the perfect temperature no matter how long after you poured it. It's almost like you have to guess like four minutes after you poured it, it's going to cool down a little bit and now it's going to be at the perfect temperature for me. If you had your coffee kept at a steady temperature in the mug no matter how long after it was poured, what would it mean for you for your coffee enjoyment? That's kind of asking them what's the impact of having this? If you had this, what would be the impact?

I'm not asking to buy, I'm just asking what the impact would be, right? If you had this, what would be the impact to how you do things, right? I'd say, well, it would be amazing. It would change my life and I wouldn't waste so much coffee and I don't know what right. I enjoy my perfect Italian roast at the right temperature and the beans and the taste would be just amazing, right?

And then what I would do is say, well, I think you and I are aligned on this. We had the same passion around coffee as you do. And wanting to have it and drink it as best enjoyment environment is the way to go. So as you might imagine, this is a big problem to solve. And rather than trying to deliver all this right now and have it perfect right at the gate, we started with white espresso sized mugs.

That's what we started with. And we got it to the point where it's proven at that size. We have people who've tried it and used it and are happy having it. And that's where I think we should start on this journey together. Is that something a starting use case that you could get behind?

So think about what I did there, right? I had a philosophical discussion about how it's plain wrong that you have to have this terrible coffee drinking experience. And I kind of agree with them. And I asked them about the impact. And then I narrowed the aperture.

I went right down to saying espresso sized white espresso sized mugs, not big, big coffee mugs. So what I was doing was like say, that's where we started, right? And if it was appropriate, I'd say, and by the end of the year, what we'll do is we'll have black espresso sized mugs and by the first quarter of next year, we'll have raised both of those up to having full size mugs in black and white, something like that, right. If that's where they couldn't keen about what the next steps are. And then you've very clearly articulated, right, but what you've articulated what you do right now, but what you've done is you've helped at least give them a chance to be inspired about the journey you're on, the big differences you want to make and what it might mean for them.

And some will get it right, some will just be excited and go, yeah, and I've seen this work in cybersecurity where it's actually collaboration about the starting use case. And I've seen people even say, okay, well, what can you do right now? What did you start with? I want to go on this journey with you. How can we get going together?

And there you're almost collaborating and saying, well, here's what we can do here's the boundaries. What use cases do you have that might fit this? And they're kind of stretching their heads a little bit, saying, well, I could probably justify this, I could justify that. It's not right in something that's going to be massive impact right now, but they're kind of almost playing it through with you to figure out where you're going to go on this journey together. We've also seen is some people this is just not right for, right?

They are the type of company that buys once you've got 200 customers, they just have no appetite for a discussion about a starting use case. What do you mean a starting use case? I want the whole thing, right? And the reality is that's fine, they're just not ready for you yet, right? They're going to want to deal with you in a year time, two years time, and you want to keep them in a nurture.

Don't try and convince them that they have to start with you right now because it's just not in their DNA. They might not be the sort of company that deals with earlier stage companies all the time. They don't want the risk that goes with that. They might have the political capital internally or even the career advancement or situation where they can afford to do that. So that's fine, right?

This conversation is going to be a weird to them and they're not going to be any more put off than they were before. And you just even part ways elegantly and say, it sounds like we're just not quite the right fit for you right now. Let's re engage perhaps in nine months or a year, and we can keep you up to date on where we are on the journey, what we've delivered and the customers, things like that, right? That's where they might come in. But the nice thing about doing this is that you have had this bigger conversation.

You're going to attract the right sort of people into it. You're being very clear what you're delivering right now versus what the big vision is going forward. And this is a proven way, I've done it myself and I've seen people do it very effectively to handle that difficult conversation between vision and what's available right now.