The Power of Philosophy in Cybersecurity Sales: Mastering Persuasion Without the Pitch

Andrew Monaghan [00:00:09]:

Today we're talking about philosophy. Now, before you say WTF and hit skip in your player, hear me out, because this can be very, very powerful in sales. If you could master the art of being philosophical in how you communicate, you'll be many times more persuasive with prospects without having to pitch them. That's the key right there, right? So let me kind of give you the background to this, and what I'm going to do once I've done that is give you an example of someone in real life, in our world, in cybersecurity, of taking this approach and how powerful it can be. But first, let me kind of explain how this works. So when people are thinking about the problems that they have, there are three different levels in which to think about them. So the first one in the lowest one, in terms of intensity or power, is the external manifestation of a problem.

Andrew Monaghan [00:01:13]:

So this is when things are too slow, they're too expensive, they're hard to do, it takes too long to find the needle in the haystack, things like that. That's the external manifestation of the problem. And frankly, that's what we focus on most of the time, right? We say that our product. Actually, what it does is it goes two times faster than someone else's, or we find this many vulnerabilities, or we have two X more signatures right? What we're doing is working on things that have to do with the external manifestation of problems. We're solving those things for people. The second and slightly more intense and more powerful way to think about it is how these problems make our prospects feel, right? So this is when you take the idea that it takes seven days to find the root cause of an issue that's the external one, the internal one. Is it frustrating that it takes seven days to find the root cause of an issue? Right. You can use phrases such as it's frustrating, you're tired of you're feeling vulnerable, and you can't do X, Y, and Z.

Andrew Monaghan [00:02:20]:

You're fed up that it's taken this long. You feel let down by the tools that you have, right? So you're using that kind of slightly more emotional way to talk about the problem. And you can do that in two ways. One is, as you're hearing from people and they're saying they've got certain problems when you summarize back or play it back to them, you say, it sounds like you're feeling a little bit vulnerable, that you can't get to that stage. Right. When you described what the problem was, I sensed a bit of frustration on your side, that it's taken seven days to get to the problem, the root cause of the problem, so apply it back to them like that. And secondly, when you're describing problems, you can say, when we talk to security leaders like you, three things tend to come up. The first one is they're feeling vulnerable that they can't get to the root cause of these problems, right? So you're playing a batson like that.

Andrew Monaghan [00:03:13]:

So there are two ways to use the internal one, and the internal one is more powerful. You connect better to people when you use phrases like that because you're using more emotional phrases. But we want to use philosophical phrases. The philosophy level is one step higher in intensity and power when it comes to thinking about problems. And this is where things are just plain wrong. It's not right that it takes you seven days to get to the root cause of the problem. You should be able to get there quicker, right? It's 2023, for goodness sake. You should be able to figure out that in less than seven days, or you shouldn't have to.

Andrew Monaghan [00:03:53]:

You shouldn't have to work with a current toolset that was developed 20 years ago and try and make it fit in today's world. You just shouldn't have to. You could say you deserve better. You deserve to have a way of doing this that works a whole lot better than it does right now. Your team deserves it. You've hired a great group of folks. You deserve a power to capability that you're just not getting from alternatives right now. You could say it's ridiculous that in 2023, with all the advancements that we've had in mobile and cloud and the computing power we have at our fingertips these days, it takes seven days to get to the root cause of an issue.

Andrew Monaghan [00:04:37]:

So I'm using those philosophical powerful words to raise the level of the conversation into the philosophical, movement that you want people to join. Now, let me give you an example of this before I go any further so you can see what someone did in real life. And I'm going to put a link in the show notes if you want to go and look at this. But this is a LinkedIn post from James Campbell. James is the CEO and co-founder at Cato Security. And he posted this three weeks ago. So that's around about early August, the start of August 2023, when he posted this. And the genesis of this post was actually from his company.

Andrew Monaghan [00:05:21]:

So Cato secured themselves posted on LinkedIn because Gartner had recognized Cato as a leader in the cloud investigation response automation space. So Gartner, being Gartner, has to have a four-letter acronym for a cloud tool, right? So it's I think it's either Kira or Sira. C-I-R-A. Right. So Cato themselves to this post and it says, we're thrilled, thank you, Gartner, for recognizing Cato, blah, blah, blah. And there's a Hype wave kind of graph here that they did. All right, now, James, I don't know James never talked to James, but I imagine he felt the need to know. Let me amplify the company post because I've got my own following.

Andrew Monaghan [00:06:03]:

I've got people who watch me listen to me or read me on LinkedIn. So let me come over to Top and kind of give some context here, right? So that's what he did. And let me kind of go through what he did here. Well, let me say what he could have done, first of all. So what he could have done was say he could have cheerleaded, right? Said, Yay, you know, Cato hitting the mark again, Don't we know we're solving problems our customers love us and the team's awesome, right? He could have done something like that. He could have done a pitch for Cato and knew we're leading this space because we do this and we do that and we're awesome at this and we're awesome at that. He could have done these things. Instead, this is what he did.

Andrew Monaghan [00:06:41]:

So first paragraph he said, Great to see Gartner recognizing Cato as a leader in the emerging Kira CIRA space. Thank you. And the embrace the cloud exclamation point. As people move to the cloud, they are unaware of the new risks and challenges it brings along with it. It's great to see Gartner shedding some much-needed light on the topic. So that's the first paragraph, right? And what he's doing there is starting to talk about problems, right? As people move to the cloud, they're unaware of the new risks and challenges it brings along with it. So that's a problem-related statement right there. It's this next bit that I think is especially powerful.

Andrew Monaghan [00:07:21]:

He continues, So after all, you should be able to investigate and understand your cloud resources at a click of a button, regardless if it's ephemeral short-lived or not. That's bullet number one. Bullet number two, after all, empowers your existing team through technology and out-of-the-box automation without the need to be across the 1001 ways the cloud works not to mention the various new technologies it brings to the table. You don't want to waste time creating tickets between teams. Automate it. Let them focus on what they do best and let's be honest, what they actually would prefer to be doing, rather than chasing where your cloud data is or how to get at it. Then the final bullet, you should own your cloud. You should be able to investigate and understand even unknown resources at the click of a button.

Andrew Monaghan [00:08:12]:

Better yet, hey, it's 2023. You should be able to do this on your prod environment at a whim and with zero impact on your operations. And then his final paragraph is, I could roll on all day. Do reach out if you'd like to know more exciting stuff too, you know, three sections to his post. Here is the first one. A great partner. Thank you. The whole thing.

Andrew Monaghan [00:08:35]:

And then he goes embrace the cloud. He talks about the problem statement in the middle. This is where his philosophical statements come from. So rather than saying what Kido does is allows you to investigate and understand your cloud resources at the click of a button. What he says is, after all, a philosophical statement, You should be able to investigate and understand your cloud. Right? He didn't say that's what we do. Next bit, empower your existing team without the need to be blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Third, you don't want to waste time.

Andrew Monaghan [00:09:05]:

That's a philosophical statement. You don't want to and the final one is you should own your cloud. You should be able to investigate and understand even unknown resources at the click of a button. Better yet, hey, it's 2023, right? So it's kind of ridiculous that in 2023 you can't do that sort of stuff, right? So he's taking a slightly different take on that. But these are philosophical statements. And what he's doing is basically he's pitching Cato without pitching Cato, right? He's raising the game up and saying, these are the things that you as a practitioner shouldn't have to put up with. These are the things you should be able to do. It's 2023.

Andrew Monaghan [00:09:45]:

Hey, it's 2023, for goodness sake, right? So he brought the philosophical stuff in there, and then right at the end, he just said, hey, I could roll on all day on this. Know, reach out if you want to know more. So really liked how James did that, right? And much more powerful than pitching or cheerleading or whatever, and much more powerful than what you usually see. People, you know, sellers on the Call I kind of look to you as people that do this all the time, is when you repost something from your company and say, hey, check out our new demo, or something like that, right? We have this new feature, check it out. And you're just reposting something from the company or even it's a blind post. It's just a share with no commentary whatsoever. This is much, much more powerful doing it this way than it would be doing it the alternative ways. So people who are neutral or positive for your way of thinking or your philosophy are going to give something like James's post a hell yeah, right? They're going to sit there and go, there's my people, right? These people get me.

Andrew Monaghan [00:10:51]:

Absolutely. I should be able to do that, right? I can't believe I can't do it. And you will attract them into your like-minded world, right? They will want to join your movement, and this is much more powerful. Joining a movement is much more powerful than asking them to buy yet another security product from yet another security vendor. So my question to you to wrap up here is how can you use your words to invite people to join a movement as opposed to buying your production?