Soft skills to master when selling cyber security

Harry Brelsford of SMB Nation sits down with Lisa Shorr to discuss mastering the skills for selling Cyber Security. 

Video Transcription

Harry Brelsford 

Hey Nation, nation dog days of summer back with Lisa shore How you doing?

Lisa Shorr 

I am trying to stay cool in the heat Harry staying cool.

Harry Brelsford 

In Austin, Texas we've had the the summer the heat down now I do see you're getting some heat up there in the Northeast. Well, hey, listen, I want to talk about the it nation secure conference in June 1 of all what is what is the conference? What was your experience?

Lisa Shorr 

So this is my second it nation secure conference. And it is amazing. You know, ConnectWise puts on an amazing show full of security vendors. But they don't just do that. There's vendors there. They have great keynote speakers. They have activities, we went to an arcade and we did some driving like some what's it called? Work, sir. Yeah, go kart driving. And I mean, but they really make it fun and collaborative. And they, so far, this is my third time at an IT nation event, being able to get up on that stage and speak. So they have all kinds of presenters from the tech side of things for sure. But also business development, personal development. And they really think about the holistic MSP not just really siloed on just the tech.

Harry Brelsford 

Yeah, yeah. So let's talk about that you gave a speech, what what was the speech or balance?

Lisa Shorr 

So my workshop was called five key soft skills. And I'm looking at my handout from the presentation, five key soft skills to master when selling cybersecurity. So, in this presentation, Harry, it's so important that MSP owners have a mindset that their entire team are business development professionals as well. Now, I'm not saying that they have to be sales professionals, but business development in the sense that when your engineers are on site, we want them to close tickets. And yes, we want a great response time and an efficient response time. But we also want them to think about business development in the sense that if the clients have an aging server, that might be end of life, or a firewall, or maybe even a switch that you can't add any more devices to. The salespeople typically are there during you know, maybe a quarterly business review meeting or by annually for a quick meeting, how are you guys doing? But the engineers are there on site. So it's like the boots on the ground. So I was training it Nation members and attendees on how I train my MSP as well as my clients on how to identify opportunities to sell like So first, we talked about what is a personal brand? And why should you care? You know, a personal brand, is how people view you when you walk into that room. But more importantly, how do they remember you when you leave the room? So are you right top of mind? I mean, everybody Harry knows you, you have such a strong personal brand in our industry, good or bad? Well, all I have to do is say Harry Brelsford and everywhere I go, somebody says I know him. I know. And that's my mission with shore success. And with me, my mission is for people to know me, they I want them to know me for being synonymous with branding, personal branding, putting your best foot forward building relationships and connections and an empathetic and authentic way. So we started there. And then I taught them a process. And the process is what I call my seed method. And seed is an acronym to S stands for see the opportunity. Okay, there, see what the opportunity is. And then and start to like, you know, having staff meeting discussions, identify Well, what is that opportunity? How do I present it II is to engage the client, once you figure it out, okay, this is the issue I'm having, well, this is what I'm seeing on site. It's a non it's a non threatening conversation when the engineer goes and says, you know, I noticed or I see, I'm concerned about, so that's e is engaging the client telling the client now the second E is engaging sales. So once the engineer has made the recommendation, and that's a key word, Harriet's recommendation, I'm not saying they're there to close the sale, but make that recommendation. Then they've got to let sales know. And I'm gonna do a quick little scripting in a second. So I'll be able to button all this up for you in one second. But then he is deployed. The last piece is is the honor of deploying the closed deal? Most of them not, not every deal is going to close. Not every suggestion is going to close. But how nice is it to actually see the fruits of your labor? Because you identified something, and now you've made that client more secure, more productive, more efficient. So the last thing I want to say about this here is I want to share with everybody here three conversation starters, you might be thinking, oh my god least, what am I say, I have no idea how to train my team, what to say how to say it. Now my first thing is make sure your voice is in an empathetic concern tone, you want to have a little bit of urgency in your voice, a little bit of concern in your voice. And I want you guys to write down three things. So this is in recording. So you can stop and play here. You know, as I say these things. The first one is, have you thought about? So have you thought about upgrading your computer? Have you thought about, you know, upgrading your switch? Have you thought about the second is I'm concerned, I'm concerned about your server being end of life, and Microsoft is no longer going to send any updates to it. And that could create downtime, it could create security holes in your network, I'm concerned about. And then the last one is, hey, I noticed, hey, I

noticed when I was calling you that your phone system sounds choppy? You know, we have what's called a VoIP or voice over IP phone system. And it's all in the cloud. You can provision it or you can set it up in the cloud. You can do anything you need, you can add new employees take away employees extensions, everything you need in the cloud. And it sounds much more clear than an on premise phone system. Now the key the last piece is I want you to close with Can I have and whoever in sales. So for my MSP for secure future tech, for example, I would say is it okay, if I have Eric, give you a call to talk about a phone system? Is it okay? If I have Eric give you a call to talk about upgrading your server? And if the client says absolutely or Yes, or you know, I'm not quite sure I'm ready to talk about it yet. But you can have our call me, then that engineer needs to go right back to whoever it is in sales at their MSP and let them know that there's now an opportunity to have a discussion. It doesn't mean that it's getting close, but there's an opportunity. And that's so powerful. And it's a complete mindset shift hairy from actually thinking well just go in and close the ticket, put in your notes and leave it in for relationships.

Harry Brelsford 

Yeah, yeah, you're bringing I'm I'm actually slightly traumatized by your, your description there. Because you know, I, I'm spending a lot of time in the private in the private sector again, which I really enjoy. Right? That's by design, instead of schlepping banner ads on a webpage. I'm actually doing work.

Lisa Shorr 

Well, I love that you're connecting your, your that's what's appealing about you.

Harry Brelsford 

And you see that all the time boy just finished assisting a client and they were kind of have that last mentality of ring the bell, like, okay, hey, go to the four o'clock meeting. And you know, when you come back at 530, I want to ring the bell that you got the deal. Right? And it might It doesn't work that way.

Lisa Shorr 

All hands on deck approach. That's what I call this. And when you start, you know, what we started doing is we started tracking, just in a simple Excel spreadsheet, nothing fancy, but we started tracking Eric's QBR meetings. So we would put the date of the meeting the client name, and then what we proposed, did it go to quote and did it close. And then we tracked what was closed. And then we started looking at attributing which of those was really because one of our engineers warmed it up so that when Eric went did the QBR, or quarterly business review meeting and made this suggestion or follow up. I mean, it's when we looked at our QBR spreadsheet, I mean, it's to the tune of several $100,000 in sales. So it adds up and not every single one of those QPR sales is because of my engineers. But when you have an all hands on deck approach, and you take the time to really think about, What does my team look like sound like? Are they in alignment with the brand that I'm trying to portray here? As my team had the strong personal brands, and so and that's been my mission, Harry is I want all MSPs to think about their entire team as opportunities to build the brand, not just in silos.

Harry Brelsford 

Yep. Hey, finally. And we'll certainly getting back next quarter will get you back in q4, maybe even after the it nations, you know, that'd be really cool to bring you back in and talk about that. But where might people see you between now and then are you going to hit a channel Pro or ASCII group or this or that?

Lisa Shorr 

Well, I actually have two kids going off to college. So I am going to be flying to Indiana to get them to college. But the one place I will be that I'm definitely not missing is I'm a member of Robin Robins. Next technology marketing toolkit in October is at High Point University. And with Dr. Nieto, Dr. Neato Cobain is one of my favorite speakers. I encourage everybody to search him on YouTube do a Google search. He's the president of High Point University. And he's going to be talking to us about our mindset about he talks to us about our circle of influence, who's who are the people that influence us, like, you know, there's a reason I'm on this podcast with you, Harry, it's important for me to align myself with people that I respect that I trust, that, you know, helped me build my brand, right, frankly, speaking, and that's why I'm here for you, too. So it's, you know, and and that's, we should be open about that and honest about that, that, think about your circle of influence, and who's going to help you grow. And that's one of the things that Dr. Coupang. So I will be in North Carroll, I'll be in Indiana, bringing my daughter to college, and then I'm flying off to North Carolina for the technology Marketing Toolkit, q4 meeting. So those are my two big things. And I'm hoping to also attend it nation connect as Oh, of course.

Harry Brelsford 

Yeah. That last comment, we'll call it good. The, the circle interesting topic is, you know, I'm, I, I'd like to say I'm expanding and evolving my horizons by being in a startup in the Canada tech areas, you know, but we still have SMB Nation. And it's interesting how that's a whole new circle of influence. It's a totally different crowd. And then it calls into question, quite frankly, the concept of maybe shrinking, it's not quite the right word. What I'm trying to say is, I have to really manage my time since I'm in a couple of startups, and so on the SMB Nation side, which we honor and we celebrate, but it there, sometimes there comes a time and a place to be blunt, where you just have to exit people from your life, the the relationships, not as functional as it was,

Lisa Shorr 

right? No, you're it's hard. But you're right. You're absolutely if they're not serving you in a way that supports you emotionally, profitably, but they're just really emotionally draining you. And then you're right, that's the hardest part is aligning with people who are going to lift you up, versus bring you down. And that's starts with your mindset first, which is really tricky. And yeah, taking ownership of it. And then physically, I've had to do that with certain people in my life and it was painful. It was painful, the repercussions because they were friends with other people, but that I lost as friendships as well. But at the end of the day, you've got to, you only have so much as neato Caribbean, we would say, I don't manage my time I manage my energy. That's a big statement. I manage my energy. So where and I only have so many hours in a day just like everybody else. Where's my energy going to be spent? So

Harry Brelsford 

big that the final word, we'll see you next quarter. Take care.

Lisa Shorr 

Take care. I'll see you next quarter. Thank you