Cybersecurity Sales Leads – Simple Triage

If you joined us for our recent livestream on cybersecurity sales objection handling, you may have noticed we’ve adapted a simplified triage process for identifying good cybersecurity sales leads.  This has lead to a higher number of sales appointments for clients pursuing security sales. However, it also requires an MSP/MSSP to have a better understanding of what roles their sales and marketing departments play in their sales process.  Your MSP sales playbook should include a process for lead triage.

Tracie Orisko from Huntress shares our belief in the triage process – when you have a marketing department that feeds your sales team leads, they have to be the right leads.  Low conversion rates usually mean poor triage.

Schedule a call with Carrie to talk about building your cybersecurity sales playbook:  www.calendly.com/coldcallcarrie

Not Now, Not Interested, Not Knowledgeable

Cybersecurity sales leads will all fall in to one of the above categories.

All sales objections are a version of “not now”.

You can check out the slides from our last livestream with Tracie Orisko from Huntress to learn the basics of objection handling when selling cybersecurity:  find the slides here!

Are Your Cybersecurity Sales Leads In The Right Funnel?

Triage Your Leads

We sort “not now” leads into two categories:

• Not Interested
• Not Knowledgeable

Real Cybersecurity Sales Leads

When your prospect truly realizes they have a problem, they are a “real” cybersecurity sales lead.  Your sales process should be built aroud nurturing these leads.  Once your prospect understands the problem, it is the role of the sales team to share the solution.

If your prospect is still unaware that they have a problem, they are not a sales lead, they are still a marketing suspect.  Until your prospect truly believes they have a problem that requires solving, your sales team is wasting their time – and their dials!  Here’s a short clip of Carrie and Tracie discussing triage.  Looking for the full recording?  You can find it here!

When Do Cybersecurity MQLs Become Cybersecurity SQLs?

Cybersecurity sales leads are ready for your sales funnel when the prospect is:

• willing to talk
• aware of the problem
• looking for a new solution

Until all three of these qualifiers are met, the lead is not “sales qualified.” The prospect who has no problems requires more education.  A “marketing qualified lead” isn’t ready for a sales demonstration.  A sales qualified lead is.  The better your process, the easier the transition from one to the other becomes.  Allowing sales reps to send “MQLs” back to marketing is an important part of reducing the time your sales team wastes trying to sell to unqualified prospects.  Triage means fewer wasted dials, and more deals that don’t stall or ghost you at the demo stage!

A Clearly Defined Cybersecurity Sales Process Eliminates Guessing

A great MSP or MSSP sales playbook will give the sales development team the authority to send leads back to the demand generation team. Your playbook will clearly identify the qualifying parameters for a good lead, so there should be no guess work required.  Your cybersecurity sales process should be documented and followed by all, with no room for finger pointing.  When your team co-operates effectively, leads are triaged and managed appropriately without laying blame.  Collaboration between sales and marketing makes for more closed deals.  Competition between sales and marketing leads to bottlenecks, stalled deals and animosity.

Cybersecurity Sales Process: Lead Triage Cheat Sheet

Keep this cybersecurity sales lead triage cheat sheet close by as you begin to prospect for new deals.  Remember to use the MSP ASK! objection handling process to determine where the prospect is in their buying journey.  If you would like help building your cybersecurity sales playbook, educating your sales team on how to prospect for better cybersecurity sales leads, or you’d like to discuss outsourcing your cybersecurity sales prospecting, we’d love to hear from you!  Schedule time with us here:  www.managedsalespros.com/booking/

Remember, Managed Sales Pros offers sales training directly for MSPs and MSSPs, and sales enablement solutions for cybersecurity vendors looking to help their partners sell more of their solutions.  Check out some of our testimonials here!