Selling Cybersecurity Even If You’re Not a Security Expert, Part 4: Conducting the Cybersecurity Services Sales Presentation

Security is the No. 1 concern of business owners today. This isn’t surprising given the number of hacks, breaches, data thefts, ransomware attacks, and privacy violations that we hear about on a daily basis. And those are just the ones we know about. According to the Online Trust Alliance’s (OTA) most recent Cyber Incident & Breach Trends Report, cybersecurity incidents nearly doubled from about 82,000 in 2016 to 160,000 or so in 2017. But since so many breaches go unreported, the OTA notes that this number could easily be more than double that.

The necessity to thwart cybercriminals and protect critical business, financial, healthcare, and other data has created a tremendous opportunity for IT service providers to address this challenge while benefiting from a continually growing revenue stream.

In this series, I’ll dive deep into the topic of selling security services and cover essential topics such as the solutions available within different levels of security offerings; how to lead with security to prospect effectively and set appointments; and how to price, position, and sell these services, even if you’re not a security expert.

Conducting the Cybersecurity Services Sales Presentation

After qualifying your prospect for your cybersecurity services, running your security and technical assessments, and pricing and developing your sales proposal, the sales presentation is the fourth step of the 7 Step Sales Process. This step focuses on presenting your cybersecurity solution to your prospect and can occur as quickly as your second sales visit with them. This meeting should occur with all decision makers present and no later than seven days from the date of your first appointment, so as not to lose any sales momentum or velocity.

Before presenting your solution to the prospect, you should try to reduce any tension in the room as quickly as possible with a few minutes of Warm Up during this visit, since the prospect will be anticipating a pricing discussion. Successful execution of the sales presentation can help the prospect understand how their specific business issues and pain points will be addressed through your proposed solution and can help eliminate most objections. 

The 3 Steps to a Successful Sales Presentation

During the presentation phase of the 7 Step Sales Process, you should follow three basic steps when presenting your solution. The three fundamental parts to any presentation of a solution should be:

• PowerPoint Presentation
• Proposal Presentation
• Return on Investment/Value on Investment (ROI/VOI) Analysis Presentation 

It is imperative that you present in a clear,concise,andlogicalorder to eliminate any misunderstandings that can lead to sales objections from your prospect. When presenting to one sole decision maker, you may present the PowerPoint on a tablet and the Proposal and ROI/VOI Analysis as a printed booklet or handout.  You should always control the handouts to ensure value can be properly conveyed at the correct time and pace.