Why Enterprise Sales Staff Should be Security Experts

Making sales is becoming more difficult by the day. In fact, 61% of salespeople consider selling harder today than it was five years ago. It’s no wonder. Sales reps are facing increasingly demanding customers whose preferences and budgets continue to shift, a constantly evolving cyber landscape, competitors who continue to innovate, and smaller margins than they’ve seen in previous years.

One of the ways that you can help your sales team stand out is by training them as security experts. Arming them with top skills and information will help them better respond to customers’ needs. Better trained salespeople make for a stronger business.

Here are eight reasons your salespeople should also be security experts:

1. No matter the product, security questions will come up. Prepping your salespeople in advance will give them more confidence in the subject matter. Questions from clients about security compliance usually follow a pattern. This pattern can easily be taught in trainings and learned quickly. They’ll be able to appear in front of the clients as the experts they are, which in turn builds customers’ confidence in your company and their desire to work with you.

2. They’ll have to rely less on technical staff to answer questions. If you’re part of a small- to medium-sized business and/or a start up, you know that time is at a premium for everyone. Your technical staff likely already has full plates with their own duties and pulling them away from their work to answer sales questions creates time drains and inefficiencies. Additionally, having to pause the sales process to wait for technical questions to be answered could disrupt the sales cycle or even halt it entirely. Finally, empowering sales staff with more knowledge will make them more self-sufficient.

4. Understanding security concerns coming from clients helps sales reps more fully understand the needs of the customer. Salespeople are experts in knowing how to approach potential customers, discuss their needs, and offer the best solutions to meet the clients’ pain points. Helping them understand their customers even better will only further this process. This will lead to better results and benefit your company’s bottom line.  

5. You’ll attract more talented salespeople. Reps want to work for companies that enable them to be at the top of their games and be successful. Top talent is in high demand, especially within the cyber industry. Companies that invest in their talent and enable them to continue developing their skills are most likely to draw the cream of the crop.

6. You’ll develop a reputation for serving your clients well. Clients are on the lookout for companies that serve them well, and when they find them, they’re more likely to sign on and recommend others join in, too. As you build a reputation for quality service with an informed sales team, your reputation may also enable you to command higher prices for your solutions.

7. You’ll have happier employees. Employees that have opportunities to train and learn new skills are also more motivated and engaged employees. Providing training demonstrates that you’re invested in their success and value them as team members. According to a University of Michigan study, empowering employees in this way leads them to be more satisfied with their jobs, more commitment to the organization, improve their performance, experience increased motivation, and have lower job turnover.  

8. Having informed salespeople will create a culture of security awareness. Information security frameworks are rarely isolated to the IT department. Reaching compliance with frameworks such as SOC 2 requires company-wide knowledge of the process and participation with processes and procedures. The better informed your staff is across the board, the more integrated security awareness will become in your organization — and the easier it will be to reach compliance.

How Practical Assurance Can Help

As compliance experts, Practical Assurance can advise your company on the importance of company-wide adoption of security awareness and compliance readiness. Contact us to get started today.