Useful or Spam? A CISO's Guide to Vendor Outreach
Why do so many vendors still get it wrong when selling to security leaders?
Welcome to Razorwire, the podcast where we share our take on the world of cybersecurity with direct, practical advice for professionals and business owners alike. I’m Jim and in this episode, I’m joined by Marius Poskus, CISO at a fintech organisation and host of the Cyber Diaries podcast, and Simon Woods, co-founder of One Compliance and a salesperson who’s been working in cybersecurity sales for over 15 years.
If you’re a CISO, you already know how this goes. The same regurgitated emails, the “just 30 seconds of your time” cold calls, the pitches that lead with product features instead of understanding what problem you’re actually trying to solve. It’s one of the most complained about topics on LinkedIn and in this episode we sit down with a CISO who gets sold to every day and also someone who does the selling to talk about why so much of it is broken.
The conversation covers why persistence without research is just spam, why the best vendor relationships take years to build, why AI-generated outreach is making things worse and what salespeople actually need to do differently if they want to get through the door. Whether you’re on the receiving end of the hundredth cold approach this week or you’re a vendor trying to work out why nobody’s responding, there’s something in this for both sides.
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Three key talking points:
- Why most sales approaches fail before they even start
- Relationships over transactions
- What good actually looks like
If you’ve ever wanted to tell a salesperson exactly where they’re going wrong, this episode does it for you. And if you’re the salesperson, consider this a free masterclass.
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On what every salesperson should think about before hitting send:
“Salespeople are not trying to understand the problems that CISOs face. It’s all about selling features and product instead of understanding where the pain points are.”
Marius Poskus
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Listen to this episode on your favourite podcasting platform:
(https://razorwire.captivate.fm/listen)
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In this episode, we covered the following topics:
00:00 – Intro & why selling to CISOs is broken
03:05 – CISOs on being spammed: what’s gone wrong?
07:00 – The death of research in sales outreach
13:10 – VC and PE pressure: the impact on sales tactics
18:10 – How bad outreach damages your brand
20:47 – Retention, relationships, and what CISOs value
29:30 – Why persistence isn’t always a virtue
32:26 – Building value and brand trust as a vendor
38:40 – The similarities between CISOs and salespeople
41:02 – The art of storytelling and solving real problems
43:01 – What new sales professionals must do to succeed
47:30 – Scripts, honesty, and breaking out of the sales rut
48:40 – Final actionable advice for sales and security pros
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For more information about us or if you have any questions you would like us to discuss email podcast@razorthorn.com.
If you need consultation, visit (https://www.razorthorn.com). We give our clients a personalised, integrated approach to information security, driven by our belief in quality and discretion.
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