The Most Effective Sales Tool to Win OT and ICS Cybersecurity Deals

​As enterprise and critical infrastructure operators become more connected digitally, they are increasingly vulnerable to cybersecurity attacks. Operational Technology (OT) and Industrial Control Systems (ICS) cybersecurity incidents have severe financial impacts, cripple operations, reduce safety, and harm human health and quality of life, both within operators and within the customers and communities that they serve.

Enterprise and critical infrastructure operators recognize the need for OT and ICS cybersecurity, and they are buying. According to ARC Advisory Group's 2019 "The State of Industrial Cybersecurity", more than 80% of companies stated that operational technology (OT) cybersecurity is a high priority and only 10% say that ‘budget limitations’ are a major concern in case of an ICS cybersecurity incident/breach. As Chief Information Security Officers (CISO) are moving to close the long-standing gap between IT security and OT security, Global Market Insights predicts the ICS cybersecurity market will reach over $12 billion by 2026, growing rapidly at 20% YOY. 

The most effective weapon that your sales team has in their fight to win the deal is the Proof of Concept (POC). Just as your OT/ICS solution combats industrial cybersecurity threats, your sales team has to combat deal threats, such as buyer insecurity, decision ‘analysis paralysis’, and competitors.

Well designed and executed POCs improve sales performance. According to McKinsey, companies with effective presales achieve:

• 5-point improvement in conversion rates
• 6–13% improvement in revenue
• 10–20% improvement sales cycle duration

Here are five ways that you can leverage POCs to boost your sales:

​​1. POCs prove that your technology will protect your prospect
Your marketing materials got you the lead and the ‘word of the salesperson’ got you the POC, but now you need to prove to your buyer that your solution will protect them.

Cybersecurity buyers worry about protecting their organization from attacks; that is why they are evaluating solutions. Buyers also worry that their vendor decision is linked directly to their job security as they may lose their job if the solution that they choose fails to prevent a cybersecurity incident.

Your buyer’s insecurity during the decision-making process cannot be underestimated in the sales cycle. 

Design your POCs to prove that your solution can do what your buyer needs it to do and to remove your buyer’s fears. 

• Proof builds confidence in your solution and in your company. 
• Proof builds consensus among your buyer’s colleagues, stakeholders, and even the neigh-sayers.
• Proof builds momentum towards a purchase decision. 
• Proof empowers your buyer to fight for executive approval for your solution. 
• Proof leads to signed contracts.

​2. POCs build the all-important ‘trusted advisor’ relationship
POCs are a collaborative form of technical evaluation. They give you multiple touchpoints with your prospect and multiple opportunities to gain a deeper knowledge about their business, priorities, motivations, and challenges.

Leverage this collaboration to design solutions that solve your prospect’s real business problems, show them new ways of protecting themselves, and guide them on continuous cybersecurity improvement. You win deals when you understand your prospect and stop selling them.

The close collaboration with your prospect also helps you look beyond the sales cycle and starting assessing:

• The working relationship and goodness-of-fit of your prospect as a would-be customer, 
• The professional services effort related to the implementation, and 
• The transition activities that will facilitate a seamless hand-off from presales to post-sales.

3. POCs let you define a plan to get the technical win
The OT and ICS cybersecurity sales cycle is complex, and it is common for buyers to fall into a state of ‘decision analysis paralysis’. OT and ICS cybersecurity solutions, and therefore POCs, are complex, often involving hundreds of sites, assets, and systems. In addition, buyers are juggling multiple vendors, each with an overwhelming array of feature sets and its own POC. 

A well-designed evaluation plan aligns you and your buyer on the goals of your POC, the use cases that will be tested, and the success criteria. A well-designed evaluation plan will bring even the most complex POC to a logical conclusion quickly and efficiently with demonstrated success. This is the very definition of the technical win.

Creating an evaluation plan can be challenging though:

• Prospects may not know what their use cases should be.
• Prospects may not know how to test the use cases properly nor how to define success.
• Prospects may be busy with their regular job activities and may not have time to figure out how to use your solution during the POC. 

The easier you make the evaluation process for your buyer, the better your chances of standing out among your competitors and winning the deal. Show your prospect that you are experienced and that you value their time by recommending a list of use cases that will demonstrate how your solution solves their business problems:

• Your evaluation plans should lead prospects to test your most valuable features. 
• Your evaluation plans should highlight your competitive advantages and include specific use cases where your competitors are weaker or where they lack key functionality. 
• Your evaluation plan should strike the right balance of just enough use cases to prove that your solution is the right solution but not so many that your solution appears complicated and time-consuming.

Standardize your POC best practices, key use cases, and lessons learned into evaluation plan templates that your presales team can use with each new prospect. Evaluation plan templates ensure that every POC is your best POC, even when managed by new or inexperienced presales teams. Templates provide great, repeatable starting points, but your presales teams should have the flexibility to tailor their evaluation plans to each prospect.

4. POCs allow you to capture product gaps and feature requests
Your product management teams are desperate for data about the product gaps and feature requests that come up in the sales cycle, whether they are nice-to-haves, blockers, future requests, or just curiosities. Presales teams are amazing at discussing features in the moment: 

• “Yes, we support that.” 
• “No, we do not.” 
• “Yes, with configuration.” 
• “Yes, with customization.” 
• And so on. 

Sadly these discussions with prospects rarely get recorded and even more rarely get passed to your product managers. 

Guide your presales teams to capture this incredibly valuable product feedback during POCs and integrate it into your product management and roadmap processes.

5. POC Management solutions are the new best practice in cybersecurity presales
Purpose-built POC management solutions like Homerun are the newest software category in the modern sales tech stack, and they change the way best-in-class cybersecurity vendors sell and win deals.

The traditional ad hoc POC process is no longer sufficient, with its reliance on knowledge and practices known only to the best presales solutions engineers, a mish-mash of side tools (most of which are unapproved by IT), and CRMs that are not designed for presales. 

The core capabilities of POC management solutions include:

• POC Management: ​From start to finish, they allow you to plan and execute effective and efficient POCs that win deals.
• POC Visibility: They tell you the status of every POC, the workload of every presales team member​, and the risks and roadblocks to winning deals.
• POC Best Practices: They have built-in presales and POC best practices so that every POC is your best POC.
• POC Insights: ​They show you what is working and what is not so that you continuously improve your POCs and your win rates.
• POC Data Integration: They integrate your POC data with your other business and data systems, including your CRM, for more connected and seamless sales operations.

At a minimum your POC management solution should maintain a record of the following items for every POC:

• The POC evaluation plan, including all activities, use cases, success criteria, and results,
• Descriptive attributes and operational details about the POC, the proposed solution, the prospect, and competitors,
• A record of all internal and external meetings and the meeting notes,
• A record of all activities and action items that were complete (Pro Tip: Incorporate formal activity tracking into your POCs to understand where your presales team is spending their time and the impacts on POC duration, win rates, and internal ROIs.), 
• A record of all product gaps and feature requests that were discussed.

Your POC management solution should integrate all of this presales and POC data with your sales tech stack (most importantly your CRM), product management solutions, post-sales solutions, and other data/reporting systems so that this valuable data can be leveraged throughout your organization.

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CASE STUDY
Learn how one cybersecurity company grew their sales through better POCs: Case Study​

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