So, Your Prospects Aren’t Sold on Antivirus Services?
Prospects typically have a poor opinion of endpoint security as a whole, as well as a number of issues with their existing solution. However, if you approach the initial discussion as a technical argument, prospects’ overall dissatisfaction with endpoint antivirus will likely increase, making them more resistant to the sale.
Instead, a stronger approach is to try to adopt the customer’s perspective and explore the issues they experience with their current endpoint security—particularly if you are going to manage or offer them your services. A critical component to making a sale is successfully positioning and contrasting what you can do for them with the business and operational issues they struggle with now.
Rather than thinking of selling a solution as selling, it should be about listening and understanding the pains your prospect has. Given the generally negative conception of antivirus products, it’s a relatively easy discussion to open. I recommend you tackle five key areas as your starting points:
- Efficacy – Ask how well their endpoint security stops malware; how often they have to reimage machines; what sorts of help desk calls they receive; and how much user productivity is lost.
- Performance – Recent Webroot surveys demonstrate performance is the No. 1 issue for nearly 50% of organizations. How does their solution measure up? And how much valuable time, not to mention system resources, is sacrificed to massive signature updates?
- Complexity – Many endpoint security suites are just too complex to manage long-term, and some companies aren’t equipped with the manpower to administer them. How user friendly do they find their existing security and its management console?
- Visibility – On average, it takes more than 200 days for companies to detect a breach. Ask what visibility, forensics and other audit optics they currently get vs. need.
- Support and remediation – Antivirus support calls can be a nightmare and take ages to resolve. Remediation itself presents a hassle, as it can be both time-consuming and costly. Ask how satisfied the prospect is with the support and remediation their provider offers.
Once you have this information, the discussion becomes much more focused, and you can begin making relevant suggestions that show you “get” customer pain points and are considering what’s best for their organization.
Remember to focus on business value, working with the customer to see the benefits of switching providers, rather than the potential hassles that have them hesitating. This will help them understand why they should switch, why they should do so now, and why you—and next-generation endpoint security from Webroot—are an ideal fit for their needs.
Understanding your prospects’ attitudes and issues, getting to know their requirements and agendas, and addressing them from the position of their best interests doesn’t just help them succeed—it helps you succeed overall.