Picture this: You’re speaking with a prospective buyer who seems confident your solution matches their needs. But when the prospect digs deeper and searches for details about your security protocols, they come up empty-handed — no certifications on your website, no trust center, nothing.
Concerned, the prospect sends you a long list of security-related questions. What first felt like a soon-to-close deal slows to a crawl as your team scrambles to pull together the necessary documentation, fill out the questionnaire, and navigate back-and-forth communication. Meanwhile, your competitor, with their security information readily available and shareable, closes the deal.
Sound familiar? With the rise of sophisticated cyberattacks, buyers are placing greater emphasis on vendor security than ever before. But complex and drawn-out security reviews can kill sales momentum and lose your team opportunities.
So, to keep deals moving, sales teams must take a proactive and transparent approach to sharing their security posture.
Vendor security is critical to trust, but is it sabotaging your sales?
While business and technology leaders have always considered security when investing in new technology, vendor security has recently taken center stage in many purchasing decisions.
This shift is largely driven by the rise in software supply chain attacks, in which threat actors target weaknesses in third-party software to infiltrate an otherwise secure target. Even if an organization has strong internal security measures in place, a gap in a vendor’s security can expose the organization to significant risk.
With 75% of software supply chains experiencing an attack in the past year, it’s no surprise that buyers now expect sales teams to be well-versed in their products’ security features and protocols. However, misalignment between sales and security teams can cause friction in the sales process — security teams must balance responding to questionnaires with their day-to-day responsibilities of managing risk and protecting the organization.
Additionally, security audits often involve time-consuming and manual processes, from searching documents for specific information to uploading documents into disparate portals. And since every organization has different security requirements, sales teams must customize their responses and processes for each prospect.
These inefficiencies drag out the sales cycle. You can avoid them by thoroughly and efficiently demonstrating your security posture to prospects upfront. Besides avoiding security-related delays, taking a proactive and transparent approach to security builds trust and confidence with potential clients, helping you close deals even faster.
Stop losing sales to slow security reviews: Close faster with transparency
When buyers can easily access information about your security posture, they’re less likely to request additional details, minimizing the back-and-forth communication that often slows down deals. And by proactively sharing security documentation, you gain a competitive edge over competitors who may appear less trustworthy or transparent.
Making security transparency part of your sales strategy doesn’t have to be difficult. Here’s how to streamline the process:
- Collaborate with your security team. To meet the growing security demands of prospective customers, you need a solid understanding of your product’s security features and protocols. It’s also important to familiarize yourself with common attack types and security documents buyers frequently ask about. Regular communication with your organization’s security team can help you stay up to date on evolving security processes and emerging risks. This collaboration also allows you to relay valuable insights to the security team based on prospects’ specific questions and concerns.
- Create a central source of truth. Sifting through multiple documents for information can be frustrating. But what if all that information lived in one, easily accessible location? By maintaining pre-prepared, vetted security documentation that’s readily available for sharing, you can reduce back-and-forth with potential buyers. A centralized trust center makes this possible, empowering buyers to quickly access the details they need.
- Automate where you can. AI has become a powerful tool for streamlining vendor security processes, especially in areas that don’t require complex human interaction. For example, automating security questionnaires allows you to quickly pull data from various sources, like your trust center and other security documents, speeding up the process while providing a clear view of your security posture. Automation also frees up time to focus on more strategic sales tasks, like relationship-building with prospects.
- Proactively share information. A centralized trust center makes it easier to proactively share important security information with prospects, including security certifications and compliance details. Likewise, working with prospects to understand their specific security concerns — such as the type of data they handle or compliance with industry-specific regulations — enables you to highlight the most relevant security details upfront. Want to take your proactivity a step further? Consider recording a walkthrough of your security measures to share with prospective customers so they have a complete picture from the start.
Transform security reviews into your secret sales accelerator
Delays are the biggest deal killer in sales — but you already know that. In the highly competitive software-as-a-service landscape, you can’t afford to let security reviews slow down your sales cycle.
The good news is that communicating your security posture transparently and proactively can go a long way toward building trust with potential customers. By creating a centralized source of truth for your security information, sharing details upfront, collaborating with security experts, and leveraging automation, you can streamline the sales process and turn security into a competitive advantage.
Read More: How to Navigate Challenges in Accurate Sales Forecasting