Beyond Buzzwords: Crafting Effective Positioning Strategies in the Cybersecurity Startup Space with Bob Wright, Managing Director at Firebrick Consulting

Welcome back to the Cybersecurity Startup Revenue Podcast! In today's episode, we have a special guest, Bob Wright, from Firebrick Consulting. Bob is a seasoned expert in cybersecurity positioning and strategy, and he's here to share his insights on how startups can drive revenue through effective positioning in the crowded cybersecurity market.

In this conversation, Bob discusses the importance of positioning in today's tighter buying climates and how CEOs are realizing the need to be actively involved in the process. We delve into why proper positioning is crucial in cybersecurity, especially in a market with over 3,400 vendors. Bob also reflects on the industry's transformation, from limited resources and hardware-based products to the current era of endless possibilities.

Bob emphasizes the excitement and innovation in the cybersecurity industry, urging startups to take advantage of this unique opportunity to become future category leaders.

Throughout the episode, Bob shares practical advice on defining and understanding the target market, avoiding buzzwords, and creating narratives that resonate with executive buyers. He stresses the importance of making the customer the hero and aligning the entire company around the positioning strategy.

So, whether you're a cybersecurity startup looking to differentiate yourself in the market or simply interested in the industry's evolving landscape, this episode is packed with valuable insights and actionable strategies to drive your revenue. Stay tuned as we dive into the world of cybersecurity positioning with Bob Wright from Firebrick Consulting.

Firebrick Consulting
Bob Wright on LinkedIn

Transcript

Andrew Monaghan [00:00:00]:

There are a few more impactful things for the success of your cybersecurity company these days and how you position what you do. If buyers are unclear about what you do, unclear what you do for them, and unclear how you are different to the 5 other companies they've already talked to, they will not buy from you. Media and large companies turn to Bob Wright, the Partner of Firebrick Consulting to help them with Today, we get to hear from Bob and learn how he thinks about positioning and how you as a small company can think differently about how you go to market and how you position the company. This is a really good discussion. Don't go away. Welcome to the cybersecurity start-up revenue podcast where we help cybersecurity companies grow revenue faster. I am your host Andrew Monaghan, our guest today is Bob Wright, partner at Firebrick Consulting. Bob, welcome to the podcast.

Bob Wright [00:01:04]:

Thank you, Andrew. I appreciate the opportunity.

Andrew Monaghan [00:01:07]:

Yeah. It's gonna be an interesting conversation. I think it's a conversation. that is sorely needed right now in the cybersecurity industry. And when we get into the discussion, I think it'll become obvious to everyone why that's the case. Well, let's talk about the conversation that you're gonna have. You're not gonna have just Neville. Let me tee it up like this. So I moved from the UK to the US in January of 2000 very different time. Things were different in all sorts of different ways. In the cybersecurity area, you know, things were in probably 2, 3 generations before they are right now. I landed. I got given a Silicon Valley Territory as a salesperson at McAfee. And I said out of my as you do as a salesperson, I've gotta I've gotta go meet some people. Right? And in within three months, I met with 17 of the 25 target companies that I went out to get involved with. Right? So what I found was it was relatively easy to do that. Why is that? Very few companies in cybersecurity in those days. In fact, it was called information security. was even called cyber. Right? I don't know how many vendors there were, but I'm gonna guess low hundreds, if that, just not too many. And that's because it was quite hard to start a company in those days. It wasn't so easy. There's hardware usually involved to to set up your website. You've lot of the products actually in cybersecurity were hardware based products, which requires a whole bunch of different type of engineering. You know, the VC world to get money was a kind of murky world that was much less transparent than it is these days. And as a result, there is are fewer companies competing for the attention of the people that I was trying to get in touch with. then the second thing that was happening at that time was it was pre LinkedIn. It was pre Zoom info. So knowing who to go after and their phone number and their email, and things like that just wasn't all that common. And when you did know, you had to do all manually. Right? You had to send emails manually. You had to you know, call manually. The it was all hard, hard work. But, you know, if you're prepared to do the work, you got the meetings. It was my experience. fast forward to May 2023 as we're recording this session today. There's 34100 vendors now in cybersecurity, much easier to get your company going, much easier it has been anyway until last year to to raise money. And I wouldn't say it's ever easy to create a product, but it's certainly a little bit easier than it was maybe 20 plus years ago. And, of course, on the sales side, you know, in 5 seconds, you can find out who the Cisco is that any of these companies are trying to target. You'll know their email and phone number in another 5 seconds. And it'll probably take you a minute to drop them in a sequence of 10 other emails and LinkedIn reaches and phone calls that've already been set up for you. to bombard them with messages. And that therein lies the challenge that we're experiencing where sisters are saying, Hold on. Way too much. Way too much. Way too much undifferentiated messaging. People all sound the same to me. I can't tell the differences. They all use the same buzzwords, but at different order to try and destroy what they do. And they make claims that they can't really back up, and it's a it's a world in which is all very confusing. And in a world of confusing confusion, then everybody loses at that point, which is why coming on to our discussion, positioning, and how you describe yourself is such an important thing these days. I think in many markets, but especially in the market this audience is in in cybersecurity. When you hear me describe that, Bob, is that gonna ring true or or you got more to add about the confusing world that everyone's in these days? Well, like I said, the success of the past is now irrelevant. So the things you did in the past will not work. Today, it's very true.

Bob Wright [00:04:47]:

I think what the good news is in cybersecurity, there's been a ground swell. Oh, I would say it was tsunami of investment that's being called for So there's big, big budgets right now. The bad news is, like you said, you have 3000, 4000 companies all chasing that budget. And can you imagine being a CSO today being bombarded, right, by vendors. It's it's gotta be a and you're probably gonna get fired from your job anyway in in 2 years. So it's a it's a very, very difficult role. I think that's where the role of positioning really helps, and we've worked with probably a dozen cybersecurity companies because now positioning does move to the forefront. The question is, you know, how do you separate yourselves from the pack if your buyers really don't want to talk to you or engage with you or they don't want any more tech. Right? How do you, as a cybersecurity company, actually separate from the pack, engage an executive buyer, and actually, you know, close a deal. And that's where positioning really comes in. The companies that are separating from the pack are the companies that have really, really strong narratives and positioning and, specifically, I would say own a very distinct corner of the room in the cybersecurity category. The way you described it, say the room you walk in right now is the cybersecurity category. If you're a lump in the if you and all your competitors are lumped in the middle, that's a really bad place to be unless you're, you know, Apollo or a CrowdStrike or one of these companies. Because in the absence of any differentiation, what is a buyer gonna do? Number 1, they won't make a decision because they can't figure it out. Or number 2, they said, hey. Everybody sounds the same, so I'm just gonna go with the brand name company. So if you're a Palo or a CrowdStrike or one of these significant players, your positioning strategy is make the market commoditized. Anytime a new entrants, comes into the market, they'll raise their hands and say, ah, we're gonna come out with that in the next 12 to 18 months. But for everybody else, that's a really bad place to be is in the middle the room in the category, if you will, and you look the same as everybody else. So everybody else, all the other players have to have a very, very strong positioning that clearly differentiates them from the brand name players and all the other confetti of noise, if you will, that's in the in the market today.

Andrew Monaghan [00:07:09]:

And we've used the word positioning to talk about this so far, and your business is is positioning. Now I would kinda hazard to guess that for many people, this is a word they throw around without perhaps really understanding quite what it means and quite maybe the power Bluebird proper positioning as well. How would you help someone understand really what the meaning is behind it all? Yeah. That's a really good question. There's a lot of I I think confusion in the b to b mark, tech mark, particularly about what's you know, branding versus positioning versus messaging. I draw a very, very clear distinction between the 3. For me, branding and they're all three important. Branding for me is

Bob Wright [00:07:46]:

What's the tone? What's the experience of the company? What's the the visual expression, if you will, the corporate identity? And that's very different from positioning. Positioning is how do I shape and a category and own a very distinct category count corner of the category and drive really clear differentiation, and the messaging is a description of what you do. So I'm, you know, I'm clearly in the positioning lane, so to speak. about how do we help companies separate from the pack, differentiate on a very, very clear, distinct corner of the room, And today, I think a lot of positioning is being used to create urgency in sales cycles because for a lot of our client status quo is the you know, is the competition because with a finite number of buying dollars out there that's being chased, half the questions, how do you turn medium intent buyers into great urgency of them. And, likewise, for the money that is available on being spent, how do you grab your share of the wallet and clearly differentiate you from the other and compete better in your and improve your win loss ratio in those in those particular sales cycles. So really positioning is really how do you own a particular perception in the minds of your buyers. I call out how do you own a distinct corner of the room and how do you create urgency in sales cycles.

Andrew Monaghan [00:09:03]:

I think right now, urgency is what many companies are after. We've seen deal cycles extend that, and as you said, status quo has become the norm. You gotta really have some sort of compelling reason to go off the status quo. One of the things I hear about from from companies we are differentiated. Right? We have things that are different. We've got this this thing that goes faster. We got this thing which is better suited for AWS. We got various things that we do differently, and yet somehow that doesn't seem to come across.

Bob Wright [00:09:34]:

Why might that be? Well, I think one of the Cardinal rules in in our industry is the superior product doesn't always win. The superior product doesn't always win. You know, and I came out of product marketing. Right? You spend all this time with the engineering team, your customers, you know, define the product, build the MRDs and everything come running out when the product's ready Go. And what's the first thing you wanna talk about? All the great features and functions that your product has that may be different from your competition. Your buyers don't care about how your product works. Your buyers don't care about how your prop works. They really wanna know why you matter. they wanna know why you matter. So what really is being required is how do you turn your your geek speak and your great superior IP and technology whizbang stuff into into solving a distinct problem fear buyer. Every all buyers buy from pain and problems. So the winning positioning is not the one that spouts all the features and functions and and talks about themselves. The Winnie Tech Companies or cybersecurity companies are the ones that actually put their product in the context of a a problem that they own and a problem that their buyer deeply cares about. And they're actually selling the problem, not the product, if if that makes sense to you. And so any company right now that's and this is regardless of a crowded market like cyber security or any of our tech markets, that is riddled with, you know, feature rich narratives out out there. The number one key to positioning is what is the big hairy multimillion dollar urgent buyer problem that you own with all and how can you build a case that your unique features can uniquely solve that problem? And that's the key fundamental power of positioning. Is there an example that you can take us through from you've worked with a cyber security company before? Yeah. You know, take well, we we were working with we just did a whole bunch of work with Cisco. Right? Cisco, huge company. They have a whole business unit specifically for cybersecurity, probably maybe what's 12, 17 investments in the last year into every single market category that you can imagine. But the question is, what does Cisco stand for? They've got one of everything. So what's the portfolio stand for? What does the Cisco security business unit stand for? So we build a really and really interesting conversation around security resilience and owning that corner of the room. If you look as we've gone through the pandemic or come in post pandemic, there's all kinds of conversations about financial resiliency, supply chain resilience, employee resiliency, And can you build a case that what's also required to make any of those works that is security resiliency? And can you own that conversation in in the corner of the room? And that's part of what we did with with Cisco and their whole portfolio at that Cerralling cryop their whole portfolio is owning that corner of the room called security resilience, which is a very different corner of the room. And it's identified with a very distinct problem in the market. The question is a lot of times of these companies, can you make the CISO a hero? When I do positioning, I always imagine Here's a seesaw. Right? That's a really difficult job. That's a very difficult job today. And, you know, everybody's calling you up because they got problems. Nobody's called up saying this is great. You know? So I think in that case, is there a way that you as a cybersecurity vendor make them a hero? So part of what we did for Cisco is security resiliency. We had what are the 7 principles of security resilience. Now the CSOs are going with a security resilience plan. to their boards, again, looking like a hero that's very connected to some very real problems. So I always feel like good positioning also it not only explains why you matter, in other words, own a problem and show how you can uniquely solve that problem, but how can you fundamentally change the lives of your buyers and make them the hero. And I think that's a really important thing particularly for the CSO because that particular executive is under fire a lot of these companies. And the question I always ask is how can your technology and platform cybersecurity? Goodness make your CISO a hero.

Andrew Monaghan [00:13:39]:

And, you know, when I think about SSO, you know, they you're right. They're they're in a tough job. No one ever calls them, say, good news. You know, congratulations, we didn't get a breach today. Right? You only get the call when things are going bad. And as they're thinking though about, you know, vendors that come on their their radar, they're probably thinking or asking themselves some questions. Right? They first, you know, maybe subconsciously, they wanna be a hero, but they probably get more practical things they're asking themselves

Bob Wright [00:14:05]:

about your company that you need to be aware of. Have I got that sort of close to being correct? Yeah. I think the problem is if you're a start up cyber security company. Right? It's interesting whenever we take our executives to our process. The first thing we ask is who is this positioning for? Who's the market? Oh, we're for the fortune 500, and I'm looking at them going, well, probably 498 of those companies wouldn't buy it because you're too small and the other 2 aren't ready. Right? So I think it's it's really, really important. to get clear about who your target market is for positioning, who your positioning really is for. And whereas your next set of revenue is gonna come from, what do those buyers look like? And I think, again, it comes down to what's the big hairy problem, multimillion dollar problem you can solve. So for example, let's take you know, vulnerability management. Right? That was a new category of software that happened a number of years ago. Right? Well, what was the problem that solved that solved that? The problem is that it solved is you got IT departments are overwhelmed by patches. Security and IT are fighting over this stuff. Right? Because The stuff's not patched and kept up to date, and it's creating these exposure levels. Right? And you got all these vulnerabilities, if you will, that are that are showing up in the infrastructure. So, again, that's the problem, if you will. And if you can go to a CSO and say, look. You have IT you have a friction between your IT and security departments. Oh, yeah. We do. Right? Are there all you know, it's a hard time keeping up all of the patches and these continuous releases that are being offered across our multi environment IT oh, yeah. We are, and that's the big problem we solve. A lot of times, you can even name the problem, if you will. So I think, again, I think it's really, really important what what's the big hairy problem that you solve and get out of the buzzword bingo, if you will, about you know, your type of sassy or your type of 0 trust or whatever. Right? because I think Clay's look is just set over you know, our buyers now. Right? because of all these buzzwords. So I think it's it's important, you know, to be in these categories, but also say, here's the specific problem that we saw. I think,

Andrew Monaghan [00:16:05]:

you know, I'm wondering if there's a fine line between creating the the naming the naming the category, naming the the problems, you know, security resiliency. versus, you know, what a Cisco or a security in my view is just another bunch of buzzwords. Right? Where where is that fine line between some of that actually has meaning for them? they get and the other site, which is, well, that just sounds a little bit stupid. Yeah. I think it's not it's not creating buzzwords really. I think what's really important is what I what I think is really important is what is the problem you solve. Right? So when we do when we work with our clients,

Bob Wright [00:16:41]:

One of the first things we do is give me let me talk to 10 customers of yours. 10 that you've just sold, right, in the past year. Not somebody who sold 5 years ago or 7 years ago, but I wanna talk to the 10 customers that look like your next set of buyers. And every single one of those buyers is what was the trigger event that caused you to raise your hand and initiate a project. And I listen for the language they use and look for the patterns. And after a while, you'll see the same patterns, and you'll So it's important to put the the problem in the in the language your buyers have. But look the I always look at the patterns. What causes a buyer to raise their hand and trigger event and actually put budget to something. What do they think the problem is that they're solving? And that helps lead to that answer of what's the big hairy problem you solve and can you name that problem?

Andrew Monaghan [00:17:29]:

Well, let's get to know you a bit more. I'm gonna ask you to pick three numbers between 135, and I'll read out the corresponding question. Alright. Number 7. 7 is, what is your favorite summer past time?

Bob Wright [00:17:42]:

Oh, my favorite summer pastime is body boarding. Body boarding. Where do you do that? Out at Stinson Beach. Does it have a cold? gotta wear a wet suit, brother. Oh my goodness. It's not for the faint art. Oh, no. What's the fun, though? Right? Yeah. It is. Alright. One more number, 2135. How about number

Andrew Monaghan [00:18:02]:

31? 31. What is your favorite city to visit?

Bob Wright [00:18:07]:

Wow. That is a really difficult question right now. Can I have couple of them? Go on then. Give me 2. I'm gonna give you Cusco, and I'm gonna go somewhere in Vuitton. They don't have really big cities.

Andrew Monaghan [00:18:22]:

Alright. So I can't let you go by with Cusco and somewhere in Vuitton. So So Cusco and Peru, the start of the the trail, right, up to machu Picchu. Is that right? Yeah. I think a trail. That's correct. What what is it about Cusco that you love? You know, it's a it's a it has layers of history to it, and the indigenous culture is still very, very present.

Bob Wright [00:18:43]:

And it has there's just people from all over the travelers, from all over the world that have either moved there or are visiting there. and it's just a fascinating place. And it's just not the incotreo. You know? It's there's all kinds of things going on there and in Peru and specifically in Cusco. It's very, very spiritual city and with a lot of nuance and a lot of layers to it. Now as Cosmopolitan

Andrew Monaghan [00:19:12]:

as Cusco might be, I'm imagining any city in Buta and not being the same as that. But but you got that wrong.

Bob Wright [00:19:19]:

What is it about Bhutan that you love? There is no big city in Bhutan, gratefully. What I love about Bhutan is it feels like you're stepping back into another world. you know, everybody is still wearing the traditional clothing. The good news is English is the 2nd language, so it's pretty easy to get around. it's a Buddhist country, and it was it was probably like Tibet was before, you know, a long, long, long time ago. So you go into the temples, there's nobody really there. It's has all these mountains. Right? It's right up against Himalayas, so it has mountains and these big rivers flowing through the the valleys and monasteries everywhere, and it's just a really love and the people are really, really lovely. And you are the first person I ever met to speak in to Buddha. What's that? Well, there you go. That you you all you can't not very many people can go there because you have to have a permit to get in. Okay. so that they try to keep people out.

Andrew Monaghan [00:20:15]:

What a what a interesting place, though. Fascinating that you've been there. Alright. Last number would seem more than 35.

Bob Wright [00:20:20]:

Why don't we go with 34?

Andrew Monaghan [00:20:23]:

34. Wow. This is gonna be interesting. Which cybersecurity startup do you admire most right now?

Bob Wright [00:20:29]:

Well, I you know, it's I would say there's a company called Exadim. I don't know if there's a startup still, but they're pretty close to it. ex beam, I would say, is an interesting company right now. Yeah. They're an interesting submarket, right, in the in the SIEM space? modern day sim? Yeah. They're trying to create security ops space at the same time, disrupt and take be the next gen sim, if you will. which is really, really interesting. And I think the other big thing about it is is really where they're focused on is compromised credentials. And I think that's one of the number one cyber security issue today is compromised credentials that are impacting companies of all sizes. So they've really taken that on, but they're SIEM and some of the other applic a software that they have built on top of it to really help companies get a handle on their you know, on that compromised credentials issue. And you got a pretty

Andrew Monaghan [00:21:22]:

forward thinking and visionaries CEO in Mike DeCesar there. Right? That's right. That's right. I was thinking about, you know, my clients and people I work with. They're already staged companies. Right? So they're your seed, a, maybe something or b as well. So they're they're in that mode of coming to market. They're trying to, you know, scratch out their part of the market, their corner of the room as you're talking about. If I think about, you know, a small player coming into a market with a dominant big player. Right? Call it Palo. Right now in Cloud, call it Wiz. Right? These companies are just yeah. They're they're big, big companies that you're trying to get your fair share from. How does a small company think about competing like that? Yeah. That's a really good question. That's a $1,000,000 question. And I think, again, it sits you have to solve it. The question is why do we need a new company in this category?

Bob Wright [00:22:16]:

Right? Why do you need a new company? And take Sassy. Why do you need a new Sassy company? Right? Why? And the question that's the that's the question you have to answer. So and what I mean by that is what's great right now as we just came through a pandemic and a huge we're in the midst of a huge transformation of business. Right? There's a business inflection point. Is it possible to bill bill the case that the old software, Palo, and all these guys were built for another era? They were born for a completely different cyber security era. And can you describe the differences between today's era and yesterday's era to build a case why it warrants a next generation of solution? And that's the argument that's that's being asked to be made if you're coming in to compete against an existing category. The other thing that I think is really interesting is to create a distinction between what you do and the old guard, if you will. is say we got an x yz type. We got a date of 1st Sassy or we have an experience for Sassy or whatever. But name your type of Sassy, to draw a very clear distinction from yesterday's Sassy and say, look. Yesterday's Sassy was born for another year. We're in the post pandemic era. We've just gone through an influx point. It's a new era of business. It's a new era of threats and exposure, if you will. that requires a different kind of xyzcybersecurity

Andrew Monaghan [00:23:37]:

or or I was using the example of Sassy. It's funny how you you picked that one. I know if you did on purpose. But, of course, the ding against the the VPNs in the past is they weren't experienced first. It was the most horrible user experience you could get. Right? So you're you're, by default, just lighting up against that emotional,

Bob Wright [00:23:54]:

yeah, this sucks. Kinda the old way sucks. I just know it. Right? Yeah. That's right. And and I and and that's the one way to do it. The other one is if you're a startup, a lot of times, you are creating a new category. So, again, it's the same thing. Why do you need a new category? Oh, because there's a new cybersecurity problem that the old class, the traditional cyber security companies weren't born to solve because this new problem wasn't around when they came into existence.

Andrew Monaghan [00:24:21]:

So if if we're that early stage company then, how do we get going on this these discussions? Right? Is there some framework or a principle or something that they should be thinking about it and say, yeah. Let's just start, you know, working through this a bit ourselves.

Bob Wright [00:24:33]:

Yeah. I think it's important to have it. Again, we have a positioning process. We take our executive teams through. what pops out as a narrative. So it's really important, you know, it's your sales deck, if you will. But the sales deck should not start with your products and features in your companies because nobody cares about. your sales deck really needs to start with the problem you solve. You know, the advent of recent mark the convergence of recent mark die market dynamics has caused a brand new problem called the x yz problem. Slide 3. And it's gonna get worse because it's not going away, and you will lose your job. Slide 4. Traditional approaches to cybersecurity will no longer solve this new problem. Slide the slide after that. What are the 4 or 5 buying criteria that's necessary to solve that problem, then introduce your company, and then connect that problem and the buying criteria to your differentiation. That's the winning positioning narrative and story. Again, it's not about you. It's about them. And can you wake up the market with a different conversation and say, we've got a viewpoint based upon these market dynamics, there's a new x, y, z problem. traditional approaches weren't it's not you were wrong. It's just they were born for a different era not designed to solve that problem. Here's the 3 or 4 things you have to do to solve problem, new capabilities, you have to arm your cybersecurity teams to solve that problem, then introduce your company, then connect it to, and that requires a different kinda cybersecurity platform with these capabilities.

Andrew Monaghan [00:26:02]:

So right there, that last description about the the ideal deck, that's the you know, for sellers. Right? That's the money bit right there. Right? We you're right. We get tied up in ourselves too much, and here's the amazing things that we're thinking about. Here's our vision. Here's our mission. Here's our our wee wee, i i stuff. And then, oh, yeah, we got something to solve the problem for you. and what you've articulated right there is almost the exact opposite. Right? You start with the prospects, start with the the buyer in mind. What do they care about? what they're experiencing, how would can this be valuable for them? And then way down the road, then you you think about, well, how do we do that? And how do we solve those problems? You said something before Bob that I wanna go back to, and that was almost selling the problem. What does that mean?

Bob Wright [00:26:47]:

Well, for example, let me give you an example. We had a client of ours that created a new category around. We called it digital intent. Well, who needs digital intent? What the hell is that? That's another buzzword, etcetera, etcetera. Well, the problem they solve is as everybody's gone digital now, on all these digital sites now, we have so much fraud. And the problem is you're starting to lock down those sites, but you're turning away all these good customers. So first off, fraud is still getting through. And second, you're turning away good customers. Right? That's a hairy problem for a lot of companies particularly if most of their commerce is done digitally. So you build a case that what's being really required is all the software that was built in the past right, was not designed to solve this particular problem. The trade off between fraud and locking everything down and let your good customers in. That requires a new capability called digital intent. Right? And digital intent, then you go to describe it. Right? And that's the that's the winning thing is moved from a product centric positioning to a buyer centric positioning and really answering three questions. What's the big hairy problem you saw? How can you uniquely solve it? What are your differentiators? And, again, what's the promised land look like when you solve it? Yeah. You know, I I think about

Andrew Monaghan [00:28:03]:

selling the problem thing. If if I they go right here from even CEOs at start ups. Right? And I get it. Look. It's Right? You spent last 3 years building this amazing thing. You're really proud of it. It's got all the whizbang stuff that you you dreamed it would have. and, you know, it's gonna be different in all the rest of it. And when I talk to people about, you know, getting away from just talking about the product, they can do it a little bit, but it's almost like the knee jerk, the reaction that this this magnus of withdrawing them back to say and now now I wanna get on to the good stuff, which is me talking about my product. How do you help people kinda get past that? Well, everybody's proud of their product. Right? And that's the first thing they wanna talk about. But I you know, one way to do it, what I do with a lot of our early stage customers is what's the founder story? Maybe you talk about that. Oh, I was working for this company, and I was in the security security ops department.

Bob Wright [00:28:53]:

And x y kept bumping up into this and it really, really sucked. It was hard. And it was killing us and blah blah blah and slowing us down and causing friction stuff. We're still getting through. And because all the threats were that we were seeing were new and and etcetera, etcetera. So I decided to go do something about it. Right? And I called this the x y z problem, and all my colleagues called the x y z problem. Then we went out and started a company. Right? And we're looking for our first five customers that also think this is a big problem. Right? Forward looking customers that think this is also a problem, and they wanna get ahead of it before their competition does. And that's who we wanna talk to. Right? There's a charter member group of customers we wanna create a movement with that really get it, the smart ones that understand that wanna get ahead curve here and provided cyber security advantage to their companies by solving this problem. That's one way to do it. It's more natural because it's, you know, did you start the company? So a founder story is a really good natural way

Andrew Monaghan [00:29:52]:

to talk about the problem and bring it up. Yeah. It's it's a difficult thing to do. seen people struggle with it quite a bit. But you're right. Some some founder stories are really compelling. Some, you know, not so. Right? You're very capitalistic and Sometimes, you gotta make it up. Right. Right. Right.

Bob Wright [00:30:08]:

You gotta figure out how what your version is of your founder story, I guess, to -- Well, the other way to do it too is So you do have a handful of customers. Right? We started the cybersecurity company. We thought we had a good idea. All of a sudden, we saw 5 customers. Right? And let me tell you what these 5 customers, what they're telling us. Right? Oh, well, they ran into the X Y Z problem all the time. This is a pain in the ass. This is blah blah blah. Right? We need we're and everything we had in here. And our cybersecurity stack wasn't wasn't helping. Right? We need to complete something completely different. So that's the other way. Just put a logo up of fives your 5 top top customers and say, let me walk you through each of these customers. What do they all have in common? Right? Oh, the X Y Z brow.

Andrew Monaghan [00:30:48]:

Love that. Love that. Go back to our situation where we're that small company making inroads in the market, whether it's a dominant player or a new category. How do you know that you've you've nailed it? I mean, how how do you know it is really actually working?

Bob Wright [00:31:01]:

Well, I think what the way we always measure positioning again, I think positioning is a company initiative, not a marketing initiative. Because if you do it right, it's gonna help you, you know, shape the category, set the buying criteria up, gonna accelerate your revenue and give direction to your product team as well as fueling your marketing investments. So I really there's really 2 metrics that I look at. 1 category of sales cycles. How what percentage of sales cycles am I actually engaging at the executive level? How what percentage of my what, you know, sales cycles do I have am I increasing my average selling price of a deal? Am I improving my win loss ratio? Am I collapsing the length of my sales cycles because I'm my narrative creating urgency. Those are always great metrics that I look at that are very measurable from a revenue mark sales perspective. From a category perspective, Are the market analysts starting to pick up my language? Are they beginning to echo my viewpoint? Over time, am I moving into a magic quadrant? Am I creating a magic quadrant? Right? Those are all really, really good metrics. And then then I always look at today, you gotta look at expansion. Right? So my current and a lot of times it it's helpful to set the expansion up right from the get go and take customers on a journey. So I always look at expansion rates, right, within my existing customer. You know, how what percentage of those customers? When it's appropriate? Am I expanding? right, and driving my CLV for my clients. So this is some of the metrics that I look at to know if your position is working or not. When you said that

Andrew Monaghan [00:32:34]:

company initiative, our marketing initiative. The first thing I thought was, what if the CEO doesn't wanna get involved? Is is that something that you would get Would you take a decline if the CEO wouldn't do that? Or -- I wouldn't do it. No. I think it's

Bob Wright [00:32:47]:

you know, it's interesting. If I look just under the last year, I'd say 75 per percent of our engagements came from the board or CEO. That's who initiated it. Because I think in these crowded markets now, CEOs are thinking First off, we're in a growth efficiency era. Right? It's not a land grab. It's growth efficiency. So you can't be a nice to have product. You gotta be a to have. And I think CEO is realizing that status quo is the competition, and we have a tighter buying climate. And and they're looking at positioning They're recognizing positioning as a key lever for them that can not only set the North Star for the company that can really help drive drive growth efficiency. So now marketing usually runs the process. Right? And they're operationalize the positioning, but the CEO typically is the 1 that is the sponsor of the initiative. When we run our process through companies, certainly, the CMO is there, the CEO is there, the CRO, there, this chief product officer. We want all parts of the company in that conversation because it's really first off, everybody has to be aligned right around a single message in this in a to focus the company and keep it, you know, aligned. But, really, what's interesting if you do with that? Well, like, for example, if I ask what's the best thing about your product? What's the most differentiated thing? I may hear very different answers from customer support versus product versus sales or even the CEO. I want all those ideas on the table. Right? because I'll come up with better positioning. So it's really important that the CEO uses the positioning process as a way to drive alignment but actually get everybody's voice and perspective in the room to build actually a better positioning.

Andrew Monaghan [00:34:26]:

How did you get consensus, though? If you got 5 different views on why we're so wonderful. Right? I guess the danger is that it becomes very watered down, trying to keep everyone happy. Well, that's why it's helpful to have somebody from the outside come in and facilitate

Bob Wright [00:34:39]:

And don't do this alone. It's really, really hard. because of your CEO, CMO, you're always seen as having an agenda. So that's why they're looking they went take a and Monaghan have a process, whether it's Bluebird 1, have a process, and have an outside run the group through the process because it's a lot easier for an outsider. But, really, it's all about a how do you up level it to a larger conversation? That's that's the the hard part that can be inclusive, really, of everybody. But I you know, I find that most companies are pretty aligned on what their differentiation is. Where they're not aligned a lot of times is their go to market strategy. You know, some companies just wanna call on anything that moves. Right? And other executives say we got a really, really focused. But the question is where do you focus? Right? And the more clear you can get about where your revenue is coming from, what those buyers look like, and keep the discipline and focus on it, the faster you're gonna accelerate your traction in the marketplace, and the better you can build a position that resonates with those specific buyers,

Andrew Monaghan [00:35:36]:

not with everybody out there. What I I've tried to find Bob is that there is, generally speaking, some alignment around why we're different, except when it comes to the sales team. because they go out and talk to people, and, you know, they were they're they get the immediate reaction of still blank stares. Like, I don't get it. Or, no, you know, it's different as you think you are. I talked to 3 companies last week, and they said exactly the same thing. And they kinda start playing around. Right? They they say, well, if it's not that, what is it? If I say it this way, does it matter? You know, how do I do this better, things like that? And that's where, you know, it become a little bit out of lockstep, I guess, with the rest of the company. Do do you see that as well? And if so, like, how do you deal with that? Yeah. I guess the question is, what do you wanna make the fight about? What's the buying criteria gonna be about? That's the question to ask. What do I wanna make the fight about If you have some unique IP that nobody else has, it's very, very easy to say we're gonna make the fight about this x yz feature capability or architecture

Bob Wright [00:36:34]:

Right? But in the absence of that, it's hard because everybody else says you have the same thing. Or if you do a really good job position, your competition copies you, and the next day, on her website shows up exactly what you. So the question is, what do you wanna make the fight about? If the buying criteria and sometimes it's not one thing, it might be three things. And if the buying criteria was based upon 3 these 3 capabilities or features, we would win every time. That's your positioning. And the question is, what are those 3 feet what problem does that those 3 features really, really solve, really, really well? And build a case that this problem is the number one issue facing yet you know, your executive at this moment. It's not gonna get any better. And if you solve it, you'll be a hero. And here are the 3 key capabilities you really need to solve that. And then if the if the buying criteria is based upon those 3 capabilities you win every single time, then that's the winning positioning to take.

Andrew Monaghan [00:37:27]:

So that's where the clarity has to come from, especially in the sales side. because you on a seller side, you need to engineer the discussion so that you're talking about you're asking questions about, you know, the things that you want the conversation to be about. Right? And what I call the unfair advantage kind of questions,

Bob Wright [00:37:44]:

You drive the conversation that direction and, you know, sign the light on the problem area and see how they're thinking about dealing with it, if it's all, things like that. And then from there, you can actually build a deal that you you got a much better chance of winning than if you let the criteria get it drift away from you. The worst place to be is an RFP land where you responded RFPs and somebody else has set the RFP for it. What a waste of time and energy and effort. Right? So how do you own the market before it gets to an RFP, RFP, and own the buying criteria before that. And like you said, can you shape the buying criteria into your favor? and that's that's part of the key tenants one of the key tenants of positioning.

Andrew Monaghan [00:38:23]:

Above last question for you. So let let's go back to our early stage team. They're they're they're fighting the fight. They're doing their thing. Give them some inspiration or assurance that

Bob Wright [00:38:35]:

you know, it's worth keeping doing the fight and worth worth thinking about things at a higher level and starting with the the battles you wanna win, things like that. How is it gonna pay off for them? Well, I think it's a really, really exciting time to be in in cybersecurity and b to b tech right now. My goodness. goodness. There is so much innovation going on right now. And the good news is we are in a different business inflection point. At every significant business inflection point, Now I'm from the past. Right? Every significant inflection point that's ever happened gave rise to a new set of category leaders. It's gonna happen again right now because, again, what was the success of the past is now irrelevant. More and more executive buyers are open to doing things differently because they're facing a completely different future than they ever had before. And so that provides an opening for any significant tech innovation to come out. And I think, particularly, you know, you just see it. There's waves and waves and new innovation that technology is having happening right now today, and I think that's a really exciting time to be in here. And I think more and more executives are open to innovation, open to doing things a little differently. Because, again, I think we're facing we're in a completely different business climate that we have. So take advantage of this opportunity It's here right now and be the next category leader that has to be disrupted a decade from now. Yeah. I love that. If someone wants to get in touch and continue the conversation, what's the best way to do that? Yeah. Just send me an email. Bob at firebk firebk.com or go to our website firebk.com.

Andrew Monaghan [00:40:09]:

irbk.com. There you go. Well, Bublish and I have enjoyed that conversation. This is a to my mind, this is such an important area, and it's often, I think, at earlier stage, maybe a little bit overlooked as they're, you know, trying to build a product and get some sales. But sometimes well, most times having the cohesive view about how you're gonna position yourself and how you're gonna take that fight on, I think, is so important that you don't wanna lose that in those early stage conversations. Alright, Andrew. Well, thank you very much and keep bringing it. For those that know me and work with me, you'll know that this is a topic that is very hot for me. And the reason is, you know, often when I go in and I I I work with sales teams and go to market teams on what they're doing and try to fix issues that they're experiencing, If you really get down to it, the root cause is on the things that Bob was talking about in this episode. Right? some of the fundamentals and the clarity around the positioning and and how you're gonna describe what you do and and take your car in the room aren't clear It's pretty hard for the sales team and the marketing team to execute at a high level. So getting clarity on these things is actually kind of important. The good news is once you get that clarity, then everything else downstream often becomes easier. So takeaways from me from this conversation First of all, I love this is saying. Positioning is not a marketing initiative. It is a company initiative to be led by the CEO. And You know, when you're trying to do something so inherent to the success of the company, it needs to have that CEO level of leadership. If you ever get involved in a situation where it's just given to the marketing team to go figure out, you know it's not getting the buy in to read the whole organization. other people are not gonna be feel like they've been heard, and it's gonna die a slow death. So positioning is not a margin initiative. It is a company initiative. Martin leads it internally, but it has to be a company initiative. Second thing was the idea that he says about making the CESSO or the buyer, the hero in the transaction that's happening. And orient everything around everything you do around making sure that they realize they'll be the hero and that you're making them be the hero. It it is funny how often in in a technology world, We think that the most important things are the the factual things, the logical things. The our our thing is faster. Our thing is better. We do more of this. reporting is better. Get more depth to it, things like that. These are all things that could be important. But in the day, you're thinking about whoever is gonna stick their neck out and wanna buy your stuff, help with them be successful and be your hero internally. can be really, really impactful. So asking yourselves, you know, this company, this person, this persona is gonna buy from us. How can we help them be the hero around this? The 3rd takeaway I had was what he said about listening to early customers. And it seems like an obvious thing to say, I get it. We always wanna be listening. But, you know, he put it in the context of thinking about what you can learn from them to help positioning. Right? He talked about asking questions such as What triggered them to look at this space or look at trying to solve this problem initially? What happened because then with cycles into this, to wanna solve it. Asking them, why do they actually buy from you specifically? And importantly, I guess, the real takeaway is what words do they use describe what you they thought that you would do for them. what you actually do for them, what they actually think you do, things like that. Right? In there is the goal mind for positioning. They're gonna use similar words across different customers. You're gonna start pulling together some of these threads and realizing that, you know, how you describe the problem is not have people in the real world describe the problem that happens a lot, but there's learning there to be had. Right? Learning to be had from from your early customers. and and seeing what they say or how to describe things. So those were my takeaways, and I'm sure you get your own ones. But to me, that was a great conversation with Bob, I think it's super meaningful. I really do. I think that if you're at that stage and you're you're strangling away trying to find your little corner of the room as Bob was talking about, I think having a an approach and a framework to work Monaghan be so helpful for you. So with that, I hope you take some of the recommendations Bob had to heart, and I wish Bob and Firebreak every success. As usual, they're they're a well known name in Silicon Valley, and they they're trusted by many many companies. many executives to do the right thing by them. Still wish everyone a great success.