Get Personal for Security Sales

Advice 2009-11-23 10:51

Nick Lowe, regional director Northern Europe for Check Point believes margin pressures are easing, and more fruitful

IT security customers want you to get closer to them, says Nick Lowe, regional director Northern Europe for Check Point. Here’s how to do it, and what’s in it for you.

1. Help customers drive down their own costs. Right now, demonstrating how you can drive down IT operating costs and simplify security will make it easy to sell services to existing clients and attract new ones. End-users are looking inward, and focusing on how they can optimise business processes to boost operational efficiency, cut costs, and do more with what they have. If you can help them with a mix of solutions and managed services, you’ll have a ready audience.

Virtualisation can play a key part in cost reduction, by helping the customer make more of the resources they have. But this technology needs to be deployed correctly, and with an eye to security, if risks and vulnerabilities are to be avoided. Research from analyst Gartner stated that 60 percent of virtual machines will be less secure than the equivalent physical servers. This is where the security specialist can score with in-depth, hard-won knowledge of the issues.

2. Sharpen your focus on your target market. This means revisiting existing customers, to get to know them better than anyone else. You’re not the only one looking for new clients; the competition is too. Taking those steps helps you to be perceived as a trusted partner. By strengthening those core relationships and solving customer problems, you’re in the ideal position for a long-term, mutually beneficial partnership.

3. Help to prepare customers for when the tide turns. Although IT budgets during this year are mostly static, most organisations’ networks are still expanding, with more users and devices. If you can help them to manage their networks more efficiently, they will be in a stronger position as the economy picks up – and you will have a stronger relationship.

4. Partner with vendors that will help you to spot new opportunities, and develop existing ones within current customers. We recently put together an internal lead-generation team tasked with identifying business to pass onto our resellers. In just 10 weeks we identified over a million pounds of business that wasn’t previously on our radar, or that of our channel. But by taking a fresh approach and with some careful questioning, these business needs came to light.

A final point from our survey earlier this year was that a majority of respondents (68 percent) said the current economic climate would not affect their IT security spending. So there’s still a market there for resellers that can offer the right services and skills. And to paraphrase The Rembrandts’ song, they’ll be there for you, if you’re there for them too.