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Power Up by Empath Cyber
In today's rundown:
đź—Ł Want to Grow Cyber Revenue? Start Telling Stories!
🚨 This One Story Saved Our Company
🧠What’s Your Story?
🤔 A Few Last Things
Read time: 5 minutes 👇
Want to Grow Cyber Revenue? Start Telling Stories!
The end of the day was dark. I held my head in my hands and drearily thought: “We’re never going to make this work. Perch is going to fail.” 2016 was a dreary year for us. Every day was stacked with 6-10 potential client calls and we failed at every turn. But then something happened. We began to shift our messaging and slowly but steadily things began to dramatically change.
See how that worked? You’re reading with interest. I could have just said: If you shift your cyber sales conversations into stories, you’ll have better success.
But that’s boring. And it doesn’t affect change. You see, stories changed my life. Or my career at least. Imagine trying to sell a SIEM downmarket to SMBs in 2016. Not the smartest move. And we nearly failed.
But if there was one thing I learned in our path to success, it was simply this: You’ve got to shift the narrative into a conversation your clients can relate to. They’ll spend money where they need to. But you’ve got to be the one to cross that chasm, not the client.
Want to know how we accomplished this? Keep on reading! 👇
This One Story Saved Our Company
The cyber world has shifted around us. What we’ve done so far isn’t enough to keep our businesses going. You see, eventually, everything we do to stop a cyber attack will eventually fail. It’s not a question of if a cyber attack is going to happen, rather, it’s a matter of when it’ll occur.
And when it occurs, will you know? Eventually you will. One immutable fact of security is this: eventually every business will know when they see that ransomware note demanding $350,000 for decryption.
Or, alternatively, you can take action earlier and save your business from ever going through such an ordeal. It does require investment. But if a full-scale ransomware attack can cost an SMB anywhere from $250k upwards, isn’t it worth it?
Investing in cyber defense is like protecting our home. We all lock our doors. But eventually, a bad guy is going to get through. They’ll break a window or pick the lock. So what do we do to address that reality?
We put a home alarm system in the home. But here’s the thing: literally no one buys an alarm system to keep bad guys out. We invest in an alarm system to tell us when a bad guy gets in. That’s the purpose. So we can be aware of criminal activity and call the police before something truly bad happens. That’s exactly what we need to do for our business.
See how that works? I’ve told that simple story a thousand times over. Way more actually. I’ve refined it into precision. And it saved our company. Because clients understand it. And our MSP partners thrived on it.
What’s Your Story?
Everyone loves to sit around the camp fire and tell ghost stories. They’re interesting. Intriguing. And they’re just plain fun to listen to.
So do you have a cyber breach story? If not, you need one. But chances are, we’ve all had a close brush with near disaster. Seize on that story. A hack isn’t just scary. They’re interesting, even to non-technical folks.
I often tell the story of an insurance agent friend of mine who went through a full scale ransomware attack. His story is rather harrowing. He went from a great work week and a fun weekend to learning that all systems were down on Sunday night.
After he went into the office that night, he discovered ransomware everywhere. He was absolutely not prepared. His business came to a grinding halt. In the aftermath of the attack, he ended up paying the ransom of $100k+ and lost close to a $1M all in on damages and recovery.
But the kicker? He learned from the digital forensics team that the hacker was in his email for over a month before anything bad happened. And this one sentence I’ve never forgotten: “Wes, the real thing that kills me on this is knowing I had 30 days or more to stop this attack from happening but I never knew.”
Yikes. That’s a story worth telling. So what’s yours?
A Few Last Things
As you work on your storytelling, here’s a few things I think are helpful from Very Well Mind.
Choose the Appropriate Time and Audience.
I think the audience is the most important here. Are your stories adjusted to your non-technical audience?
Use a Hook to Engage the Listener.
Keep It Concise.
Highlight Emotional Elements.
Don't Rush.
Poke Fun at Yourself and Nobody Else.
Vary Your Rate of Speech and Volume.
Ask Listeners to Imagine.
I’d love to hear back from you. Have a breach story? A favorite analogy? A win from sharing a story leading to closing a deal? Reply back on this email or hit me up at [email protected] and maybe I’ll feature your story sometime in the Power Up newsletter!
That's all for now!
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