Speaker 1: 0:04

Welcome back to Sell Me this Podcast, where we explore the people, products and ideas that are changing the game in business and technology. Today's guest is Scott Coleman, enterprise Account Executive at Arctic Wolf, a leader in cybersecurity From capital markets to tech sales. Scott's journey is anything but typical and today he opens up about what it takes to succeed in a fast-evolving, high-stakes industry. We'll dive into the realities of modern cybersecurity, what executive leaders need to know but often miss the art of navigating cold outreach with empathy, and how likability, trust and preparation separate the pros from the rest. If you're in sales tech or just want to better understand how companies are defending against modern threats, this is a must. Listen, let's jump in. Hey Scott, welcome to another episode of Sell Me this Podcast. We're so excited to have you here today. I'm going to dive right into things. Why don't you tell us a little bit about yourself and the work that you do?

Speaker 2: 1:06

Yeah, so yeah, thanks for having me, keith. This is exciting. This is actually the first time I've done a podcast, oh my goodness, so this is. Maiden Voyage. Yeah, so we're getting set up the microphone. All that I'm like.

Speaker 1: 1:14

this is it's quite official. What are the odds that you cry today? I'm like 10 out of 10.

Speaker 2: 1:25

Okay, cry for sure especially if you're with the emotional stuff. My goal is to start off with your childhood and we'll go from there. Nice, perfect. Yeah. So scott coleman, I'm an enterprise account executive with arctic wolf. I like to tell everybody just enterprise by title. We look after customers of all sizes, right all the way from five users in environment to a hundred thousand. Yeah, we look after, I look after southern alberta. We used to look after saskatchewan as well. Companies grown. With growth comes new people, new things, right, so right. So just responsible for Southern Alberta at this point and working on the team in Canada here.

Speaker 1: 1:50

That's amazing. So security obviously tip of the tongue for a lot of people. How did you find yourself into the security industry?

Speaker 2: 1:56

Oh man, Did you want the real story or do you want like a cool story?

Speaker 1: 1:59

No, hopefully the real story is cool. It's pretty good.

Speaker 2: 2:01

I spent a long time in capital markets and finance before I came into the tech sector actually just shy of 11 years so that was really interesting. It was a big transition and when I moved in it was by fluke. I wasn't working for about six months. I ended up going to Dell for about five years. I feel like a lot of people start their tech careers at Dell.

Speaker 1: 2:17

I remember you, that's right.

Speaker 2: 2:18

I took on the acquisition public sector business for Dell for Alberta, saskatchewan, manitoba. That was a lot of fun, had a great journey, we had a tremendous business, a lot of happy customers, partners etc. And it was just a great opportunity to join Arctic Wolf, my engineer at Arctic Wolf. He had already gone to Arctic Wolf after spending some time with Cisco and some other things and he had reached out to our VP for Canada and said hey, listen, when you guys want to put another person in the prairies, we want to put someone in Calgary. We should really go after Scott. And that's the short version. A few conversations later and here we are.

Speaker 1: 2:49

Yeah, Obviously, you've worked in a couple of different tech companies. What's different about Arctic Wolf? I know you're incredibly passionate about the work that you do, but what really stands out about the company, the product the environment, and I think the company would love for me to say culture.

Speaker 2: 3:01

Just every other company wants me to say culture, and they do have a great culture, an incredible team, hardworking people. Look, we're Arctic Wolf's, come to market with a really interesting solution, one that I do believe is incredibly unique. It fits the broader Canadian market and our market here in Calgary extremely well. So overall it's a solution. It's people, it's an incredible sales organization. There's not one thing that really makes it stand out, I would argue, but a great solution, great outcomes for our customers and our partners as well. Actually, the Channel First-led organization was extremely attractive to me. I've worked in organizations before where there was multiple routes to conducting transactions and getting business done and whatnot, wherewithal if we go in one direction and that makes it really easy for us to build powerful relationships with our partners and alliances and whatnot. One path, so I love it from that regard.

Speaker 1: 3:51

Yeah, Amazing and obviously security is such a rapidly evolving market. Right now, the questions you have to ask, the questions you get asked, I imagine, change every day. If I'm an executive buyer right now, like I feel like it's really hard to see through the noise. How do you differentiate in the conversations you're having, and not even specifically with Arctic Wolf, but how should these executives that are working on some of these really challenging security problems approach the market and how should they identify what they need for their organizations?

Speaker 2: 4:22

I realize that's a giant question. No, it is. Let's try and piece it all together here. I don't know that there's one single answer for that. For sure, and I would argue, in security as well, there's especially not one answer for that because there's so many directions you can go. We're tracking, keith, something like 4,000 security tools you can buy on the market right now and more every day, and from all over the world, different countries and whatnot US, canada, israel, everywhere, russia, god you can do like anything. At this point, everyone's got a tool For executives when they are going to market, when they are looking at stuff.

Speaker 2: 4:48

I think the biggest thing is to be open-minded, right. Ultimately, from our side, I think what we need to understand is that we don't have to be everything for everybody, both in sales and solution. It's okay for customers to not be ready to talk to not just me, but anyone at that time. I know that there's frustrations from the security side, notably because there's so many players coming to market. They're aggressive with their marketing, they do a lot of different things and I know that can drive executives, cisos, ctos, cios, managers, directors, vps I know it can drive them crazy and they do get a lot of that outreach, and I'm sure that we're doing a lot of that as well.

Speaker 2: 5:21

But reach, whether and I'm sure that we're doing a lot of that as well, but it is it is tough, right, because you're trying to find interesting ways to differentiate yourself and from our side this being my business we've really tried to focus on presenting a bit of a bit more of a story in all of this, both in our outreach and intentional marketing, but like focusing less on the capabilities, because and I think that this is a little bit of a sales cliche Don't focus on the, don't focus so much on the capabilities, the product, but rather the outcomes. But I'm trying to paint a bit of a picture and trying to do that in a creative way. And that is hard to do with cold outreach, but the unfortunate reality of cold outreach. But it's a great thing for marketing, it's a real thing. Numbers count, right. If I send out a hundred cold outreaches of whatever type of campaign you do, if you get one person to talk to you, that's a successful campaign.

Speaker 1: 6:08

And it's such an interesting balance as well, and I know you and I have talked about this at length before, but it's almost becomes a necessary evil, right? Because, theoretically, people don't want their inboxes blown up, and I feel like those private spaces have shifted. It used to be your email inbox and that became a little less private. It maybe became your LinkedIn inbox and your cell phone and whoever. I remember a time when texting someone that you weren't best friends with was taboo, and I feel like all of those different avenues are starting to shift and mold. But, at the same point, it's the job of an organization to grow their market share, to get their message out, and so how are you finding that balance? And how are you? If you were an executive, how would you find that balance between needing to know what's out and needing to say I'm doing my due diligence as a leader of an organization, but also not having every crevice of your digital life being blown up For sure?

Speaker 2: 7:00

So I think first of all, we're customers as well Telecom companies, certainly LinkedIn, recruiters, everything we deal with the same type of stuff that executives do. So I understand frustration. I understand not wanting to hear from the same organization. Recently I just got a new vehicle.

Speaker 2: 7:17

Once these dealerships caught wind of that that I was looking, so I get it To separate through the noise. I think that a customer needs to have a bit of an idea of what they want, but they need to be open-minded to understand that sometimes you might not know what you're missing, and I know that's hard when you get 20, 30 of those outreaches per day. Do you want to go and do all the due diligence around that? Probably not. There's a lot of professional walk around and learn that way, and then if you take a lot, if you spend some time to do that or have a team around you that can do that, I would argue that most CISOs aren't taking a lot of cold calls at this point. They're not the people or the CTOs or CIOs, c-levels, really not taking those.

Speaker 2: 7:59

The teams that work amongst their, or the team members that work amongst their teams, are the ones that are going to validate that technology, and so for those guys, I think that there has to be a lot of trust given out. Sometimes I think that's missed. That's a huge one that I find all the time is you have this concept and it's the same thing of owning a business. When you grip it, grip it. It's like this is my baby and you have a hard time relinquishing some of that control.

Speaker 1: 8:21

Yeah, there's this inclination to hold on to everything, and especially with security as well, because there's some things where the risk isn't quite as high, correct and security does not fit that profile, and so I can definitely see just the human nature to want to hold on to the things that you have dear. Yeah, be even more prevalent there?

Speaker 2: 8:36

Definitely, yeah, exactly. And I think that those C-suite members have a vision. Yeah, and what is that vision? Have they defined that? And if they have great, then that team should be able to weed through the different types of things that they are getting from, the different types of cold outreaches or the conversations they have at these events and these conferences or networking or whatever. They're trusted advisors, they're partners. I love that Again, I love that our company is channel led because we can work with trusted advisors, with their customers. It's a much better approach rather than the next US or Israeli or whatever company coming in to say we got great stuff.

Speaker 1: 9:10

Listen to us so you can layer on some of those relationships with more trusted local relationships to be able to deliver on that.

Speaker 2: 9:16

Yeah, and again, that is a hard thing to do and to do it in a productive manner. But I would argue as well that on the folks on our side, when we do get that opportunity to talk, be ready. And when you do have those colder outreachers or those different types of campaigns I won't say any of the direct campaigns that we're doing or anything like that when you send out like some sort of a swag to take a meeting or something like that, make that creative as you can. But also, if you get that opportunity, be prepared. Be prepared, because there's a lot of folks that take those calls and they are not ready for that.

Speaker 2: 9:45

God bless the 22 year old SDR working extremely hard, no fear of the phone or whatever. They get the 25 year CTO on the phone.

Speaker 1: 9:55

Are they ready? One I remember when I was starting off my sales career and there was so much focus on get the meeting, get the meeting, get the meeting, and you'd see people that would get the meeting. And then they get to the meeting and have no clue what to actually say Exactly. And I'd say what is more, even valuable than some of those personal spaces to a lot of these leaders is time, and the 35 or 40 minutes that you have set aside for that meeting you can't really get back in your calendar.

Speaker 2: 10:25

For sure. No, I agree, and both from the executive side, like you, need to be very intentional with the information that you're sharing right. Obviously, we want to understand the stories and the outcomes of the different types of products that we're bringing to market, and I understand that. But we also have to get to the point very quickly with these, with these folks that do have very jam-packed schedules and don't have a lot of time for this stuff. A lot of times, especially I find in a lot of our discussions and transactions and whatnot, we spend very little time with the C-suite.

Speaker 1: 10:48

Almost none.

Speaker 2: 10:49

We are working with the different types of directors and VPs and whatnot. I don't want to call them soldiers, because that's sometimes how all of us in the tech industry here in Canada we're just a bunch of foot soldiers supporting US tech companies, or whatever.

Speaker 2: 11:00

Well, those guys and ladies that have gone out and really spent that time dug into a product or a service or something like that and word of mouth counts, right, it is hard when you're first getting started. There's different ways to make noise in the market. When I first joined Arctic three years ago, we were not a household name in Calgary.

Speaker 1: 11:16

It took time, but we had a strategy for that and it's panned out and it's going well, yeah, and I feel like your name is synonymous with it as well, and I feel like that brand growth has been really exciting to watch and see. One thing that you challenged me with and like I've always taken the stance and I that the noise is becoming a little bit unbearable and that it's becoming tougher and tougher for executives to to identify what's new and what's cool because of the noise, and I really appreciated the perspective that you challenged me with, which was this is a necessary evil in order to continue making the market move forward. I'd love to dive into that a little bit, so would you mind kind of unpacking that a little bit? Yeah, yeah, absolutely.

Speaker 2: 11:55

And, again, maybe a lot of those executives haven't been in a sales position before, but I would also make the argument absolutely that the C-suite guess what that's the most important salesperson for any organization. If it's a for-profit organization, which let's keep it for-profit. In this case, if the CEO is pushing it, that's going to be your best salesperson, or the CTO or CEO, like whatever technology. And so ultimately, yeah, when these types of outreaches are coming I know that there's, and I see them on LinkedIn all the time you have a CISO or some sort of a C-suite person come out, it's just just do better salespeople, don't do it that way and blah, blah, blah. But I will go back to the point I made before. Keith, it's CISO. You might feel that way and I totally respect that. I really do, and because I'm a customer as well of a lot of different services. Successful campaign because it has you talking and the reality of it is that if someone's talking, whether good or bad, there is a discussion around that product happening and then, if enough of it goes around, eventually say yeah, that might've been a campaign that frustrated you or whatever, but they actually have a really great service or really great technology. Maybe it's worth looking at it and it really is just generating awareness. And so, while there's frustrations, these campaigns have, quite frankly, been very successful.

Speaker 2: 13:08

And for those executives, I guess my only message is always to be patient. Right, they were young in their careers at one point as well. Right, and I know this is easier said than done, real, much easier said than done, right, but be patient with these folks. They're not out there to frustrate you, right? They're not out there to cause problems. In Canada we do have CASEL law. I know in the States that's a different thing, I don't know how that all works, but in Canada we have castle law. Finding creative ways to connect with different types of decision makers, different types of folks that are a part of a medic plan and having that type of practice in place is very important.

Speaker 2: 13:36

And, once again, sometimes these guys don't know what they're missing, and it's not just art to love, it could be anything. You don't know what you're missing. When you get into that position and I think this is I like to tie in like a professional athlete, for example, they get paid millions of dollars, right, and sometimes signing a lot of autographs can be frustrating, sometimes the extracurricular part that comes around with the millions of dollars and the attention, and that type of thing can be hard. Same can be said with celebrities.

Speaker 2: 14:03

But you have a responsibility, right. You have a responsibility to give back a little bit. You have a responsibility to give that time right, to give back a little bit. You have responsibility to give that time right Because, guess what, most people don't get there on their own. They have a team and so, ultimately, when those folks are getting those cold reach outs and those different types of campaigns, don't take it negatively, be flattered. People like SDRs have time as well, account executives have time as well, and that's our resource and we're taking the time because we do believe that we have something to offer value.

Speaker 1: 14:31

If you don't see that, that's fine, we move on and I really appreciate that perspective as well, and I think that one story that I've been told is that no one wakes up in the morning thinking they're going to do something malicious to someone correct Especially and I'm sure there are lots of people that actually do approach it that way, but're trying to build their career. They're trying to tell a story, they're trying to build something, and I think that humanity is also something that's really important in a lot of these interactions, and I do agree that berating some of these people or taking some misplaced X, y and Z out on them isn't necessarily the right place either, absolutely.

Speaker 2: 15:06

People have bad days, and I think there's one concept, one word that I think sometimes falls off the map because so many people are so excited to share this solution, they forget about likability. Yeah, likability is a major factor If you, if you want to have a genuine conversation. Both sides of the table know why they're having this conversation generally, and so we can get past that very quickly. So let's try and make this as enjoyable as a process as possible. The technology is good. That's why we're here. It's going to take care of itself. How can we make this as enjoyable as possible? How can I be someone that folks enjoy talking to or enjoy working with? Are there things that I'm doing that they find valuable, that give them the opportunity to want to give me more of their time? That's very hard to do from the inside in these campaigns, but there are ways to do it.

Speaker 1: 15:47

Yeah Well, there was a really interesting stat that I believe it was Gartner that came out with, where they talked about the idea that a lot of these purchase decisions were at least up to a certain point, or made even before engaging with the sales team Absolutely. And so a lot of that research has been done, and so the role of sales then becomes how do I sherpa them through this process and how do I make that experience as excellent as possible? Experience as excellent as possible so that, as they're going through that emotional state of kind of making those decisions, et cetera, et cetera, that it can be a really memorable and amazing one for them and that's a and that's a great lesson for salespeople is how they ask that question, because a lot of times they don't.

Speaker 2: 16:20

There's a lot of assumptions, and that ties back to my last point about them really wanting to share this great whatever, but how they ask those questions. Yeah, that is a hard thing and sometimes it's hard to get that out of the other side. With the campaigns, with Arctic Wolf, I've always been very clear with all of our prospects and whatnot. We're not here to kick down doors and we won't do business that way. We will be patient. Everyone has numbers and that's all fine. We'll find ways to do that, but we're going to do it the right way, and that is ensuring that we remain likable, whether they buy it or not.

Speaker 2: 16:50

Whether they buy Arctic Wolf or whatever we're selling at that time.

Speaker 1: 16:52

We want the community, we want our partners to know that they enjoy working with us, and you know this as well as I do, that Calgary is a small community as well, and that what is worse than losing something is leaving someone with a bad taste in their mouth and burning that bridge completely, and I think the word gets around real quick, and I also think that it's a it's just important to do the right things in those scenarios?

Speaker 2: 17:13

Definitely yeah, the right things and the intentional things. So far too often in our world, in the tech world I know you know this from your previous life we're faced with very tough decisions where we know that there's an easier path, but it's the wrong one. In fact, we run into that almost every day, keith. So keeping that integrity is ragingly important by way of your partners, by way of your alliance partners, your customers, everybody that's involved in the process, and I agree, I completely agree with your sentiment on that, because we run into that far more often than I like to admit, and so to build on that a little bit.

Speaker 1: 17:45

When you're dealing with some of these executives that are in the spot where they might be making the wrong choice, of these executives that are in the spot where they might be making the wrong choice, are you saying that it's because you see a path for them that they don't see, or is it because there is a sales quota attached to something and you just have to do the right thing where you know it's not the right fit for that customer Got it?

Speaker 2: 18:03

Yeah. So, first and foremost, you can't call anyone's baby ugly no matter how much you'd like to because you might think it might not be the right thing.

Speaker 2: 18:11

They certainly do and they have their reasons for that. There's an old. There's an old story I'm trying to remember the name of it, but ultimately premise of it was there was a store called New York downtown style selling really expensive coats, right To fur coats, and the very wealthy woman came in, bought the fur coat, brought it back the next day it spilled something all over. It was clearly her fault, but came in and threw a big fit. Sometimes it's better to jump in that boat with a customer right and say, yeah, this isn't great, I'm with you, this sucks. And so maybe there's the side of it where you look at their solution and say, okay, yeah, you like it. Maybe I can try and wrap my head.

Speaker 2: 18:48

The tech sector no one loves to talk about their solutions more than the people that put them in. So give the opportunity to share that story, get into that boat with them and, if it's negative, get in that boat as well. You can't be afraid to have hard conversations because, as we know, in the tech sector sometimes it's not how great your solution is. A lot of times it's how great you are at fixing it when something breaks, and so get in that boat with them, understand and then ultimately produce the opportunity to drive value at a later time.

Speaker 1: 19:13

I love it and I completely agree that empathy, I feel like, is lost a lot and everyone's so excited and I share this with the most amount of respect to share their pitch deck or to share their here's the brochure or whatever that I have where they forget that. A really important step, which is how can I be more curious, how can I understand where you're coming from and how can I really sit in your boat?

Speaker 2: 19:34

Yeah, exactly, and it is. Digging in is sometimes a hard thing to do. You want to keep your values. The challenging thing about being a salesperson is you do have to be a chameleon. You got to be every color in every room and I totally understand that. But you have to maintain integrity but also have respect for the other side of the room and the way we go to market. I will never call anyone's baby ugly. Regardless of what the solution is and I'm sure that there's lots of solutions out there that would love to say that we can do everything they can. We'll do it for less or whatever. It doesn't matter what the company is. That's totally out there. I think that turns buyers off, keith.

Speaker 1: 20:04

I would agree with you, and I also can't stop laughing at the you turn into your baby. No one will call someone's baby ugly. I feel like that one's going to stick with me. That's the thing I'm going to remember now is that saying let's face it, I've seen lots of people that they love their baby so much.

Speaker 2: 20:16

I'm just like damn, oh great, looking kid, the cutest baby in the world. Yeah, that's right.

Speaker 1: 20:23

No, I brought us off track here a little bit. So you, as you've grown the Arctic Wolf presence here in Calgary, you've had really a privilege to talk to a lot of the different influential business leaders, tech leaders in the city. There's some relationships that I'm sure stand out more than others to you. What are some of the things when you think about from a technology leader perspective, and whether it's the attention they give you or the respect I know you've mentioned respect a few times what are some of the things that you wish you could coach leaders around, around how to make the most out of some of those technology relationships and those partnerships.

Speaker 2: 20:55

Yeah. So the first and foremost is enable your team yeah, Quite frankly, enable your team. Those technology leaders don't need to be in every meeting, and so if they're giving their team the ability to actually as Steve Jobs always said, you don't hire smart people to tell them what to do right. Great leaders that I've seen in the tech sector have really empowered the people around them to get in, get the information and make informed decisions right. So that concept of squeezing and letting go a little bit, I think, is what makes incredible leaders. But then also, when we're at the table with those leaders, the ability to listen, understand, ask intelligent questions. Sometimes we run into situations where they just don't want to hear it. They're like, but then I just challenges them why are you here? Why are you here? And a great leader can always emulate why we're in this meeting. And let's get to the point quickly, but be receptive to the process. So when folks are receptive to the process, I think that they get a lot more from it.

Speaker 2: 21:45

I've never left a room, Not once have we left a room in a conversation. In the three years and probably 1500 pitches we've done, we have never left a room where I felt that the customer didn't get some value from the conversation, whether they buy or not and being receptive to those stories. If you're going to take the time, be present, but I think salespeople can learn that as well. Quite frankly, don't be on your phone my phone's gone up 10 times in my pocket no but be receptive and listen to the story and understand and be open to the topic. But I do really think that the ability to relinquish some of that control and give your team the ability to take in the learnings come to you this you do need to look at this and here's why and give them that time is just so powerful.

Speaker 1: 22:26

So powerful, and I think that's one thing you said that stood out to me at the very beginning, which was it's a lot of the teams that you're working with and there's in sales, a lot of the coaching, the training, the. You see when some of the leadership sometimes is, hey, I'll get to the C level, get to the C level, and a lot of that work is done in the trenches.

Speaker 2: 22:41

Yeah.

Speaker 1: 22:42

And it's done with the teams that are on the front lines doing some of this defense. We're doing some of this reactive work on the security side of things.

Speaker 2: 22:48

And I respect that, like I do respect that get to the ultimate decision maker as fast as possible, like this old sales ad. I don't know From our side. I think that there's a. You have to identify a process that works for the team that you're working with and make it a meticulous process that you can follow over and over again and be able to transfer that knowledge. There's nothing worse than a process that only one person can do. If it's not repeatable, it's not a good process. So put that in place, follow it, go down the different paths, make sure that you're there. I think that's pretty powerful stuff when you do it that way. And for an organization to say, get to that buyer's who's possible. If you follow the process, you're probably going to get there. There's all kinds of frameworks. You can follow them, the med picks and all that stuff, and that's all very important because I think it is valuable to be very intentional in your process. But figure out what's good for you, but make it repeatable.

Speaker 1: 23:36

Yeah, there is no shortage of sales. Acronyms God.

Speaker 2: 23:39

I try so hard not to use, and in cybersecurity it's even worse.

Speaker 1: 23:42

Yeah, I feel like the only thing worse than sales for acronyms might be cybersecurity 100%. You need like a thesaurus of acronyms to just make it through the day.

Speaker 2: 23:49

But and sales as well. Sales is challenging because I don't think anyone in my role and when you were doing in the past, nobody wants to be thought of as a salesman. But here's the thing it's an art man, it's an art and it's an excruciating amount of work. There's been times where, you know, or when my wife was on during mat leave or something like that, and she was home when I was working from home. Maybe she thought at one point she could come down and have a conversation in the office. I'm on the phone all day, man. Yeah, by the end of the day, I don't want to talk to anybody anymore.

Speaker 1: 24:19

Yeah, totally good. And I think that people see the lunch, the beer, the networking events and then the golf, yeah and game. But there is a lot more that goes into it For the people that do it.

Speaker 2: 24:36

They heard a quote when I was early on in my career that sales can either be one of the easiest low-paying jobs ever or one of the hardest high-paying jobs 100%. And you're absolutely right. Folks do see the networking aspects and stuff like that, but even that stuff gets very exhausting. I have two kids. Man, I'm not as much as I love having an espresso martini on a Tuesday night at 10 pm. I'm good.

Speaker 1: 24:52

But those opportunities also do present themselves and I think that you do have to be present, but pick and choose your places, and that's where I think one of the things that I love about my previous sales career as well and I say previous with a little bit of an asterisk, because I feel like you're always selling right and, whether or not you're in sales or not, like there's always a sales element, but you get to develop these amazing relationships and the opportunity to sit across from someone and have that espresso martini at 10 PM. There are friendships that I've made and, like you don't get the opportunity to meet that many amazing people in many other professions like that I agree, and you know what that's.

Speaker 2: 25:24

a? The privilege is a perfect word for it and, even tying back to our conversation of not frustrating executives, it is a privilege to get their time and I think that sometimes is lost and we have to treat it. Excuse me, we do have to treat it with the utmost respect because, yeah, it's an absolute privilege to talk about your product, your service, your whatever with anyone that will listen. So don't blow it. Have a plan, prepare. Everything's a negotiation, right? How are you going to negotiate this conversation right? Every interaction we have in life is a negotiation. For Pete's sake, Be prepared.

Speaker 1: 25:55

I know I like the theme of preparation, I like the theme of respect. Are there some things that when you look at I don't want to call them deals, but if you think about, like interactions that you've worked on that have gone sideways or you wish they'd gone different once again, from the perspective of some of those leaders, are there some red flags that you look out for that you just wish technical leaders would approach certain elements differently.

Speaker 2: 26:15

I would say one thing that I do believe that every leader should do and I think it's unfair when they don't is when it doesn't go your way, give us that debrief, give us that opportunity to learn. If it's something simple, tell me that they were cheaper. Okay. If that's all it is, then that's fine. We go through salespeople, engineers, different types of people we involve in the process. Sometimes we work on opportunities with organizations or engagements for up to a year, maybe more, two, three, four, and when that decision finally comes, and if it doesn't go your way, give us the respect That'd be.

Speaker 2: 26:48

My biggest ask of any executive anywhere is to give us that opportunity to learn, because we want to understand how we can be better. We've spent time and resources. It might not have gone our way and, for the record, a good salesperson and a good team will absolutely respect the decision you made. Far too often we see it go the other way, where there's some anger there over a big process. But I've been on both sides of it. We're not going to win every single thing and that's okay.

Speaker 2: 27:11

So have have respect for the decision that's been made. Be be very complimentary of the decision that they made From the other side. Time's been spent, so help us understand. Give us that debrief. I don't need two hours. Give me 30 minutes. Give me 15, so we can understand. Security is hard, though, because you go through all these different types of things the MNDAs, the, the. You go through all these different types of things the MNDAs, the compliance, the different types of checklists you have to go through, and whatnot. So sometimes folks are a little bit hesitant to share with you the decisions that they made and why, but ultimately, I would challenge please give us that opportunity.

Speaker 1: 27:42

And what's the joke? You're almost like left on read or something like that, where you're dating for a year and then all of a sudden, someone disappears.

Speaker 2: 27:47

And that's the other thing. When you're in an engagement, speaking with customers, sometimes things go quiet. They call it going cold, right? Hey, look, organizations and executives and directors and infrastructure analysts and system admins and all these guys they are busy people. Something could blow up. There could be a project they have to work on, there could be a big change of some sort, there could be organizational changes. We have to respect that and we don't know everything that's going on all the time. Right?

Speaker 2: 28:11

When that happens, again, I think responding with empathy, right, is the better way to go about it. Kicking down doors, chasing quarter end and all that type of stuff, and it's our fiscal list and that share the information and I get all that. But when you do that, you really start to become unlikable. Yeah, it is hard to get deals back on the rails. Sometimes I'll call them deals because they are right, they're opportunities. When an opportunity does go a little quiet for a while, have empathy and have some sort of like a plan for the follow-up. That's going to be a little bit more effective and if it goes quiet for a long time, maybe you lost that one. Respond with empathy.

Speaker 1: 28:44

That makes a lot of sense. I want to pivot a little bit to security. So I feel like we've obviously talked a lot about the sales side of things. I feel like we could continue talking about that the entire time, all day, all day. And it almost feels like we're having a beer right now.

Speaker 2: 28:57

Yeah, that's what I'm going for, yeah.

Speaker 1: 29:01

I like that vibe as well.

Speaker 2: 29:02

I feel like it's probably it should have been beers. It could have been beers here.

Speaker 1: 29:06

This is true. It is not 10 o'clock in the morning, no, definitely not so security. Obviously, the world is changing incredibly quickly. There's new threats every day. There are, as you mentioned, like an incredible amount of investment coming in, so there's new competitors every day. How does a leader comprehend all of this without spending all of their day, every day, in?

Speaker 2: 29:27

security? Good question. So I guess it depends on the leader. Once again, go to your team, go to your people that spend time, because when we start to look at larger matrix organizations, where you do have a lead of multiple heads and that type of thing heads of departments and whatnot you really do have to draw from the knowledge of those teams to actually make informed decisions, because you don't have time to be everywhere in all things. The CEO of Arctic Wolf can't be everything to everyone all the time. Very intelligent man, highly respected, incredible person, but, yeah, he's got to focus on sales, operations, technology everything goes along with it and so these organizations have incredible people. We've given them responsibility. Right, if you're going to make informed decisions, you really have to draw from the intelligence and the work that those teams have done. I think that's how you do it.

Speaker 1: 30:14

And I know that you're the Robin to the Batman of Faisan right now but if you were to describe to our listeners even some of the big things that are happening on the security industry, what are some of the macro trends that people should be aware of?

Speaker 2: 30:25

Yeah, I think AI is such a buzz acronym at this point, but it's a very real thing. There's a tremendous amount of data out there. It's worth more than gold. I'm sure that you've had folks on your podcast that really got into data.

Speaker 2: 30:35

Look, I think that what I've seen is that bad actors, threat actors, these types of folks I wouldn't call them. I wouldn't call them what was the opposite of lazy, because they're not lazy but they are at the same. That's going to be something that they do. Social engineering is a lot of work, but it's a ton of creativity. Right, you can do that with AI, but it also requires a human element. I think that the different types of threats that we're seeing is too widespread to even identify one silo or even a couple of them, because it changes so fast. Whatever I say on this podcast might change by next week. It's tough and, honestly, from the different types of things we've seen, certainly here in Calgary, right is. It is a heavily hit city for threat actors because we have the oil and gas headquarters companies here, and for Canada that's such a tremendous amount of GDP, that if you harm those companies, it tends to do a lot of damage, and so, ultimately, the different types of social engineering and whatnot.

Speaker 2: 31:32

I would argue that organizations really need to take staff training seriously. I know that staff use it as a huge nuisance, but staff training is. It's expensive, it's intentional, but there's a reason for that, and I think that all the staff really need to focus on that. And guess what? That starts at the C-suite. If you want to take it seriously, they need to prove out how important that is and they need to be the leader in that.

Speaker 1: 31:53

So that security, conversation and culture all the way, all the way from the top, all the way to the bottom, that's right, that's right.

Speaker 2: 31:58

Who's responsible? Here's a great question, right. Who's responsible for cybersecurity at your organization? The answer is you are. 90% of breaches start at the staff level, so everybody's part of it. And it's a far bigger thing, right? Maybe XYZ person is using the exact same password on Netflix that they are in their corporate. These are the types of things, these hygiene practices, I think are really neglected. So, for practice, I'm not. For me, I'm actually less focused on what threat actors are doing and more on the preventative side, notably as we would tie it to the MITRE ATT&CK framework. When I think about the left side of that ATT&CK framework, what are we doing over here to negate these types of activities? Earlier on, that's all hygiene, right? Do you have a whole bunch of PII?

Speaker 1: 32:38

in your inbox and just from an acronym place here. So what is PII? Sorry, personal, identifiable. I'm going to do the acronym place. There we go yeah.

Speaker 2: 32:45

Personally identifiable information, yes. So if you have that type of information present in your different types of cloud apps and whatnot in your inboxes, think about that. That's gold to these guys. So we have to think about that type of stuff, so less focused on the threats themselves and more on what we can do. Get proactive, have good cyber hygiene. And it goes across everybody. At this point, everyone's a target. As much as we don't want to admit it, it's a very real thing.

Speaker 1: 33:09

Yeah, and I know it seems like the buzzword right, but everyone is a target, small, big, large, enterprise, public, private, like the whole gamut is, without being yeah, I think sometimes when I have an organization say we're too small to be a target, I think the response generally is you're too small to be a headline and that's fine.

Speaker 2: 33:26

But, like we've seen, organizations of all different shapes and sizes have incidences and they are detrimental to their organizations.

Speaker 1: 33:33

It's crazy, and I'm I know that we could probably spend the next 20 minutes talking about headlines and the and which companies got out of business, et cetera, et cetera. I was in an event yesterday that was talking about the big bridge, which was millions and millions of and I don't want to start naming and shaming.

Speaker 2: 33:51

All of a sudden, this podcast gets canceled real quick.

Speaker 1: 33:55

But I think that it's not a question of if, but when, and that whole understanding of the framework and understanding the components along it are so important. I agree. What are the conversations you find yourself having right now? Is it a lot of product-focused conversations around the platform that you're supporting, or are executives coming to you with more existential conversations around? How does this fit into the overall picture?

Speaker 2: 34:19

Yeah, I actually find that a lot of our conversations are becoming a little bit more educational from the standpoint of the challenges that we actually see based on the various solutions that have presented themselves in the market. It's become a very siloed market, right that you have silo for XDR, silo for network detection response, you have cloud detection response, you have different types of log aggregators, and this and all of them are different subject matter experts and none of them talk to each other. It's a very challenging world, especially when we're as short cyber professionals as we are in Canada and I think the number is like 4 million globally or something like that. We're short based on demand. That's crazy. It's a big number, yeah, and so when we think about that, especially especially here in Calgary, I know that we do not have as much cyber talent as we would probably like, right, and so there's a lot of challenges presenting themselves just because we are so short on those resources. Right, there's a lot of things that have been purchased that you know they might be a great band-aid for a certain thing or a certain situation, a certain cut, but it doesn't really play well with the larger plan that whatever person in that organization had put together so we identify the challenges that we're seeing in cybersecurity and how to rectify some of those.

Speaker 2: 35:29

It is hard to go on a security journey because things are always changing. A key company, as part of your cybersecurity journey, might get purchased. Then all of a sudden they're gone and then you have to reevaluate. Might get purchased, then all of a sudden they're gone and then you have to reevaluate. It is tough, right, but way more emphasis is for our side anyway has been focused around the challenges we see, and it's not just saying that our tool is going to solve all your problems. But are you thinking about these things right? We're not perfect either. I'm a sales guy. I'm not perfect. I'm not an engineer in any way, shape or form, but we have these conversations so often that we're really learning a lot and we're trying to help customers understand. What are you trying to do? What are you like? What journey are you trying to go on? What is your ultimate goal? Unfortunately, the security. The posts continue to shift.

Speaker 1: 36:14

They definitely continue to shift and move and they're not posts sometimes.

Speaker 2: 36:17

Yeah.

Speaker 1: 36:18

Anything, and so you brought up a really interesting point. Just around the sprawl that's starting to happen in the security landscape, there's so many niche products that solve a very specific challenge, and what we see a lot when we go into organizations is sometimes that there's product A that does four things. You buy it for one thing and then the three other components aren't really used and then you continue to rinse and repeat and there's so much overlap on those platforms that there just becomes almost like a security bloat in a lot of environments. Are you seeing that and how are you working through that with some customers?

Speaker 2: 36:51

Yeah. So we see, probably as much as 50% of the cybersecurity tooling that's been purchased in customers' environments has become shelfware. Wow, at least 50. And that's not to say that these tools aren't great tools, because they really are. There's incredible technologies, incredible processes, but we're short cyber talent, we're short resources, so how can we possibly keep up with the amount of data right that is that is coming out and the amount of information that's coming from those tools? It's's very hard to do. Humans are not robots. We're not cyborgs, at least yet God knows what's going to happen, but we're not. So it's very hard to keep up with that practice and that's why, ultimately, we have to find a way to be more streamlined and find ways to operationalize the investments that we've actually made. That's a hard thing to do. It's a very hard thing to do, but very hard thing to do. But I do see a lot of bloat, for sure, and I do see very expensive tools that are not being used to their full potential because we don't have the expertise to utilize them.

Speaker 1: 37:48

So is that a people problem? Because it sounds like people go into these things?

Speaker 2: 37:50

No, I would argue process Process, okay, yeah, yeah, I can't wait. There's incredible. You think about the types of IT professionals and security professionals in our city. We have some unbelievably talented people. We have a lot of talented people, right? But the process of all of it is still relatively new for a lot of these folks, right? And how do we keep up with that? What am I supposed to be looking for? Did I miss something? How can I validate? How can I get those answers quickly? You see what I'm saying. You see what's happening here, right, and that's just. It's a never ending list of things you have to go through. But the problem is how do I assign criticalities to all of that? What's most critical?

Speaker 1: 38:23

Hard to do. The triage becomes the challenge and there's been so many conversations that I know you brought it up a few times around the data and the data state. That continues to grow because everything generates more and more data now. So the ability to filter through the noise no different than the sales conversation, but to filter through the noise to find the important things is getting harder and harder.

Speaker 2: 38:42

Yeah, and classifying all of it right. Yeah it is and, like I say, there absolutely is no perfect solution for cybersecurity. It does not exist. Because as soon as you put in one solution, you identify that you need something else and then, once that's in, you identify you need something else.

Speaker 2: 38:56

Almost like a pyramid scheme, it feels like sometimes where you're having one and then it starts to get bigger and bigger. I think that what we are seeing in the industry is a continued push towards a platformatization of all of these products, but you can make the argument that there's a series of products that could be put into some sort of a platform, some sort of bundle that can produce those outcomes. Maybe a bit of a shameless plug for Arctic Wolf, but we're not the only ones that are doing it.

Speaker 2: 39:16

I see what you did there, yeah but we're not the only ones that are doing it, and so, ultimately, I do think that that is going to become more of a factor as we start to find ways to operationalize the investments that we've made. Like how do we make the most out of these cybersecurity purchases? It's hard to do but platformatize it to make it a little bit easier, and we're seeing that across a lot of the big companies as well.

Speaker 1: 39:35

So, to wrap things up, there is a ton of amazing information that you shared today. I hope so. Is there one thing that you wish people would leave with if you were to wrap everything up into one piece of advice that you really want our listeners to walk away with? Is there something that stands?

Speaker 2: 39:51

out to you. So from the executive side, I'd say be patient with us. Camera's here, be patient with us. We're not out there to get you. We want to share great information. We want to provide value. If the value is not with us today, be honest quickly, but be patient with us and when it doesn't go our way, give us that debrief. Please do that for us and good luck, because it's a very challenging world and I actually do mean that very genuinely. Good luck To the sales side of the folks. That's a world. Be likable. I think that's so lost in the industry now is are you likable? Be a good person, do the right thing, even when it's a very hard thing to do, and also be patient with your prospects, with people, because they're busy. So that would be my big two takeaways from both sides of the house and for someone that's not in either of those, I don't know, I just hope that you enjoyed something.

Speaker 2: 40:35

I said today because I ranted a few times. That would be my leafs.

Speaker 1: 40:38

I love it If someone wanted to connect with you, if they wanted to learn more, if they want to buy a whole bunch of Arctic Wolf product, where can they find?

Speaker 2: 40:44

you. Yeah, Give me a call. I'm easy to find on LinkedIn. Honestly Deliver Digital markets me really well. Linkedin's great. I'm a pretty open book. My phone never really turns off Drives my wife crazy. But yeah, I'm really easy to find.

Speaker 1: 40:58

Amazing. Thank you so much for coming on today. It's been an absolute pleasure. I'm excited to maybe get out on the golf course this summer and thank you for taking the time for coming on the show. Oh, thanks for having me, man. It's been a pleasure. Cool, amazing, cheers, cheers.