I wonder if they have any sales to large enterprises or similar institutions. In my experience, the larger organizations will have a "security" questionnaire required of their vendors, and the person administering it is a droid, incapable of evaluating whether the questions, originally written in the mid-00s and only updated for buzzword compliance since, are applicable to modern security practice today, or to the pa…
We initially had some troubles navigating these waters in the financial sector, but once we were able to convince 1 big customer to try our system on a trial basis, everyone else started to play along really nicely. No one wants to be the first one to try a new thing and get burned by it.
In 2021, you can sometimes leverage things like technological FOMO to make a business owner believe that they are going to lose out on future business value relative to competition, who you might frame as be willing to take on a bigger technological risk. And indeed, smaller clients in our industry are willing to overlook certain audit points (at least temporarily) in order to compete with bigger players.
Some might not like it, but being able to engage in the sales process and bend some rules occasionally is absolutely required to play in the big leagues. Once you are in, it's a lot easier to move around. No one has a perfect solution and everyone knows it. It's just a matter of who is the better sales person at a certain point.