Avant CCaaS, Cybersecurity Teams Target New Buyer Personas in 2023
Stephen Semmelroth said partners will evolve in cybersecurity to sell to more stakeholders than the CIO.
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How will Avant’s cybersecurity supplier portfolio evolve from last year?
Stephen Semmelroth, senior director of security at Avant, said his team’s overarching goal is to expand into “different buyer personas.” That’s because in 2022, the company targeted cybersecurity providers whose solutions met the needs of the buyers agents were used to selling to. As a result, Avant was giving advisors solutions to position to, on average, the chief information officer at an enterprise or midmarket company.
“What are the solutions that are inside the domain and purview of that chief information officer? Enterprise or corporate-focused security methods, where we don’t have to go train a trusted advisor and a whole new buyer persona? Where are they comfortable now? How can we build a desire to continue to grow and expand a professional practice that a trusted advisor has without pushing them too much or too far?” he posed.
But 2023, he said, will position partners to sell to other people, including but not limited to the chief information security officer.
The Cyber Defense Matrix (pictured above) created by Sounil Yu, plays a key role in Avant and its advisors’ customer engagements.
Partners use the three-dimensional framework to identify and show where a particular solution or policy fits within a customer’s security gaps. For example, managed extended detection and response (EDR) will fit in a different area than that of SASE, and potentially complement one another.
“We can very quickly look and see what a coverage at a client looks like,” he said.
At the time of the interview, Semmelroth said he had used the matrix on five calls that week. And advisors are adopting it in their sales practices.
“We have trusted advisors that are going on marketing campaigns using this and our engineers combined, who are already trained to execute this with a client,” Semmelroth said. “Because trusted advisors see the value of not just the portfolio and the enablement in the training, but the process itself and the way to visually see how a service can either consolidate different products or can move the needle.”
Channel Futures asked about the experiences Avant’s cybersecurity vendors are reporting from their engagements in the agent channel. For some of these suppliers, signing with Avant represented their first true foray into the technology advisor community.
Semmelroth said he sees an inflection point occurring between years two and three of partnering with the TSD.
For vendors on the earlier side of that, Semmelroth said vendors tend to increase their investments in the second quarter of their relationship.
“That’s where they really understand the model. They know it in their head, but now they understand it in their heart. Those are two different things,” he said.
Semmelroth said vendor partners reach an inflection point approximately two-and-a-half years into the partnership.
“And that’s where we start to hear the chief financial officers at the vendors say things like, ‘I see a path to being 100% indirect channel,'