Mentor Thoughts — killing company credibility
Credibility is key in a professional environment. Credibility for a person as well as for a company means not overpromising, being honest and open on the reasons for engagement, (over)delivering the agreed items, being clear and open in receiving and giving feedback and helping others.
Company credibility is killed daily by the representatives of companies trying to chase down a sales target. This is especially true for information security companies, who rely on potential customers giving them a massive amount of trust.

Dear CEO’s and sales people, here’s how you kill your credibility:
- Out of the blue asking for my number for “a very important chat that you need to have with me” — You don’t need my number. Or my e-mail. Because that information is only useful if you need to either investigate me for whatever reason, to sell my data or to bother me with spam. None of those builds my trust in your company.
- Out of the blue asking me for my office address and suggesting that you buy me coffee and have a chat — There is no such thing as free lunch. See the bullet above for the rest.
- Out of the blue asking for an “…open and honest conversation about my company’s current cyber security challenges…” — In what universe do you expect for a person to talk about their problems with an unknown person that reached out over some social network? In what universe would i want to work with a company with such expectations?
- Guessing e-mail addresses in my company and blasting random offers and promotion — This is beyond rude. How would you expect that we consider you the highest level of professionals when you try to develop business by mail bombing?
- Dumping a list of first names and theoretical CV excerpts in e-mail blasts claiming that the company X has the best talent in their pool — You don’t know what we need, yet you are dumping your ‘best talent pool’ on an e-mail? You are not protecting the interests neither of the employer nor the employee. Why would I trust you to do the right thing?
- Asking for “…what is on the horizon and what can company X help…” or “…the type of problems that you face in cyber security…”- You are on a fishing expedition for any business, not one specific thing. That means you aren’t particularly good at anything. Why would I want to work with someone like that?
- Asking for a contact of other people in my company, or the worse version: names and phone numbers of people “that can decide things in my company” — Yeah. Right.
I did a stint in sales for a while many years ago. I understand the pressures you feel to meet targets and to bring revenue. You do the numbers game: contact 10,000 to sign 10.
Understand that in the 21st century and especially in cybersecurity the sales numbers game doesn’t work. Trust does. We all talk to each other, and if one person lost the trust they’ll share.
Help your sales by building credibility. Our main problem is lack of time. Help us like your product by not hiding it, not locking it beyond registration forms, conf calls and requests for quotes. If we like what we see we’ll reach out. And again — we’ll talk to each other. And you’ll win the numbers game.
Originally published on Linkedin due to some weird Medium restriction: https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/mentor-thoughts-killing-company-credibility-spirovski/
