October 14, 2024 • 51 mins
What if the key to success in entrepreneurship lies in mastering every aspect of a business?
In this episode of Battle Scars of a Sales Leader, James sits down with Dane Meah, CEO and co-founder of MyCISO, a cutting-edge security SaaS platform.
Dane shares his incredible journey from selling plastic bags to building a successful cybersecurity company.
In this episode you'll learn:
- Dane's early career experiences and his passion for sales and business improvement
- The serendipitous path that led him to cybersecurity in Australia
- Building InfoTrust from 0 to 300 customers in just 3 years
- The challenges and pivots in developing MyCISO, a SaaS platform simplifying cybersecurity management
- Insights on work ethic, sales strategies, and the five core traits Dane looks for in sales professionals
Discover how resilience, adaptability, and customer-centric approach drove Dane's success in the competitive cybersecurity industry.
This episode is packed with valuable lessons for sales leaders and entrepreneurs alike!
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Dane (00:00):
InfoTrust went from zero.
You know two guys, no clue howto run a business, but we knew
how to sell.
So within a year we had 100customers, two year, 200
customers, three year, 300customers.
What happened next was evenmore incredible.
James (00:20):
Dane Meir, CEO and co-founder of a security SaaS
platform, business MySizeO.
Dane (00:26):
You need to divide and conquer.
This is a big opportunity withMySizeO, but you're not going to
do it as a side hobby.
Oh, it'll be fine.
I've got this Disaster, we'vegot enough on our plate.
Three hours later, I've got awhiteboard the size of the wall
and there's arrows everywhere,and did that translate to
results?
James (00:44):
Thank you for thank you for joining and, um, you know,
just to just to kick off, wouldlove to start in in.
Yeah, tell us a little bitabout you.
Know where you are today, whatyou're doing from a my size
perspective, and then I want toreflect back and and talk about
about what were you doing 10years ago and kind of how that
journey has been.
Dane (01:05):
Sure, yeah, no, look great to be here.
Obviously, likewise, it'sdifficult to miss you.
So when we, when we first met,you know, equally it was great
to meet you and follow yourjourney as well, building a
successful business as well,building a successful business.
But look in terms of where I'mat and you know the journey
(01:29):
that's got me here.
You know you never expectthings to end up the way they
end up, but you know it hasn'tbeen without a lot of hard work.
My SISO has really been abusiness.
That's been, uh, really a babyand an idea um of mine and my
co-founder, simon um, for a longtime, nearly 10 years, um and
(01:54):
um, and I'll come back to kindof how it all started.
But shortly into the tenurewith infotrust and we were
pretty much brand new.
You know, simon and I had comefrom a software background and
in a product background and Ialways I always talk about my
time at Symantec part of theircloud business, the SaaS
(02:14):
business as my MBA because I wasdeeply kind of fascinated in
every part of the business, beit sales, which is what I was
paid to do, but marketing, evencollections, the finance aspect,
seeing why customers weren'tpaying in some cases or partners
had lost track of invoicing andsubscription billing and things
(02:37):
like that.
And you know I really enjoyedthat aspect of learning about
how to run a SaaS business.
So I was really passionate aboutcreating a software product
when we started InfoTrust but,you know, quickly realized it
wasn't as straightforward as Ifirst thought.
(02:57):
You know, there's obviously bigdifferences between running a
service business, as we were,and a software business.
Big differences between runninga service business as we were
and a software business.
And hence the reason why overtime the business is kind of
diverged and you know, mysizerbecame its own entity.
So, and here we are.
But yeah, there's been a lot ofother wins and challenges on
(03:24):
the journey which kind of helpyou grow and become better at
what you do and incrementally,yeah, I'm excited to tap into a
couple of those today.
James (03:33):
So you mentioned that you were at Symantec and paid as a
sales rep but also just had thispassion for other areas of the
business as well.
And yeah, I've been a sales repand an individual contributor
and I personally wasn'tinterested in the collection
side, um, or chasing upcustomers or looking at kind of
behind the scenes.
Dane (03:54):
So, like that's to talk to me a bit about kind of how that
came about and you're not justfocusing purely on your number
you know I often say to peoplein the business now, if, if you
ask for my opinion, expect toget an answer, because you know
I've always put my nose intothings.
Maybe that I shouldn't, and youknow I've always been quite
(04:14):
interested in processimprovement.
You know how things can be.
You know problem solving andhow things can be done better.
Problem solving and how thingscan be done better.
I kind of reflect now morerecently at my work experience
at age 12.
I was put into a balloon kindof party decoration and supplier
(04:36):
business for a week and no wordof a lie, really got my hands
dirty transforming that business.
Um, not necessarily on theoperational kind of delivery
component, but the shop lookedcompletely different by the end
of the week, um, which was umkind of indicative of.
(04:56):
You know he certainly didn'thire a 12 year old to come in
and rebuild, relay out his shop.
But I could I kind of just sawthat as well.
By the way, sir, you know thisis not really laid out the best.
I don't think you're gettinggood visibility on these
products and blah, blah, andthat's kind of what I've carried
on doing throughout my careerand sometimes it gets me into a
(05:18):
bit of trouble.
Um, my first sales job, uh, atthe age of?
Um, my first sales job at theage of must have been 18,
working for a polythenemanufacturing company.
I remember turning up for myinterview school trousers and a
(05:39):
shirt that I'd you know, a plainshirt that I think my mum had
bought me for a wedding orsomething.
I turn up we do about 15minutes of the interview and he
said now you know this isn'tschool anymore, so go and buy a
suit and come back.
So you know, deeplyembarrassing off, I went, came
back, um with a suit the nextday, um 400 pounds poorer, which
(06:02):
was probably my life savings atthat point.
But anyway, I worked in thatbusiness, learned a lot over
that first month, but you know,really kind of as I started to
do what I even did at that point.
You know, in that case it gotme into trouble and you know
that was a short tenured career,but you know, not through lack
(06:22):
of, you know, good intentions,it was more.
You know keeping your head downas well.
James (06:27):
But that's like I said, that's just always been
something I've done and movingon from that, uh, that role, and
was that a sales role?
Selling poly polythene,polythene plastic, selling
plastic plastic bags that soundsso fancy the first time.
So you went from selling umselling balloons to plastic bags
(06:48):
um what was the next step inyour career?
Dane (06:51):
oh dear.
So, um, I worked in recruitmentbecause I realized, um, uh, uh,
the age of 17, had a quite badfootball injury which put me
into a um predicament.
Frankly, um, you know, wasabout to complete my a-levels,
go to university, and had asituation where I had a quite,
(07:16):
quite a common but seriousfractured tib and fib.
Um, the injury meant I couldn'tgo to university, didn't
actually interrupt a lot with myA-levels because it wasn't
healing.
I started a business at home.
So this was really probably myfirst thing that got me into
business, got me trying out newthings and ideas, problem
(07:37):
solving, and the business thatstarted was really buying and
selling online different thingsconsumer electronics, apparel
but the genius product was aninformation product on how to
buy and sell consumerelectronics and apparel online,
which is basically just a fewpages context of supplies.
And I would sometimes come homefrom school and I'd have 50 to
(08:02):
a hundred pounds in my bankaccount and all I had to do was
send out a bunch of pdfs, whichwas, you know, probably still to
this day, the best, best money,that best margins that I've
ever made.
But that got me kind of theappetite for sales, the thrill
of the chase, and I'd done otherjobs in kind of Tesco's and
things like that, working ondifferent departments and things
(08:23):
like that working on differentdepartments.
But I knew I wanted to do sales.
So off I went walking around thetown centre of Stevenage in
Hertfordshire in England andfinding out who's going to give
me a job in sales.
Eventually someone said whydon't you come and work for us?
You don't have much of a salescareer, can't really count the
(08:45):
month, unfortunately, that youhad there.
But you know we can see you'vegot a bit of gusto about you.
Come and work for us.
So I did a few years inrecruitment which was, you know,
brilliant in terms of learningthe, I guess, firstly, work
(09:06):
ethic.
You know what's required to besuccessful.
You know, in the case of anysales role, you know having high
activity.
That was drilled into me from ayoung age.
Again, I remember one of thesort of early days of getting
(09:28):
into recruitment.
You know learning about reallystarting the day with high
levels of activity, so from evensort of 8, 8.30,.
You know contacting people thatyou know nowadays it might be
candidates it's more convenientbefore they get into the office
to call them um and the same youknow that would continue on
(09:49):
into the evening, so I alwayshad that drilled into me from a
young age.
James (09:52):
Um, when you say that was drilled into you at a young age
, was that someone else drillinginto you or did you just
recognize that that was that wasrequired and you figure that
out yourself to get acompetitive edge?
Dane (10:04):
you needed to put that in yeah, I would say that's a good
question.
I definitely worked harder thanthe people around me.
Yeah, you know, that was alwaysthe benchmark, not who's um.
You know what's the best looklike and match that was how do I
do more.
Yeah, so you know, I wasregularly the first in the last
to leave, and that was justbecause I had that desire to to,
(10:28):
you know, achieve great results, get ahead.
You know I was younger as well,so you know I had more to prove
um and did that translate toresults?
you working harder um, yes, Imean ultimately, you know, in
those days I was a bluntinstrument, right that uh, you
(10:48):
know, didn't necessarily havethe contacts, the talk, track,
things like that, the knowledgeof the industry, um, but what I
always say is, you know, havingum more attempts, having having
ultimately more practice, uhsharpens that blade really
quickly.
And there's another story thathappened a few years later, that
(11:10):
kind of, um, you know, I usedthat same approach to get ahead,
um, but my next job was inpharmaceutical sales.
So I've gone from sellingpeople to selling not even
selling, but consulting todoctors on medical research and,
you know, presenting medicalstudies, um, you know, did that
(11:33):
for a couple of years.
Again, you know that that wasinteresting.
Yeah, I learned a lot about anumber of different disease
areas, but wasn't really kind ofhadn't found the thing that, um
, that that I really was feelingpassionate about and just on
the the note of passion, youmentioned a couple of minutes
ago that you you recognized thatyou wanted to find a role in
(11:55):
sales.
James (11:56):
Different people get into sales for different reasons.
What?
What was it about sales thatattracted you?
Dane (12:02):
um, I, I'd had that experience uh selling, uh, in my
little home business and I'dalways you know, if I go back to
a few years before I'd startedlittle businesses at home.
Um, so, you know, sellinggenerally, you're generally
selling a product or somethingso is that the the, the thrill
(12:23):
of the chase, is it?
James (12:24):
it that satisfaction when you get I just got a deal.
Yeah, yeah, exactly, just thateuphoria.
Dane (12:30):
I think the effort reward, uh formula was was the, you
know, the, the, but then tuningyour effort, yeah, efficient,
more being more efficient.
You know, that was exciting.
And I had this, uh, thisbusiness at home which was, you
know, earning me some pocketmoney, um, but I decided, look,
(12:55):
if I want to be better, I needto join a business that I can be
around people that have beenthere and done that I can learn
from and, as I said, recruitmentpharmaceuticals.
That took me to the age ofabout 21.
And I had this sort of nigglingthing where I've wanted to
(13:19):
start a business.
So in my evenings and sparetime I started a recruitment
business.
Now, I shouldn't say this toyou, I did not know that.
Yeah, so I started arecruitment business called Now
Recruit.
Okay, right, it's kind of NowRecruit, so it's what we do now
(13:39):
recruit.
So that was the name of thebusiness loved the process of
setting up the business, um,went through all of that kind of
preparatory stage and then, uh,started doing it and then I
realized why I'd gone out of it.
I'm not gonna say, uh, I justdon't think I'm very good at it.
I'm kind of.
You have to be a certain breedof person to kind of manage so
(14:03):
many balls in the air and somany relationships with, like
the market, candidates as wellas your clients, and juggling
expectations, and lots of thingscan go wrong.
And, yeah, it was at the sortof ripe old age of 21 where I
realized I was having a lifecrisis.
I thought, well, richardBranson, by the age of 21, he'd
(14:25):
already started Virgin andthings were starting to go quite
well for him.
And here I was looking at abusiness of one not enjoying
what I did, didn't enjoy thepharma industry, and we needed a
life intervention.
So, uh, I said to my girlfriend, who's now my wife we've been
(14:48):
happily married for a long time.
Um, uh, you know, I'm feelingreally sad about where I'm at in
life and she was ready for achange.
And almost the next day we metsomebody who said they were
moving to Australia.
It was like a light bulb moment.
What's this?
How do you do that?
(15:09):
You know, can you just move?
Is there?
What's the visa situation?
And, yeah, I guess the rest washistory.
We booked a one-way flight aweek later and we were on a
plane within a couple of months,and what happened next was even
more incredible.
So we're on our way over.
(15:31):
I'll tell you the short version,because we only have three
hours right for this interview.
I have three, okay, so theabridged version is stopping off
in korea.
I walk past an internetcomputer to check and I think,
well, we've got an hour to burn.
Let's check my email.
Uh, there's an email from mysoon-to-be landlord saying sorry
(15:52):
, we found someone better.
Best of luck.
Now we're arriving at 5 am onnew year's day.
I've got nowhere to go.
So we messaged the one personthat we knew and said hey, do
you remember meeting us?
Um, that time at that party.
Anyway, do you know anyone thatwill take us in tomorrow?
And then close the email.
(16:14):
If we went, got the flight.
11 hours later we land in sy,in Sydney, on the search for an
internet computer they used tobe dotted around in those days
Tipped my email go to MilsonsPoint, alfred Street, and again
I said I'd give you the shortversion.
Here we go.
But that day at the house, onNew Year's Day, they happened to
(16:36):
be having a barbecue and I metthe sales director of Message
Labs, which was the company thatSymantec acquired, and that was
how I got into cybersecurity.
I met him by complete fluke,and the guy I was just chatting
to him.
He happened to be a Palm and anArsenal fan as well.
So we got on quite well.
And as he's leaving, hewhispers in my ear send me your
(17:01):
CV.
And I thought who's this guy?
I thought he was just my mate,but it turns out he yeah.
He had a role for me and Istarted a couple of weeks later.
And how old were you at thatpoint?
James (17:13):
I was 21, 21 wow sorry, 22, just 22.
Yeah, yeah, incredible, yeah,yeah, incredible, yeah, yeah,
incredible.
Dane (17:21):
And yeah, and back to kind of work ethic, that first three
months.
So it didn't go completely toplan.
He wanted me in his sales team.
The VP of the region said look,you're a working holiday visa.
I'm not putting you in our mostsuccessful sales team in the
region without a proper visa, um.
(17:42):
So I said, okay, you know.
I was probably quite close tosaying screw this.
You know I've.
You know I've been selling foryears.
I can do.
You know you should have ahighly proficient 22 year old
yeah so and then I had a littletalk to myself as I was walking
up the street up in north sydney.
I said look, no one's watching,just keep your head down, work
(18:05):
hard and you'll they'll realizepretty quickly where you should
be.
So I started off intelemarketing and I worked um,
like I said, same work, workethic, first in last to leave
Because I saw it as a hack.
It was like a little secrethack which was I can call into
New Zealand from 7 am and I cancall into Perth up until sort of
(18:30):
7, you know, 8 o'clock at night, depending on the time.
Now I wasn't doing that everyday, but quite regularly I'd be
like right well, now is my perthis.
You know, after five o'clock noone.
No, most, most cold callers arecalling from sydney or
melbourne, but no one's callingat that time.
So it's perfect time to callthem.
James (18:49):
And not a lot of people phone perth from the east coast
after five.
So that's my point.
Dane (18:53):
Yeah, that was my yeah, so very quickly.
You know the, the, the, thelead target was just being blown
out of the water.
You know I really used it.
We had good trainings.
We learned about spin.
Selling was the foundationalkind of learning that I got,
which was fantastic.
I read a whole bunch of otherbooks.
(19:14):
That was kind of.
You know that was the start.
My my sales career really waswas learning applying.
What I learned, um, and youknow I did four months in
telemarketing and then got gotthe jump into into, yeah, the
call up, the call up, yeah, thecall up for the quota, and there
was a big kind of dip in therest of everybody else's sales
(19:34):
performance after I lefttelemarketing, because you know
the leads are dried up right,but no, I'm joking, but it was
um, uh, that's so, funnilyenough, simon, who's my business
partner, was I was histelemarketer.
James (19:48):
No way oh, that's incredible.
Yeah, so you became a rep, um asuccessful rep.
How?
How many years were you workingat Symantec as a rep before you
jumped out and and set up infotrust?
so it was about six and a halfyears all up and, and I guess so
(20:11):
, you were there for six and ahalf years and there was a
catalyst, I assume, for yousaying, hey, now is the time for
us to you know, I see anopportunity of some sort for us
to take the take the leap offaith and do something on our
own.
Can you talk a little bit aboutthat, that whole process and
experience and what you saw?
Dane (20:29):
you know, timing is everything.
Right when starting a business,there has to be, there has to
be, um, a a clear need for whatyou're offering in order to make
life a bit more comfortable.
Right that, ideally, you've gotsome favorable circumstances
right that make your you know,for example, you know, having
(20:53):
come from an adjacent spacewhere you have a lot of
relationships, that's, you know,a good leg up.
Space where you have a lot ofrelationships, that's that's you
know, a good leg up.
So, um, the the kind of journey, the journey for me, uh,
semantic, was, as I said,working in this subsidiary for
the whole seven years or six anda half years.
Uh, message labs, laterrebranded as sas business unit
(21:16):
and then cloud.
Um, the the kind of journeymeant what went from managing
smb to enterprise, largeenterprise, and, um, building a
lot of relationships with, umyou know, some really prominent
businesses around australia.
Um, I'd become, I'd realized asa account manager that I had to
(21:40):
be constantly reinventing myself, adding value in different ways
.
Now, with a quite narrowproduct set.
It wasn't always easy, but Ialways made sure that I remained
relevant.
So if, whether I was walkinginto a tier one bank or you know
major manufacturing companies.
You know all sorts of differentbusinesses.
(22:01):
You know I would generally beable to gain access to this you
know whether it be the cso andthat executive team just through
being highly valuable, right?
So we?
The way that we did that wasbeing an advisor, providing, you
know, insights into how theycan derive more value from the
products that they already had.
(22:22):
That was a big focus for me.
I had the benefit of having thekey accounts, of having a
client service manager and othersupport, access to the best
people in the business, know thebest people in the business.
(22:42):
Um, so what had happened withsemantic over the past oh sorry,
incrementally is they make anacquisition and gradually rip
the, the winning formula, apart.
You know, no one would be uh, Idon't think you'd find many
people that disagree with that,and it was ironic when broadcom
acquired them, but that wasstarting to happen within our
business.
But, with respect and credit toBrenton Smith, who's the
(23:07):
managing director, he wasextremely protective of that
unit and kept us going to thepoint where we were still right
up until the day that we weremade redundant, which is also
incredible.
It was the highest performingteam in the region and that you
(23:29):
know it was the winning formulaof customers, what's later known
as customer success.
Obviously, having good productsis required, so the catalyst was
we could see what would happenin the US and in Europe when
they got rid of the cloud team.
So, no surprise, customers left.
Competitors came in and swoopedin and said hey, you're getting
(23:51):
the support that you want.
How's the product?
And we were already under a lotof pressures from other
competing solutions.
So you step away or you get ridof that team.
Then millions of dollars justleaves the business.
So that was kind of our moment,which was we started InfoTrust
(24:12):
initially and we made a valueproposition to Brenton and said
look, we get it.
You have to make our teamredundant.
Row in with the strategy forthe rest of the global business.
You've held out for two yearsbut it's not going to last
forever.
So Simon and I wrote a.
First of all, I approached Simon.
I said look, there's a windowof opportunity here.
(24:33):
We've got 6,000 customers inAustralia, we've got new
businesses wanting to buy thisproduct and series of products
and all the knowledge aboutthese solutions is leaving
Symantec and the customers aremostly direct, are not going to
have any support or proactivesupport, and that was our value
(24:56):
proposition to brent and we saidlook, we can continue to bring
your rock star sales team, butworking for ourselves, how does
that sound?
Uh, twitch is like that soundsfantastic.
Um, you know, would love tokeep you in the ecosystem.
So, basically, the first yearwas approaching, either
(25:17):
approaching customers I hadgreat relationships with who
wanted to continue a service, orbeing brought in by semantic as
the specialist cloud partner,um or you know, for new, new
business deals.
Uh or uh, where there was achurned customer, really unhappy
customer of all sizes, we wouldget called in to save the
(25:39):
account.
So it was using that knowledgeand ip that we already had built
up over many years, uh, to kindof grow the business.
So info trust went from zero.
You know, two guys no clue howto um run a business to, uh to,
but we knew how to sell.
So within a year we had 100customers.
(26:02):
Two year, 200 customers.
James (26:04):
Three is 300 customers um , and initially it was selling
maintenance and supportagreements, both kind of
reactive and proactive yeah.
Dane (26:14):
So we called it the info trust way, um, and it was a
value proposition that was, uh,I'd reverse engineered the uh,
the buy-in cycle from spinselling, nil rackham's buy's
buying cycle where you knowtraditional or kind of weaker
(26:35):
sales people will engage.
When a company is reviewing themarket, reviewing opportunities
, they call and say, now, whatyour requirements?
Well, you know, we're lookingat email security right now.
Now that's the worst time toengage, right.
Of course you wouldn't pass itup if it came to you, but you
want to be engaging, not onestep before but two steps before
(26:58):
that.
Now, the step prior to that is,uh, recognition of needs.
So when you recognize thatyou've got unmet needs, you kind
of go.
Things aren't quite working as Iwould like, um, and the stage
before that changes over timechanges to the threat landscape,
changes to the infrastructure,whatever is in the given
(27:20):
solution area.
So our kind of engagement modelwas to map to this.
The InfoTrust way was to map tothe buy-in cycle and actually
be highly engaged withbusinesses as changes were
occurring, advising them on howthey can derive more value from
their investments, how they cantweak the configuration, what's
(27:40):
coming, how they can address newthreats that are coming into
the ecosystem.
Customers loved it.
It's really a consulting, veryconsultative, but delivered by
me, by Simon, and we trained ourteam up to do that.
That was, uh, that was kind ofcore to our value prop and that
(28:00):
customers got on board with it.
Um, and you know that that kindof gave us that start off in in
business and so that was thetwo of you nearly 10 years ago
now.
James (28:14):
Fast forward info.
Infotrust has done incrediblywell.
I think they've got 100-oddpeople in the business.
Now, when you reflect on the Iguess different milestones of
growth, is there any stage thatstands out as particularly
memorable for either a positiveor negative reason?
Dane (28:33):
Probably keeping it um, humorous, but the just just
between us, just between us,between us, I've got one that
you don't tell anyone.
I won't.
No, so look the um.
Our first employee was, um, we,we got.
So we started the business inApril.
(28:53):
It was about, I think it wasJuly, august.
We'd done some great businessand great deals brought on.
You know well, as I said, 100in the first year and it's
getting.
We're two people and I thinkwe'd hired, or we're about to
hire, a seller in Melbourne.
(29:14):
But we were like we haven'tinvoiced most of these customers
and we were straight on thehook.
It's not that we wouldn't pay,we just hadn't got around to
invoicing them.
And so the first hire was atemp.
I said let's just get a temp in.
This was at like 9 o'clock on aFriday morning, so we put it
out on LinkedIn.
I said anyone know a temp?
(29:34):
I said let's just get a temp in.
This was at like nine o'clockon a friday morning, so we
called, put it out on linkedin.
I said anyone know a tempagency?
Someone comes back, call thelady, we can have someone
interviewing this afternoon.
So, um, that was.
That was a turning point becauseit was our first hire.
But the lady comes in, we, weinterviewed her for about 20
(29:54):
minutes, thinking it's atemporary role.
We just need you to pump out abunch of invoices.
She is now still working for usand has been, you know, so
integral to our business.
Uh, lady by the name of francis, who you would know, um just
just an amazing, can-do kind ofgood soul of a person, um, and
(30:20):
look the that's kind of those.
Those are the things thatactually, um are more rewarding
than any deal that you might winis.
You know, bringing people inand you know building not just
the business but people'scareers, having fun in the
process.
Of course, lots of ups anddowns you know, looking back
over the years.
But yeah, definitely that.
(30:42):
That's.
That's the fun part, yeah andfor for you.
James (30:49):
you know what I'm picking up is you've your, your mind is
often going on.
You know this entrepreneurshipsort of journey of how can I do
things better and identify aproblem, and I think that's a
massive opportunity.
But also, do you get distracted?
How do you not get distracted?
Because you've obviously doneincredibly well with your career
InfoTrust, what you're doingnow with MySizo how do you stay
(31:13):
focused when you've got yourmind going in a million
different directions?
Like what did you just say?
Dane (31:24):
I can't lie right because there's people watching this
that know me, um, but no, look,I I do get distracted, um, I
think a lot.
It's weird because a's weirdbecause there's different
personality types.
So I am someone that likes tokeep things quite full in terms
of the bucket, happy to work onmultiple things at the same time
.
So you know someone that doesget a bit excited and does get a
(31:48):
bit distracted from time totime.
But systems and processes, youknow, if I go back to my sales
days, you know I I would havethe same personality, uh, but I
never.
You know, my, my systems, myprocesses made sure that, at
(32:11):
least outwardly, I was extremelyorganized.
You know, follow up everymeeting within ideally the same
day, but certainly within 24hours, summarizing notes.
I had a good system for keepingnotes.
So you know you've got to putthose systems and processes
first.
You know, make sure that thatmight have meant sometimes I
(32:31):
didn't leave the office until 8o'clock because that was a
promise to myself, that thatmight have meant sometimes I
didn't leave the office untileight o'clock because that was a
promise to myself in terms ofmy integrity and what I would
deliver, that I would get thingsdone, but sending a follow-up.
So I know, as soon as you leaveit to the next day, it's
possible.
It's the chance of it takingthree days.
Uh, it's times 10, there's amultiple versus just getting it
(32:56):
out while it's fresh in yourmind.
You have your notes there.
Um, so, to answer your question, yes, I do get distracted, you
know, have weaknesses like that,but, um, yeah, processes and
systems to keep me on track is,you know, fundamental it's.
James (33:13):
I've taken a lot away from that because I notice I'm
the same in the sense of um I Iwill get distracted, think of
something else and regularly sayI'll do that this evening after
the kids have gone to bed.
I don't think I've ever donethat the kids went to bed, but I
always think really positivewhen I've got energy.
Um, but.
But I like your line of like,having integrity of what I say
(33:34):
I'll do and holding yourselfaccountable and you are your
word, yeah, um, so you cancontrol that.
You.
You built um.
You built info trust um.
Talk to us a little bit aboutmy size, oh, and how that has um
evolved and grown out of um ofinfo trust yeah.
Dane (33:53):
So going back to 2015, we're a one-year-old business,
we're just starting to get sometraction and we noticed a lot of
customers were calling us.
It was the year of CryptoLocker, so 2014-15, which, for anyone
(34:14):
that's not familiar with that,it was one of the earlier forms
of ransomware.
So we had all theseorganizations calling us.
Some of them were new customers, some of them were prospects
that we'd said hey, we're aspecialized cybersecurity.
In the days before that wasreally a thing Before it was
cool, before it was cool, beforeit was cool, um, and they said
(34:37):
we want, we need to know,because we've just been talking
to our buddies down the road,competitor, or with some of the
board there's been anothercompany like us that's just had
a ransomware incident or we'vejust had one.
We need to make sure weransomware ready.
So I was like, okay, well,straight away, my mind goes into
problem solve, um.
(34:59):
So you know, I spent some timereverse engineering the
ransomware attack chain um, fromusually a spoofed email, you
know, going backwards throughthe attack chain for the email
gateway, the web gateway, theuser endpoint, backups and
ability to detect and respond tothe incident in the first place
(35:19):
All of those things.
And then we built solutionsaround them, but I actually knew
that because we were getting somany people asking us.
We built a self-assessment tool, which was an online tool that
we plugged into our website andused it as a value add for our
customers or anyone visiting ourwebsite, and people used it.
(35:41):
Was pretty basic.
It presented all of our as theresults, all of our solutions,
as you know, the recommendationsbut it just got me thinking
well, if we could do that forbasic assessment, what if we can
do a much more comprehensiveassessment and a kind of
consultant quality report as theoutput instead of just a
(36:02):
spreadsheet?
And that was the beginnings ofit.
About a year later, we hired aGRC practice leader at InfoTrust
, someone to run the consultingand advisory practice, and
during the interview process Isaid look, consulting's part of
your job right, that's thetraditional part of your job.
(36:25):
This is another project that Ineed your help with if you're
the right person for that,called MySizer, and it's a
platform that will sassify whatthe consultant does, so we don't
need to use consultants.
It will allow the user todevelop and run their cyber
(36:45):
program from a dashboard insteadof spreadsheets.
It will allow them to generatereports in seconds instead of
days or weeks, and that's justthe beginning.
That was the idea and credit tothe guy who said I know exactly
what you want to do.
I've been thinking about doingit myself.
He was quite an entrepreneurialguy and off we went.
(37:07):
That was in 2017.
Three years later, and I'd saidto someone in one of the media,
I said we're launching in July.
Three years later, we did hitJuly.
It was just the wrong year.
So there we were, july 2020,middle of COVID, and we're in
(37:31):
beta.
The customers in beta weresaying this is fantastic.
I'm like feeling so good.
You know, this is going to bebig.
And my glc practice leader comesand resigns.
He's going back home to hishome country.
Look after his dad.
Disaster.
Like, we've got enough on ourplate, covid.
We're working, navigating thechoppy waters of covid, work
(37:53):
from home, work, all that funstuff, and I really it was the
last thing.
I needed to be perfectly honestand, um, our advisors have been
saying for years boys to me andsimon, you need to divide and
conquer, right, this is a bigopportunity with my size.
Oh, but you're not going to doit as a side hobby?
Oh, it'll be fine.
You know, I've got this.
(38:14):
No, no, just the first.
So what basically happened andsorry, the outcome of that was I
had to take over from sameinterim.
I jumped into it.
I'm like this product ishorrible.
I take one, look at it, how doyou use it?
Every time I click, nextpopping up with an error message
(38:35):
saying you need to do y.
So I called.
I said look, before you gooverseas, can you come back and
explain to me how this thingworks?
He comes in three hours laterI've got a whiteboard the size
of the wall and there's arrowseverywhere and you've got this
data object relates to that.
Risks, you know, relate tocontrols and and.
And I had no idea howcomplicated this thing was going
(38:57):
to get.
And that wasn't the brief.
The brief was about simplifyingcybersecurity for the IT
manager yes, the CISO, but makeit more accessible to all.
And I said thank you for comingback, really appreciate your
time.
And I realized we're nevergoing to launch that product.
So Over the next couple ofmonths I changed the hiring
(39:22):
strategy from a GRC leader to aCX-focused product owner.
So customer experience and Ifound Phil.
Phil had worked in big financecompanies banking large tier one
banks, creating apps likemortgage application forms,
websites, that kind of thing.
(39:43):
Now those tools have to beseamless and simple on the front
end, but there's massivecomplexity on the back end.
So we took that approach to mysize and initially he said we
can rebuild it, I can work withit.
Six months later loads ofwasted effort we'd scrapped it
and we started again.
So we're getting on for fouryears worth of development.
(40:05):
By 2020 mid-2021 we scrapped itcompletely and started again.
It's actually more than fouryears, but within three months
and we tripled our developmentresources and I had stepped out
of infotrust and workingfull-time in my my size from the
start of 2021.
We'd caught up and we weremiles ahead of where we were six
(40:27):
months prior.
So that was kind of really theconviction that we had to have
to be successful.
James (40:36):
And when you yeah, yeah, I appreciate you're saying time
you came in and it was focusedand you accelerated, and that
absolutely makes sense.
What were the types ofactivities that you were doing
that allowed you to acceleratethe development?
Dane (40:51):
Yeah.
So first of all, finding theright team.
Yeah, you know that, bothsoftware development and product
managers.
You know building, laying thefoundations to scale the
business.
So I was heavily involved in Isaw my role not as the kind of
determinant of the features andfunctions, but more about being
(41:15):
the customer advocate.
Obviously I know security well.
I've been in this industry fora long time, but I'm not a GRC
consultant, I would never claimto be.
So my role was sanitizing it tomake sure that we didn't make
the same mistake again.
Keeping it simple If it madesense to me, it made sense to my
(41:36):
target market was my approach,and that was primarily.
There was a lot of time spentdesigning the software which
Phil and I worked on together.
And then the other side wasbuilding the back end of the
business, which I'd done overmany years at InfoTrust, but
(42:03):
this time I didn't have manyyears.
So all the systems and billingand all of that sort of stuff
that we kind of went well, okay,how do we want to take this to
market when we're ready tolaunch?
So I spent a lot of my time onthat side of things initially.
Yeah, and also, you know I wasout presenting wireframes right
(42:27):
and you know, getting customersbasically excited.
For six months before welaunched um, you know I was
sometimes doing seven meetings aday.
You know it was.
It was intense because therewas no one else, it was just
phil and I, um, and obviously afew others, but you know yeah,
that's, it's awesome stories.
James (42:43):
And again, from the outside, yeah, even I and I've
got to know you over the years Ididn't realize that there was
that much heartache and and painthat you went through to get
there and having the resilienceto actually and the resilience,
but also the um, the wisdom toto chop it and start all over
again as well.
(43:04):
And if we, you know, let's fastforward a couple of years and
you're now building out yourgo-to-market team, there seems
to be traction, momentum,product market fit seems to be
there.
There's the referrals and thecase studies that you're getting
are just phenomenal.
So, you know, congratulationson transforming it.
What wasn't a product a coupleof years ago has now got product
(43:26):
market fit.
When you, when you're lookingat your go-to-market team, um,
are there differences in thesorts of people that you want in
your software business than,say, in the in the services
business, and what are the sortof characteristics and traits
that you're looking for?
Dane (43:41):
Not fundamentally different.
Right, it boils down to youknow, if we're talking about
technical capabilities, you knowthe core capabilities you would
need for you know riskmanagement and you know the sort
(44:01):
of GRC From a sales perspective.
Broadly the same.
But at the same time, if wecompare InfoTrust to my size,
the profile if I was going tosay is slightly different would
be we're the experts at what wedo.
(44:21):
We only have one series ofproducts but we're one vendor,
whereas an InfoTrust or an MSSPsalesperson is going to need to
know a little about manysolutions and customers enjoy
working with MSSPs because ofthat, because that account
(44:46):
manager will have a broadknowledge of different
technologies and solutions.
So you know our team.
Now we're building out thego-to-market.
We've recently hired amarketing manager, a senior
marketing manager, who's beenfantastic.
The sales team we have aboutsix in the sales team now.
(45:06):
They're all specialists at whatthey do.
A big part of their role is toknow the product inside out so
that they can speak to newprospects, demo the platform
themselves and we're neededbringing a technical resource
from a pre-sales or serviceperspective.
But generally, you know, itkind of starts and ends with the
(45:29):
salesperson.
So they need to know they needto be really competent at
presenting the platform demoinga little bit more technical than
perhaps some sellers in somevendors where they would have an
SE with them at all times.
James (45:42):
And from a um, a characteristics perspective,
that the sort of dna that you'relooking for in your team.
Yeah, what is your slam dunkfit in terms of a rep?
Dane (45:51):
okay.
So, um, I always say there'sfive core traits that I look for
.
Um, I've already mentionedactivity.
You know it, it it's.
It's not sexy, right, as asales trait, but it's
fundamental.
And so we look for activity andnot just I can do it or I will
(46:14):
do it, but you know I enjoy it.
I get up kind of to you know,and charge at the day rather
than you know, crawl into theday rather than you know, crawl
into the day.
So that's number one.
Number two we spoke aboutorganization being highly
organized.
You know that's important froma salesperson perspective
because that helps you give thecustomer a good experience do
(46:39):
what you say you're going to do.
If you're organized, you writethings down, you get things done
.
Number three, and this isn't inparticular order, by the way,
but rapport.
I did a poll on the fourattributes because LinkedIn only
allows you to choose fouroptions, but I omitted activity.
(46:59):
But and everyone said rapportwas the number one, like by a
country mile.
But rapport is an important one.
I think the reason why a lot ofcustomers chose that is because
they like people they like.
But the reason they like themis probably that they're good at
what they do and they follow upon time and things like that.
But rapport is another one.
So being able to go into a roomand strike up a conversation
(47:22):
easily maintain thatrelationship.
The other two, so productknowledge.
Now, I don't just call this myproduct, I mean all products in
that area.
So knowing the competition,knowing the market, being
knowledgeable someone that doesenjoy reading the subject matter
of your company, whether it be,in our case, frameworks, is
(47:45):
kind of the DNA that underpinsour business.
So knowing the differencebetween NIST and Essential 8,
that's a fairly basic level ofunderstanding.
You would know that.
So product knowledge is key.
And then, last but not least, issales acumen.
Now, this was ranked the lowestof importance, admittedly,
(48:06):
because a lot of customers haveanswered the poll they don't
want to be sales acumened, theydon't want to be sold to, they
don't want to be sold, they wantto buy.
But what they don't necessarilyrealize is someone with strong
sales acumen delivers them abetter experience because
they've asked the rightquestions to deliver the right
product.
What does sales acumen mean?
Yeah, so sales acumen is um,for example, there's a number of
(48:30):
factors to it.
Uh, discovery, right, numberone.
You know I mentioned spinselling.
You know, foundational for meas a 22 year old seller learning
about not just asking what doyou need but asking about
problems, uncovering thoseproblems, uncovering the impact
of those problems and, um, youknow the implication that it has
(48:53):
on the business, on the person,etc.
Etc.
So that's one aspect to it.
Another is handling thenegotiation, because often in a
sale you're going to be, you'regoing to get to a certain point.
The customer can't move ahead.
You know that you need to beable to have a non-awkward
conversation about how do wenavigate a path forward.
(49:15):
That's a win for both of us andthere's many other aspects to
it.
So so obviously you know justreading buying signals and
things like that in sales isimportant.
You know identifying where therecould be objections.
You can usually tell.
You kind of develop anintuition in sales when you're
(49:37):
speaking to someone and you knowyou don't feel that they're
completely comfortable with youknow the information you
provided, to know when to fleshout objections and then how to
handle those objections tosatisfaction as well.
So there's a whole bunch tosales acumen.
It's a life kind of journey interms of skilling up and, you
(49:57):
know, sharpening your skills.
And, to answer your question,what do I look for every look
there's?
I would everyone's different.
I'm not going to look for 10out of 10 in every in every
category.
It's for me it's um looking atwhat could work in our business
(50:18):
in the role um for where we'reat, you know.
For, for example, if I'm hiringaccount managers, you know I
want someone that's gotdefinitely got strong rapport.
Yeah, relationship management,you know perhaps the sort of
outbound kind of activity basedattributes less important.
James (50:38):
That was incredibly valuable.
I loved hearing your.
It's been amazing to look atthe frameworks that you've
applied throughout your life, tolook at the discipline that
you've had, and also to takeaway so many actionable tips as
well.
If anyone listening does wantto learn a little bit more about
my SISO or InfoTrust, or evenjust connect with you, how can
they get in touch with you?
Dane (50:59):
Yeah, sure, so come and find me on me on LinkedIn.
Always happy to connect.
We share a lot of updates viathat channel.
Check out our website as wellmycisoco m-y-c-i-s-o dot co.
And yeah, we'd love to connectwith anyone in the industry.
Anyone wanting to look at theplatform, reach out and we can
(51:21):
arrange a demo for you.
Definitely Brilliant.
James (51:24):
Thanks, dean, no problem, thanks, james.
InfoTrust went from zero.
You know two guys, no clue howto run a business, but we knew
how to sell.
So within a year we had 100customers, two year, 200
customers, three year, 300customers.
What happened next was evenmore incredible.
James (00:20):
Dane Meir, CEO and co-founder of a security SaaS
platform, business MySizeO.
Dane (00:26):
You need to divide and conquer.
This is a big opportunity withMySizeO, but you're not going to
do it as a side hobby.
Oh, it'll be fine.
I've got this Disaster, we'vegot enough on our plate.
Three hours later, I've got awhiteboard the size of the wall
and there's arrows everywhere,and did that translate to
results?
James (00:44):
Thank you for thank you for joining and, um, you know,
just to just to kick off, wouldlove to start in in.
Yeah, tell us a little bitabout you.
Know where you are today, whatyou're doing from a my size
perspective, and then I want toreflect back and and talk about
about what were you doing 10years ago and kind of how that
journey has been.
Dane (01:05):
Sure, yeah, no, look great to be here.
Obviously, likewise, it'sdifficult to miss you.
So when we, when we first met,you know, equally it was great
to meet you and follow yourjourney as well, building a
successful business as well,building a successful business.
But look in terms of where I'mat and you know the journey
(01:29):
that's got me here.
You know you never expectthings to end up the way they
end up, but you know it hasn'tbeen without a lot of hard work.
My SISO has really been abusiness.
That's been, uh, really a babyand an idea um of mine and my
co-founder, simon um, for a longtime, nearly 10 years, um and
(01:54):
um, and I'll come back to kindof how it all started.
But shortly into the tenurewith infotrust and we were
pretty much brand new.
You know, simon and I had comefrom a software background and
in a product background and Ialways I always talk about my
time at Symantec part of theircloud business, the SaaS
(02:14):
business as my MBA because I wasdeeply kind of fascinated in
every part of the business, beit sales, which is what I was
paid to do, but marketing, evencollections, the finance aspect,
seeing why customers weren'tpaying in some cases or partners
had lost track of invoicing andsubscription billing and things
(02:37):
like that.
And you know I really enjoyedthat aspect of learning about
how to run a SaaS business.
So I was really passionate aboutcreating a software product
when we started InfoTrust but,you know, quickly realized it
wasn't as straightforward as Ifirst thought.
(02:57):
You know, there's obviously bigdifferences between running a
service business, as we were,and a software business.
Big differences between runninga service business as we were
and a software business.
And hence the reason why overtime the business is kind of
diverged and you know, mysizerbecame its own entity.
So, and here we are.
But yeah, there's been a lot ofother wins and challenges on
(03:24):
the journey which kind of helpyou grow and become better at
what you do and incrementally,yeah, I'm excited to tap into a
couple of those today.
James (03:33):
So you mentioned that you were at Symantec and paid as a
sales rep but also just had thispassion for other areas of the
business as well.
And yeah, I've been a sales repand an individual contributor
and I personally wasn'tinterested in the collection
side, um, or chasing upcustomers or looking at kind of
behind the scenes.
Dane (03:54):
So, like that's to talk to me a bit about kind of how that
came about and you're not justfocusing purely on your number
you know I often say to peoplein the business now, if, if you
ask for my opinion, expect toget an answer, because you know
I've always put my nose intothings.
Maybe that I shouldn't, and youknow I've always been quite
(04:14):
interested in processimprovement.
You know how things can be.
You know problem solving andhow things can be done better.
Problem solving and how thingscan be done better.
I kind of reflect now morerecently at my work experience
at age 12.
I was put into a balloon kindof party decoration and supplier
(04:36):
business for a week and no wordof a lie, really got my hands
dirty transforming that business.
Um, not necessarily on theoperational kind of delivery
component, but the shop lookedcompletely different by the end
of the week, um, which was umkind of indicative of.
(04:56):
You know he certainly didn'thire a 12 year old to come in
and rebuild, relay out his shop.
But I could I kind of just sawthat as well.
By the way, sir, you know thisis not really laid out the best.
I don't think you're gettinggood visibility on these
products and blah, blah, andthat's kind of what I've carried
on doing throughout my careerand sometimes it gets me into a
(05:18):
bit of trouble.
Um, my first sales job, uh, atthe age of?
Um, my first sales job at theage of must have been 18,
working for a polythenemanufacturing company.
I remember turning up for myinterview school trousers and a
(05:39):
shirt that I'd you know, a plainshirt that I think my mum had
bought me for a wedding orsomething.
I turn up we do about 15minutes of the interview and he
said now you know this isn'tschool anymore, so go and buy a
suit and come back.
So you know, deeplyembarrassing off, I went, came
back, um with a suit the nextday, um 400 pounds poorer, which
(06:02):
was probably my life savings atthat point.
But anyway, I worked in thatbusiness, learned a lot over
that first month, but you know,really kind of as I started to
do what I even did at that point.
You know, in that case it gotme into trouble and you know
that was a short tenured career,but you know, not through lack
(06:22):
of, you know, good intentions,it was more.
You know keeping your head downas well.
James (06:27):
But that's like I said, that's just always been
something I've done and movingon from that, uh, that role, and
was that a sales role?
Selling poly polythene,polythene plastic, selling
plastic plastic bags that soundsso fancy the first time.
So you went from selling umselling balloons to plastic bags
(06:48):
um what was the next step inyour career?
Dane (06:51):
oh dear.
So, um, I worked in recruitmentbecause I realized, um, uh, uh,
the age of 17, had a quite badfootball injury which put me
into a um predicament.
Frankly, um, you know, wasabout to complete my a-levels,
go to university, and had asituation where I had a quite,
(07:16):
quite a common but seriousfractured tib and fib.
Um, the injury meant I couldn'tgo to university, didn't
actually interrupt a lot with myA-levels because it wasn't
healing.
I started a business at home.
So this was really probably myfirst thing that got me into
business, got me trying out newthings and ideas, problem
(07:37):
solving, and the business thatstarted was really buying and
selling online different thingsconsumer electronics, apparel
but the genius product was aninformation product on how to
buy and sell consumerelectronics and apparel online,
which is basically just a fewpages context of supplies.
And I would sometimes come homefrom school and I'd have 50 to
(08:02):
a hundred pounds in my bankaccount and all I had to do was
send out a bunch of pdfs, whichwas, you know, probably still to
this day, the best, best money,that best margins that I've
ever made.
But that got me kind of theappetite for sales, the thrill
of the chase, and I'd done otherjobs in kind of Tesco's and
things like that, working ondifferent departments and things
(08:23):
like that working on differentdepartments.
But I knew I wanted to do sales.
So off I went walking around thetown centre of Stevenage in
Hertfordshire in England andfinding out who's going to give
me a job in sales.
Eventually someone said whydon't you come and work for us?
You don't have much of a salescareer, can't really count the
(08:45):
month, unfortunately, that youhad there.
But you know we can see you'vegot a bit of gusto about you.
Come and work for us.
So I did a few years inrecruitment which was, you know,
brilliant in terms of learningthe, I guess, firstly, work
(09:06):
ethic.
You know what's required to besuccessful.
You know, in the case of anysales role, you know having high
activity.
That was drilled into me from ayoung age.
Again, I remember one of thesort of early days of getting
(09:28):
into recruitment.
You know learning about reallystarting the day with high
levels of activity, so from evensort of 8, 8.30,.
You know contacting people thatyou know nowadays it might be
candidates it's more convenientbefore they get into the office
to call them um and the same youknow that would continue on
(09:49):
into the evening, so I alwayshad that drilled into me from a
young age.
James (09:52):
Um, when you say that was drilled into you at a young age
, was that someone else drillinginto you or did you just
recognize that that was that wasrequired and you figure that
out yourself to get acompetitive edge?
Dane (10:04):
you needed to put that in yeah, I would say that's a good
question.
I definitely worked harder thanthe people around me.
Yeah, you know, that was alwaysthe benchmark, not who's um.
You know what's the best looklike and match that was how do I
do more.
Yeah, so you know, I wasregularly the first in the last
to leave, and that was justbecause I had that desire to to,
(10:28):
you know, achieve great results, get ahead.
You know I was younger as well,so you know I had more to prove
um and did that translate toresults?
you working harder um, yes, Imean ultimately, you know, in
those days I was a bluntinstrument, right that uh, you
(10:48):
know, didn't necessarily havethe contacts, the talk, track,
things like that, the knowledgeof the industry, um, but what I
always say is, you know, havingum more attempts, having having
ultimately more practice, uhsharpens that blade really
quickly.
And there's another story thathappened a few years later, that
(11:10):
kind of, um, you know, I usedthat same approach to get ahead,
um, but my next job was inpharmaceutical sales.
So I've gone from sellingpeople to selling not even
selling, but consulting todoctors on medical research and,
you know, presenting medicalstudies, um, you know, did that
(11:33):
for a couple of years.
Again, you know that that wasinteresting.
Yeah, I learned a lot about anumber of different disease
areas, but wasn't really kind ofhadn't found the thing that, um
, that that I really was feelingpassionate about and just on
the the note of passion, youmentioned a couple of minutes
ago that you you recognized thatyou wanted to find a role in
(11:55):
sales.
James (11:56):
Different people get into sales for different reasons.
What?
What was it about sales thatattracted you?
Dane (12:02):
um, I, I'd had that experience uh selling, uh, in my
little home business and I'dalways you know, if I go back to
a few years before I'd startedlittle businesses at home.
Um, so, you know, sellinggenerally, you're generally
selling a product or somethingso is that the the, the thrill
(12:23):
of the chase, is it?
James (12:24):
it that satisfaction when you get I just got a deal.
Yeah, yeah, exactly, just thateuphoria.
Dane (12:30):
I think the effort reward, uh formula was was the, you
know, the, the, but then tuningyour effort, yeah, efficient,
more being more efficient.
You know, that was exciting.
And I had this, uh, thisbusiness at home which was, you
know, earning me some pocketmoney, um, but I decided, look,
(12:55):
if I want to be better, I needto join a business that I can be
around people that have beenthere and done that I can learn
from and, as I said, recruitmentpharmaceuticals.
That took me to the age ofabout 21.
And I had this sort of nigglingthing where I've wanted to
(13:19):
start a business.
So in my evenings and sparetime I started a recruitment
business.
Now, I shouldn't say this toyou, I did not know that.
Yeah, so I started arecruitment business called Now
Recruit.
Okay, right, it's kind of NowRecruit, so it's what we do now
(13:39):
recruit.
So that was the name of thebusiness loved the process of
setting up the business, um,went through all of that kind of
preparatory stage and then, uh,started doing it and then I
realized why I'd gone out of it.
I'm not gonna say, uh, I justdon't think I'm very good at it.
I'm kind of.
You have to be a certain breedof person to kind of manage so
(14:03):
many balls in the air and somany relationships with, like
the market, candidates as wellas your clients, and juggling
expectations, and lots of thingscan go wrong.
And, yeah, it was at the sortof ripe old age of 21 where I
realized I was having a lifecrisis.
I thought, well, richardBranson, by the age of 21, he'd
(14:25):
already started Virgin andthings were starting to go quite
well for him.
And here I was looking at abusiness of one not enjoying
what I did, didn't enjoy thepharma industry, and we needed a
life intervention.
So, uh, I said to my girlfriend, who's now my wife we've been
(14:48):
happily married for a long time.
Um, uh, you know, I'm feelingreally sad about where I'm at in
life and she was ready for achange.
And almost the next day we metsomebody who said they were
moving to Australia.
It was like a light bulb moment.
What's this?
How do you do that?
(15:09):
You know, can you just move?
Is there?
What's the visa situation?
And, yeah, I guess the rest washistory.
We booked a one-way flight aweek later and we were on a
plane within a couple of months,and what happened next was even
more incredible.
So we're on our way over.
(15:31):
I'll tell you the short version,because we only have three
hours right for this interview.
I have three, okay, so theabridged version is stopping off
in korea.
I walk past an internetcomputer to check and I think,
well, we've got an hour to burn.
Let's check my email.
Uh, there's an email from mysoon-to-be landlord saying sorry
(15:52):
, we found someone better.
Best of luck.
Now we're arriving at 5 am onnew year's day.
I've got nowhere to go.
So we messaged the one personthat we knew and said hey, do
you remember meeting us?
Um, that time at that party.
Anyway, do you know anyone thatwill take us in tomorrow?
And then close the email.
(16:14):
If we went, got the flight.
11 hours later we land in sy,in Sydney, on the search for an
internet computer they used tobe dotted around in those days
Tipped my email go to MilsonsPoint, alfred Street, and again
I said I'd give you the shortversion.
Here we go.
But that day at the house, onNew Year's Day, they happened to
(16:36):
be having a barbecue and I metthe sales director of Message
Labs, which was the company thatSymantec acquired, and that was
how I got into cybersecurity.
I met him by complete fluke,and the guy I was just chatting
to him.
He happened to be a Palm and anArsenal fan as well.
So we got on quite well.
And as he's leaving, hewhispers in my ear send me your
(17:01):
CV.
And I thought who's this guy?
I thought he was just my mate,but it turns out he yeah.
He had a role for me and Istarted a couple of weeks later.
And how old were you at thatpoint?
James (17:13):
I was 21, 21 wow sorry, 22, just 22.
Yeah, yeah, incredible, yeah,yeah, incredible, yeah, yeah,
incredible.
Dane (17:21):
And yeah, and back to kind of work ethic, that first three
months.
So it didn't go completely toplan.
He wanted me in his sales team.
The VP of the region said look,you're a working holiday visa.
I'm not putting you in our mostsuccessful sales team in the
region without a proper visa, um.
(17:42):
So I said, okay, you know.
I was probably quite close tosaying screw this.
You know I've.
You know I've been selling foryears.
I can do.
You know you should have ahighly proficient 22 year old
yeah so and then I had a littletalk to myself as I was walking
up the street up in north sydney.
I said look, no one's watching,just keep your head down, work
(18:05):
hard and you'll they'll realizepretty quickly where you should
be.
So I started off intelemarketing and I worked um,
like I said, same work, workethic, first in last to leave
Because I saw it as a hack.
It was like a little secrethack which was I can call into
New Zealand from 7 am and I cancall into Perth up until sort of
(18:30):
7, you know, 8 o'clock at night, depending on the time.
Now I wasn't doing that everyday, but quite regularly I'd be
like right well, now is my perthis.
You know, after five o'clock noone.
No, most, most cold callers arecalling from sydney or
melbourne, but no one's callingat that time.
So it's perfect time to callthem.
James (18:49):
And not a lot of people phone perth from the east coast
after five.
So that's my point.
Dane (18:53):
Yeah, that was my yeah, so very quickly.
You know the, the, the, thelead target was just being blown
out of the water.
You know I really used it.
We had good trainings.
We learned about spin.
Selling was the foundationalkind of learning that I got,
which was fantastic.
I read a whole bunch of otherbooks.
(19:14):
That was kind of.
You know that was the start.
My my sales career really waswas learning applying.
What I learned, um, and youknow I did four months in
telemarketing and then got gotthe jump into into, yeah, the
call up, the call up, yeah, thecall up for the quota, and there
was a big kind of dip in therest of everybody else's sales
(19:34):
performance after I lefttelemarketing, because you know
the leads are dried up right,but no, I'm joking, but it was
um, uh, that's so, funnilyenough, simon, who's my business
partner, was I was histelemarketer.
James (19:48):
No way oh, that's incredible.
Yeah, so you became a rep, um asuccessful rep.
How?
How many years were you workingat Symantec as a rep before you
jumped out and and set up infotrust?
so it was about six and a halfyears all up and, and I guess so
(20:11):
, you were there for six and ahalf years and there was a
catalyst, I assume, for yousaying, hey, now is the time for
us to you know, I see anopportunity of some sort for us
to take the take the leap offaith and do something on our
own.
Can you talk a little bit aboutthat, that whole process and
experience and what you saw?
Dane (20:29):
you know, timing is everything.
Right when starting a business,there has to be, there has to
be, um, a a clear need for whatyou're offering in order to make
life a bit more comfortable.
Right that, ideally, you've gotsome favorable circumstances
right that make your you know,for example, you know, having
(20:53):
come from an adjacent spacewhere you have a lot of
relationships, that's, you know,a good leg up.
Space where you have a lot ofrelationships, that's that's you
know, a good leg up.
So, um, the the kind of journey, the journey for me, uh,
semantic, was, as I said,working in this subsidiary for
the whole seven years or six anda half years.
Uh, message labs, laterrebranded as sas business unit
(21:16):
and then cloud.
Um, the the kind of journeymeant what went from managing
smb to enterprise, largeenterprise, and, um, building a
lot of relationships with, umyou know, some really prominent
businesses around australia.
Um, I'd become, I'd realized asa account manager that I had to
(21:40):
be constantly reinventing myself, adding value in different ways
.
Now, with a quite narrowproduct set.
It wasn't always easy, but Ialways made sure that I remained
relevant.
So if, whether I was walkinginto a tier one bank or you know
major manufacturing companies.
You know all sorts of differentbusinesses.
(22:01):
You know I would generally beable to gain access to this you
know whether it be the cso andthat executive team just through
being highly valuable, right?
So we?
The way that we did that wasbeing an advisor, providing, you
know, insights into how theycan derive more value from the
products that they already had.
(22:22):
That was a big focus for me.
I had the benefit of having thekey accounts, of having a
client service manager and othersupport, access to the best
people in the business, know thebest people in the business.
(22:42):
Um, so what had happened withsemantic over the past oh sorry,
incrementally is they make anacquisition and gradually rip
the, the winning formula, apart.
You know, no one would be uh, Idon't think you'd find many
people that disagree with that,and it was ironic when broadcom
acquired them, but that wasstarting to happen within our
business.
But, with respect and credit toBrenton Smith, who's the
(23:07):
managing director, he wasextremely protective of that
unit and kept us going to thepoint where we were still right
up until the day that we weremade redundant, which is also
incredible.
It was the highest performingteam in the region and that you
(23:29):
know it was the winning formulaof customers, what's later known
as customer success.
Obviously, having good productsis required, so the catalyst was
we could see what would happenin the US and in Europe when
they got rid of the cloud team.
So, no surprise, customers left.
Competitors came in and swoopedin and said hey, you're getting
(23:51):
the support that you want.
How's the product?
And we were already under a lotof pressures from other
competing solutions.
So you step away or you get ridof that team.
Then millions of dollars justleaves the business.
So that was kind of our moment,which was we started InfoTrust
(24:12):
initially and we made a valueproposition to Brenton and said
look, we get it.
You have to make our teamredundant.
Row in with the strategy forthe rest of the global business.
You've held out for two yearsbut it's not going to last
forever.
So Simon and I wrote a.
First of all, I approached Simon.
I said look, there's a windowof opportunity here.
(24:33):
We've got 6,000 customers inAustralia, we've got new
businesses wanting to buy thisproduct and series of products
and all the knowledge aboutthese solutions is leaving
Symantec and the customers aremostly direct, are not going to
have any support or proactivesupport, and that was our value
(24:56):
proposition to brent and we saidlook, we can continue to bring
your rock star sales team, butworking for ourselves, how does
that sound?
Uh, twitch is like that soundsfantastic.
Um, you know, would love tokeep you in the ecosystem.
So, basically, the first yearwas approaching, either
(25:17):
approaching customers I hadgreat relationships with who
wanted to continue a service, orbeing brought in by semantic as
the specialist cloud partner,um or you know, for new, new
business deals.
Uh or uh, where there was achurned customer, really unhappy
customer of all sizes, we wouldget called in to save the
(25:39):
account.
So it was using that knowledgeand ip that we already had built
up over many years, uh, to kindof grow the business.
So info trust went from zero.
You know, two guys no clue howto um run a business to, uh to,
but we knew how to sell.
So within a year we had 100customers.
(26:02):
Two year, 200 customers.
James (26:04):
Three is 300 customers um , and initially it was selling
maintenance and supportagreements, both kind of
reactive and proactive yeah.
Dane (26:14):
So we called it the info trust way, um, and it was a
value proposition that was, uh,I'd reverse engineered the uh,
the buy-in cycle from spinselling, nil rackham's buy's
buying cycle where you knowtraditional or kind of weaker
(26:35):
sales people will engage.
When a company is reviewing themarket, reviewing opportunities
, they call and say, now, whatyour requirements?
Well, you know, we're lookingat email security right now.
Now that's the worst time toengage, right.
Of course you wouldn't pass itup if it came to you, but you
want to be engaging, not onestep before but two steps before
(26:58):
that.
Now, the step prior to that is,uh, recognition of needs.
So when you recognize thatyou've got unmet needs, you kind
of go.
Things aren't quite working as Iwould like, um, and the stage
before that changes over timechanges to the threat landscape,
changes to the infrastructure,whatever is in the given
(27:20):
solution area.
So our kind of engagement modelwas to map to this.
The InfoTrust way was to map tothe buy-in cycle and actually
be highly engaged withbusinesses as changes were
occurring, advising them on howthey can derive more value from
their investments, how they cantweak the configuration, what's
(27:40):
coming, how they can address newthreats that are coming into
the ecosystem.
Customers loved it.
It's really a consulting, veryconsultative, but delivered by
me, by Simon, and we trained ourteam up to do that.
That was, uh, that was kind ofcore to our value prop and that
(28:00):
customers got on board with it.
Um, and you know that that kindof gave us that start off in in
business and so that was thetwo of you nearly 10 years ago
now.
James (28:14):
Fast forward info.
Infotrust has done incrediblywell.
I think they've got 100-oddpeople in the business.
Now, when you reflect on the Iguess different milestones of
growth, is there any stage thatstands out as particularly
memorable for either a positiveor negative reason?
Dane (28:33):
Probably keeping it um, humorous, but the just just
between us, just between us,between us, I've got one that
you don't tell anyone.
I won't.
No, so look the um.
Our first employee was, um, we,we got.
So we started the business inApril.
(28:53):
It was about, I think it wasJuly, august.
We'd done some great businessand great deals brought on.
You know well, as I said, 100in the first year and it's
getting.
We're two people and I thinkwe'd hired, or we're about to
hire, a seller in Melbourne.
(29:14):
But we were like we haven'tinvoiced most of these customers
and we were straight on thehook.
It's not that we wouldn't pay,we just hadn't got around to
invoicing them.
And so the first hire was atemp.
I said let's just get a temp in.
This was at like 9 o'clock on aFriday morning, so we put it
out on LinkedIn.
I said anyone know a temp?
(29:34):
I said let's just get a temp in.
This was at like nine o'clockon a friday morning, so we
called, put it out on linkedin.
I said anyone know a tempagency?
Someone comes back, call thelady, we can have someone
interviewing this afternoon.
So, um, that was.
That was a turning point becauseit was our first hire.
But the lady comes in, we, weinterviewed her for about 20
(29:54):
minutes, thinking it's atemporary role.
We just need you to pump out abunch of invoices.
She is now still working for usand has been, you know, so
integral to our business.
Uh, lady by the name of francis, who you would know, um just
just an amazing, can-do kind ofgood soul of a person, um, and
(30:20):
look the that's kind of those.
Those are the things thatactually, um are more rewarding
than any deal that you might winis.
You know, bringing people inand you know building not just
the business but people'scareers, having fun in the
process.
Of course, lots of ups anddowns you know, looking back
over the years.
But yeah, definitely that.
(30:42):
That's.
That's the fun part, yeah andfor for you.
James (30:49):
you know what I'm picking up is you've your, your mind is
often going on.
You know this entrepreneurshipsort of journey of how can I do
things better and identify aproblem, and I think that's a
massive opportunity.
But also, do you get distracted?
How do you not get distracted?
Because you've obviously doneincredibly well with your career
InfoTrust, what you're doingnow with MySizo how do you stay
(31:13):
focused when you've got yourmind going in a million
different directions?
Like what did you just say?
Dane (31:24):
I can't lie right because there's people watching this
that know me, um, but no, look,I I do get distracted, um, I
think a lot.
It's weird because a's weirdbecause there's different
personality types.
So I am someone that likes tokeep things quite full in terms
of the bucket, happy to work onmultiple things at the same time
.
So you know someone that doesget a bit excited and does get a
(31:48):
bit distracted from time totime.
But systems and processes, youknow, if I go back to my sales
days, you know I I would havethe same personality, uh, but I
never.
You know, my, my systems, myprocesses made sure that, at
(32:11):
least outwardly, I was extremelyorganized.
You know, follow up everymeeting within ideally the same
day, but certainly within 24hours, summarizing notes.
I had a good system for keepingnotes.
So you know you've got to putthose systems and processes
first.
You know, make sure that thatmight have meant sometimes I
(32:31):
didn't leave the office until 8o'clock because that was a
promise to myself, that thatmight have meant sometimes I
didn't leave the office untileight o'clock because that was a
promise to myself in terms ofmy integrity and what I would
deliver, that I would get thingsdone, but sending a follow-up.
So I know, as soon as you leaveit to the next day, it's
possible.
It's the chance of it takingthree days.
Uh, it's times 10, there's amultiple versus just getting it
(32:56):
out while it's fresh in yourmind.
You have your notes there.
Um, so, to answer your question, yes, I do get distracted, you
know, have weaknesses like that,but, um, yeah, processes and
systems to keep me on track is,you know, fundamental it's.
James (33:13):
I've taken a lot away from that because I notice I'm
the same in the sense of um I Iwill get distracted, think of
something else and regularly sayI'll do that this evening after
the kids have gone to bed.
I don't think I've ever donethat the kids went to bed, but I
always think really positivewhen I've got energy.
Um, but.
But I like your line of like,having integrity of what I say
(33:34):
I'll do and holding yourselfaccountable and you are your
word, yeah, um, so you cancontrol that.
You.
You built um.
You built info trust um.
Talk to us a little bit aboutmy size, oh, and how that has um
evolved and grown out of um ofinfo trust yeah.
Dane (33:53):
So going back to 2015, we're a one-year-old business,
we're just starting to get sometraction and we noticed a lot of
customers were calling us.
It was the year of CryptoLocker, so 2014-15, which, for anyone
(34:14):
that's not familiar with that,it was one of the earlier forms
of ransomware.
So we had all theseorganizations calling us.
Some of them were new customers, some of them were prospects
that we'd said hey, we're aspecialized cybersecurity.
In the days before that wasreally a thing Before it was
cool, before it was cool, beforeit was cool, um, and they said
(34:37):
we want, we need to know,because we've just been talking
to our buddies down the road,competitor, or with some of the
board there's been anothercompany like us that's just had
a ransomware incident or we'vejust had one.
We need to make sure weransomware ready.
So I was like, okay, well,straight away, my mind goes into
problem solve, um.
(34:59):
So you know, I spent some timereverse engineering the
ransomware attack chain um, fromusually a spoofed email, you
know, going backwards throughthe attack chain for the email
gateway, the web gateway, theuser endpoint, backups and
ability to detect and respond tothe incident in the first place
(35:19):
All of those things.
And then we built solutionsaround them, but I actually knew
that because we were getting somany people asking us.
We built a self-assessment tool, which was an online tool that
we plugged into our website andused it as a value add for our
customers or anyone visiting ourwebsite, and people used it.
(35:41):
Was pretty basic.
It presented all of our as theresults, all of our solutions,
as you know, the recommendationsbut it just got me thinking
well, if we could do that forbasic assessment, what if we can
do a much more comprehensiveassessment and a kind of
consultant quality report as theoutput instead of just a
(36:02):
spreadsheet?
And that was the beginnings ofit.
About a year later, we hired aGRC practice leader at InfoTrust
, someone to run the consultingand advisory practice, and
during the interview process Isaid look, consulting's part of
your job right, that's thetraditional part of your job.
(36:25):
This is another project that Ineed your help with if you're
the right person for that,called MySizer, and it's a
platform that will sassify whatthe consultant does, so we don't
need to use consultants.
It will allow the user todevelop and run their cyber
(36:45):
program from a dashboard insteadof spreadsheets.
It will allow them to generatereports in seconds instead of
days or weeks, and that's justthe beginning.
That was the idea and credit tothe guy who said I know exactly
what you want to do.
I've been thinking about doingit myself.
He was quite an entrepreneurialguy and off we went.
(37:07):
That was in 2017.
Three years later, and I'd saidto someone in one of the media,
I said we're launching in July.
Three years later, we did hitJuly.
It was just the wrong year.
So there we were, july 2020,middle of COVID, and we're in
(37:31):
beta.
The customers in beta weresaying this is fantastic.
I'm like feeling so good.
You know, this is going to bebig.
And my glc practice leader comesand resigns.
He's going back home to hishome country.
Look after his dad.
Disaster.
Like, we've got enough on ourplate, covid.
We're working, navigating thechoppy waters of covid, work
(37:53):
from home, work, all that funstuff, and I really it was the
last thing.
I needed to be perfectly honestand, um, our advisors have been
saying for years boys to me andsimon, you need to divide and
conquer, right, this is a bigopportunity with my size.
Oh, but you're not going to doit as a side hobby?
Oh, it'll be fine.
You know, I've got this.
(38:14):
No, no, just the first.
So what basically happened andsorry, the outcome of that was I
had to take over from sameinterim.
I jumped into it.
I'm like this product ishorrible.
I take one, look at it, how doyou use it?
Every time I click, nextpopping up with an error message
(38:35):
saying you need to do y.
So I called.
I said look, before you gooverseas, can you come back and
explain to me how this thingworks?
He comes in three hours laterI've got a whiteboard the size
of the wall and there's arrowseverywhere and you've got this
data object relates to that.
Risks, you know, relate tocontrols and and.
And I had no idea howcomplicated this thing was going
(38:57):
to get.
And that wasn't the brief.
The brief was about simplifyingcybersecurity for the IT
manager yes, the CISO, but makeit more accessible to all.
And I said thank you for comingback, really appreciate your
time.
And I realized we're nevergoing to launch that product.
So Over the next couple ofmonths I changed the hiring
(39:22):
strategy from a GRC leader to aCX-focused product owner.
So customer experience and Ifound Phil.
Phil had worked in big financecompanies banking large tier one
banks, creating apps likemortgage application forms,
websites, that kind of thing.
(39:43):
Now those tools have to beseamless and simple on the front
end, but there's massivecomplexity on the back end.
So we took that approach to mysize and initially he said we
can rebuild it, I can work withit.
Six months later loads ofwasted effort we'd scrapped it
and we started again.
So we're getting on for fouryears worth of development.
(40:05):
By 2020 mid-2021 we scrapped itcompletely and started again.
It's actually more than fouryears, but within three months
and we tripled our developmentresources and I had stepped out
of infotrust and workingfull-time in my my size from the
start of 2021.
We'd caught up and we weremiles ahead of where we were six
(40:27):
months prior.
So that was kind of really theconviction that we had to have
to be successful.
James (40:36):
And when you yeah, yeah, I appreciate you're saying time
you came in and it was focusedand you accelerated, and that
absolutely makes sense.
What were the types ofactivities that you were doing
that allowed you to acceleratethe development?
Dane (40:51):
Yeah.
So first of all, finding theright team.
Yeah, you know that, bothsoftware development and product
managers.
You know building, laying thefoundations to scale the
business.
So I was heavily involved in Isaw my role not as the kind of
determinant of the features andfunctions, but more about being
(41:15):
the customer advocate.
Obviously I know security well.
I've been in this industry fora long time, but I'm not a GRC
consultant, I would never claimto be.
So my role was sanitizing it tomake sure that we didn't make
the same mistake again.
Keeping it simple If it madesense to me, it made sense to my
(41:36):
target market was my approach,and that was primarily.
There was a lot of time spentdesigning the software which
Phil and I worked on together.
And then the other side wasbuilding the back end of the
business, which I'd done overmany years at InfoTrust, but
(42:03):
this time I didn't have manyyears.
So all the systems and billingand all of that sort of stuff
that we kind of went well, okay,how do we want to take this to
market when we're ready tolaunch?
So I spent a lot of my time onthat side of things initially.
Yeah, and also, you know I wasout presenting wireframes right
(42:27):
and you know, getting customersbasically excited.
For six months before welaunched um, you know I was
sometimes doing seven meetings aday.
You know it was.
It was intense because therewas no one else, it was just
phil and I, um, and obviously afew others, but you know yeah,
that's, it's awesome stories.
James (42:43):
And again, from the outside, yeah, even I and I've
got to know you over the years Ididn't realize that there was
that much heartache and and painthat you went through to get
there and having the resilienceto actually and the resilience,
but also the um, the wisdom toto chop it and start all over
again as well.
(43:04):
And if we, you know, let's fastforward a couple of years and
you're now building out yourgo-to-market team, there seems
to be traction, momentum,product market fit seems to be
there.
There's the referrals and thecase studies that you're getting
are just phenomenal.
So, you know, congratulationson transforming it.
What wasn't a product a coupleof years ago has now got product
(43:26):
market fit.
When you, when you're lookingat your go-to-market team, um,
are there differences in thesorts of people that you want in
your software business than,say, in the in the services
business, and what are the sortof characteristics and traits
that you're looking for?
Dane (43:41):
Not fundamentally different.
Right, it boils down to youknow, if we're talking about
technical capabilities, you knowthe core capabilities you would
need for you know riskmanagement and you know the sort
(44:01):
of GRC From a sales perspective.
Broadly the same.
But at the same time, if wecompare InfoTrust to my size,
the profile if I was going tosay is slightly different would
be we're the experts at what wedo.
(44:21):
We only have one series ofproducts but we're one vendor,
whereas an InfoTrust or an MSSPsalesperson is going to need to
know a little about manysolutions and customers enjoy
working with MSSPs because ofthat, because that account
(44:46):
manager will have a broadknowledge of different
technologies and solutions.
So you know our team.
Now we're building out thego-to-market.
We've recently hired amarketing manager, a senior
marketing manager, who's beenfantastic.
The sales team we have aboutsix in the sales team now.
(45:06):
They're all specialists at whatthey do.
A big part of their role is toknow the product inside out so
that they can speak to newprospects, demo the platform
themselves and we're neededbringing a technical resource
from a pre-sales or serviceperspective.
But generally, you know, itkind of starts and ends with the
(45:29):
salesperson.
So they need to know they needto be really competent at
presenting the platform demoinga little bit more technical than
perhaps some sellers in somevendors where they would have an
SE with them at all times.
James (45:42):
And from a um, a characteristics perspective,
that the sort of dna that you'relooking for in your team.
Yeah, what is your slam dunkfit in terms of a rep?
Dane (45:51):
okay.
So, um, I always say there'sfive core traits that I look for
.
Um, I've already mentionedactivity.
You know it, it it's.
It's not sexy, right, as asales trait, but it's
fundamental.
And so we look for activity andnot just I can do it or I will
(46:14):
do it, but you know I enjoy it.
I get up kind of to you know,and charge at the day rather
than you know, crawl into theday rather than you know, crawl
into the day.
So that's number one.
Number two we spoke aboutorganization being highly
organized.
You know that's important froma salesperson perspective
because that helps you give thecustomer a good experience do
(46:39):
what you say you're going to do.
If you're organized, you writethings down, you get things done
.
Number three, and this isn't inparticular order, by the way,
but rapport.
I did a poll on the fourattributes because LinkedIn only
allows you to choose fouroptions, but I omitted activity.
(46:59):
But and everyone said rapportwas the number one, like by a
country mile.
But rapport is an important one.
I think the reason why a lot ofcustomers chose that is because
they like people they like.
But the reason they like themis probably that they're good at
what they do and they follow upon time and things like that.
But rapport is another one.
So being able to go into a roomand strike up a conversation
(47:22):
easily maintain thatrelationship.
The other two, so productknowledge.
Now, I don't just call this myproduct, I mean all products in
that area.
So knowing the competition,knowing the market, being
knowledgeable someone that doesenjoy reading the subject matter
of your company, whether it be,in our case, frameworks, is
(47:45):
kind of the DNA that underpinsour business.
So knowing the differencebetween NIST and Essential 8,
that's a fairly basic level ofunderstanding.
You would know that.
So product knowledge is key.
And then, last but not least, issales acumen.
Now, this was ranked the lowestof importance, admittedly,
(48:06):
because a lot of customers haveanswered the poll they don't
want to be sales acumened, theydon't want to be sold to, they
don't want to be sold, they wantto buy.
But what they don't necessarilyrealize is someone with strong
sales acumen delivers them abetter experience because
they've asked the rightquestions to deliver the right
product.
What does sales acumen mean?
Yeah, so sales acumen is um,for example, there's a number of
(48:30):
factors to it.
Uh, discovery, right, numberone.
You know I mentioned spinselling.
You know, foundational for meas a 22 year old seller learning
about not just asking what doyou need but asking about
problems, uncovering thoseproblems, uncovering the impact
of those problems and, um, youknow the implication that it has
(48:53):
on the business, on the person,etc.
Etc.
So that's one aspect to it.
Another is handling thenegotiation, because often in a
sale you're going to be, you'regoing to get to a certain point.
The customer can't move ahead.
You know that you need to beable to have a non-awkward
conversation about how do wenavigate a path forward.
(49:15):
That's a win for both of us andthere's many other aspects to
it.
So so obviously you know justreading buying signals and
things like that in sales isimportant.
You know identifying where therecould be objections.
You can usually tell.
You kind of develop anintuition in sales when you're
(49:37):
speaking to someone and you knowyou don't feel that they're
completely comfortable with youknow the information you
provided, to know when to fleshout objections and then how to
handle those objections tosatisfaction as well.
So there's a whole bunch tosales acumen.
It's a life kind of journey interms of skilling up and, you
(49:57):
know, sharpening your skills.
And, to answer your question,what do I look for every look
there's?
I would everyone's different.
I'm not going to look for 10out of 10 in every in every
category.
It's for me it's um looking atwhat could work in our business
(50:18):
in the role um for where we'reat, you know.
For, for example, if I'm hiringaccount managers, you know I
want someone that's gotdefinitely got strong rapport.
Yeah, relationship management,you know perhaps the sort of
outbound kind of activity basedattributes less important.
James (50:38):
That was incredibly valuable.
I loved hearing your.
It's been amazing to look atthe frameworks that you've
applied throughout your life, tolook at the discipline that
you've had, and also to takeaway so many actionable tips as
well.
If anyone listening does wantto learn a little bit more about
my SISO or InfoTrust, or evenjust connect with you, how can
they get in touch with you?
Dane (50:59):
Yeah, sure, so come and find me on me on LinkedIn.
Always happy to connect.
We share a lot of updates viathat channel.
Check out our website as wellmycisoco m-y-c-i-s-o dot co.
And yeah, we'd love to connectwith anyone in the industry.
Anyone wanting to look at theplatform, reach out and we can
(51:21):
arrange a demo for you.
Definitely Brilliant.
James (51:24):
Thanks, dean, no problem, thanks, james.
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