Why security buyers are different
A CISO's inbox is the most contested surface in B2B. Every vendor in a crowded category is chasing the same small population of people, and those people have developed extremely efficient filters.
Three things make the market harder than any other we work in:
- Saturation. The volume of outreach reaching a security leader is far beyond any other function. Anything that pattern-matches to a template is gone in under a second.
- Technical credibility. A security buyer detects a rep who does not understand the domain almost immediately, and the conversation ends there.
- Long, committee-driven cycles. Security purchases involve procurement, compliance, and often the board. The first meeting is the start of a long process, so meeting quality compounds.
What happened with Cypago
Cypago is a cybersecurity SaaS company in New York. Before we started, they had run an internal SDR team and used three agencies. None of it produced consistent traction, which is the normal outcome of applying general outbound technique to a security audience.
The rebuild was narrower rather than louder: tighter segmentation, targeting senior security buyers specifically, and a much higher bar for what counted as a meeting.
The full write-up, including what the previous four attempts got wrong, is in the Cypago case study.
How we approach security markets
Segment before you scale
The instinct after a failed campaign is more volume. In security that makes things worse, because the failure was relevance and volume amplifies irrelevance. We define a much narrower set of accounts where the product solves a problem the buyer already knows they have.
Lead with the compliance or risk trigger
Security buying is usually driven by a specific event: an audit, a framework deadline, a customer requirement, an incident. An opening that names a plausible trigger earns a conversation. One that describes your platform does not.
Respect the seniority ladder
Going only for the CISO can be a mistake. Security architects and compliance leads are often more reachable and frequently control whether an evaluation begins at all. Mapping the real buying group matters more here than in most markets.
How the engagement actually runs
Every programme follows the same four stages. Nothing starts until the market is defined, and nothing goes live until you have approved the positioning.
Weeks one and two - strategy and build
We interview your team, study your offer, review recorded customer calls and existing sales material, then build the playbook. In parallel we define the addressable market: ideal customer profile, priority sectors and regions, and the exclusions that keep the campaign clean. Infrastructure and data are set up alongside SDR training.
Week three - go live
Most campaigns start dialling and sending in week three. Scripts have been tested through role play, call listening and live coaching before the first real conversation. Qualified meetings can begin from launch.
Ongoing - coaching and iteration
Your SDR is coached by a manager three times a week. Calls are recorded with AI-generated notes, so you can hear the market rather than read a summary of it. Every reply and objection feeds back into targeting and messaging.
Reporting you can act on
You see which roles, regions and messages convert, what competitors are being mentioned, which objections recur and where pricing pressure sits. That intelligence is often worth as much as the meetings.
Where we will tell you not to bother
If your product overlaps heavily with an established category leader and has no clear differentiator a buyer can grasp in one sentence, outbound will not fix that. Security buyers are unusually good at spotting undifferentiated tools, and a campaign will simply establish that fact expensively.