Building a Scalable Business - Eric Brooker - Channel Security Secrets - Episode #12
Welcome to Channel Security Secrets. I'm Lou Raban. On this show, we expose the untold secrets and critical insights from the people shaping the future of cybersecurity sales in the trusted adviser channel. If you're looking to up your game around selling security, stick around. Channel Security Secrets is brought to you by Cyber Defense Group on a mission to shift cybersecurity from reactive to resilient.
Lou Rabon:I'm really looking forward to our guest today. He's a technology leader, keynote speaker, podcast host, and best selling author. He's the author of the best selling book, You Are Enough, host of the Council Culture podcast ranked in the top 1% globally. He built a channel advisory firm that empowers suppliers to boost visibility and drive growth. He's the founder and CEO of the channel Standard.
Lou Rabon:Eric Brooker, welcome to the show.
Eric Brooker:Good to good to be here. I always love conversations with you. So excited about the conversation today.
Lou Rabon:Yes. Yes. Likewise. Likewise. And, you know, just to jump into it, you know, tell us, Eric, you've got a storied background, obviously, and we're gonna go through some of the things you've done in the past.
Lou Rabon:But what can you tell our listeners the the biggest secret to your successes in the channel?
Eric Brooker:You know, it's interesting. You and I have had a lot of conversations over the last couple of months. And I think for me, when I when I really sit on that question, I think of folks in this industry, particularly after you and I bumped into a show each other at a show, what, just a couple weeks ago. I've got a lot of relationships in the channel with people I've never transacted with. And some would argue maybe that's not where I should be investing my time.
Eric Brooker:But people do business with people that they like and trust. I made a conscious decision probably early in my professional career that I wasn't gonna focus on. I I'm gonna get to know Lou. I'm gonna get to know Ian, or I'm gonna get to know Patrick for the sake of doing business. I think we're all sort of drawn to people that we wanna get to know and be around.
Eric Brooker:I can think of a couple people. Again, I'm not transacted with, but if I'm honest with myself, they have been great resources to get to connected to the other folks in the channel that would take the big piece for me, in short is just building relationships for relationships sake and not having any other motive or agenda.
Lou Rabon:Yeah. I think that's great advice, and and I I hear you. I think you had told me a story of someone that it it was actually years before you had, kinda met that person. You helped them with something. They weren't even really necessarily in the same industry, and then afterwards, you, you know, many years down the road, they actually were in a position to help you out.
Lou Rabon:And, I think that that's that that's completely relevant. Like, not selling if if you're constantly on, constantly selling and you're looking at everyone like a piggy bank that might be able to, you know, help you achieve your dreams, I I think people can sniff that, and they and they just they that it's kind of repellent in a way.
Eric Brooker:You know, I'll I'll I'll share a story maybe a little bit vulnerably, but when I set out to launch my own company, I didn't have any clients. I had money in the bank, and it was unexpected. I had gotten laid off, got a a really great sort of golden parachute, if you will. At one point in that journey, I had put a note out on LinkedIn that it was it was really vague. It was intentionally vague because I didn't wanna admit that I was looking for work.
Eric Brooker:I didn't wanna admit that I was struggling to get the business off the ground. And so it was a super vague. I might be looking for work. I might be looking for clients. I am looking to pay my bills next month.
Eric Brooker:Someone help. And I got a lot of calls like, hey. What are you what are you really looking for? And an individual we'll we'll call him Ryan mostly because that's his name, but we but we won't name his company. But Ryan called and he said, hey, I saw your post and I wanna help.
Eric Brooker:And I just sat there and I listened. Because again, I was early enough in this now three year long journey of of entrepreneurship where I didn't I I wasn't even ready to tell him I needed work. I just needed money. I needed some consistency. Grateful to be on the backside of that.
Eric Brooker:But what Ryan said to me is, Eric, you're an entrepreneur. I wanna help. What can my company buy from you to keep you down the path that is clearly where you're supposed to be? Ryan and I had bumped into each other over the years, sort of that old adage of do unto others, if you will. I'd always been good to Ryan.
Eric Brooker:Ryan had always been good to me, and I needed something, I e, a job or some stability financially. And Ryan, I didn't call him, but Ryan picked up and said, hey. I I got you. Let's figure it out.
Lou Rabon:It's amazing. And and that was not even intentional on your part. Like, someday Ryan's gonna do this for me. It's just, being a good person, being genuine. You know, ultimately, I think anyone's success is you know, we're standing on the shoulders, shoulders of our parents, shoulders of our grandparents, shoulders of all the people that helped us to where we are at and and our friends too.
Lou Rabon:And sometimes, yeah, friends come from strange places that you wouldn't expect. You know, obviously, Ryan saw something in you that was he could tell this was a passion of yours, and he wanted to support that. And, you know, that's that's excellent. That that really is a testament to to who you are as a person.
Eric Brooker:I appreciate that.
Lou Rabon:Yeah. So that's a good secret, I think, for anyone because one of the through lines of of this podcast, it's it's really interesting for me because I'm I'm getting to learn the channel's relatively new to me as well, and what works, what doesn't. I'm not a I'm a practitioner, a security guy. I'm you know, I I'd normally if I weren't doing this, I'd have a c level title somewhere in, like, a CSO whatever company, and I'd probably be bored out of my mind. So I'm really happy to be doing it, but the the channel stuff is is new and the sales stuff, like, the mechanics of sales is new.
Lou Rabon:And for practitioners, we often look at it like, oh, yeah. Salespeople, you just have to be charming and and have a good Rolodex and know how to speak to people or whatever. And, you know, what I've learned over this journey is that's absolutely not the case. The people that are most successful in this channel are people that, you know, generally in life. It's yes.
Lou Rabon:You're genuine. Yes. You truly wanna help. You've got passion for what you do, and you've got integrity too. So I think nontransactional sellers are the ones that especially in this channel because this channel is about relationships.
Lou Rabon:Everything's about relationships, but to your point of what your secret is, having being a person in this channel with relationships, that's something that, it's such a small world too. You there's currency there.
Eric Brooker:Yeah. Yeah. I I agree. It it's interesting. The consulting practice that I have now and has been around for three years.
Eric Brooker:I've never thought of it this way. A lot of what I do is figure out for our clients, the suppliers, who their ideal partner profile is, not ICP, but ideal partner profile. Who are the trusted advisers that are most likely to sell your stuff? And what I'm hearing from you is something that I had never thought of. The reason these agents pick up the phone is because many of them I've established relationships with never sold through.
Eric Brooker:And now I need some help. But now I've got the relationship capital where I can pick up the phone and say, hey, Lou. I've got a new supplier that might be a really good fit in your portfolio. Would you give me candid feedback? Would you take a look at this supplier and let me know if you think there's value?
Lou Rabon:Big time. We we actually have we call that an iTap. Ideal trusted adviser profile. So not ICP, but iTap. And we learn because the first year that we were in this channel, we were like, wait a second.
Lou Rabon:We're we have look at our meetings. Like, the metric was meetings. If we the more meetings we have, the more deals we're gonna close, and that wasn't correlating. We're like, wait a second. We've had 30 meetings this month or something or you know?
Lou Rabon:And and maybe we've had one deal come out of that. Wait a sec. We need to really dial in here. And we found there's trust advisors that all they want, they're like, Give us a quote. Immediately, we say, No.
Lou Rabon:Want a quote. You don't want us to speak to your customer. I get it that a lot of the customers don't want to have endless meetings with endless suppliers, but especially for what we're offering. You know, they they need to understand more than a p it's not gonna come across at black and white on a piece of paper. Plus, we understand that that's if we don't establish at least some connection with the customer, there there's not there's there's a low likelihood that that's gonna really go anywhere.
Lou Rabon:And then also really what I think the trusted advisers are doing in that circumstance is it's three quoting. Right? They're like, okay. We need another quote. Let's just go to these guys.
Lou Rabon:And so we've we've turned that down. That that puts you we have a scoring system, and you you get points off immediately if that's that's how we're transacting with you. Or, you know, we've learned that some of these these trust advisers don't have personal relationships with their customers. They it's they're in the Rolodex. Right?
Lou Rabon:But to your point, they have not established a relationship with them. Again, very transactional. So they're like, oh, yeah. We sold them something. We're gonna try to sell them something else.
Lou Rabon:And so when we go in there and maybe we do start to present and give a quote, they can't give us any intel as to, you know, where we are. And and we don't always expect to be, okay. You're our preferred provider. That's ideal. Right?
Lou Rabon:But we understand we might be one of three other more providers. At least give us feedback. Right? Like, tell us this is you know, they they like this. They don't like that pricing, whatever.
Lou Rabon:That's the whole reason we're having this relationship, and that to us is, like, earning the commission. So we've got a bunch of metrics like that. So it's, you know, you're tracking on that one too. I think it's important.
Eric Brooker:I love it.
Lou Rabon:So so what about, security? Do you do you have any thoughts about how security is evolving and being sold in the channel?
Eric Brooker:So when I started in the channel, there were about 50 suppliers. I spoke to a TSD the other day. Actually, it was a week ago today, and they told me they had over 700 suppliers. So when I first started, my secret was I was the only guy in the industry that worked for a company that sold SD WAN, which made it really easy to win business. Right.
Eric Brooker:Because I had the one widget everybody wanted, but nobody nobody else was selling. You know what's interesting? Because when I started, there were a lot of folks that we now refer to as as transactional. A lot of trusted advisers out there selling the low hanging fruit. The 10x spiff on UCaaS maybe on a good day if the customer asks for it, contact center.
Eric Brooker:But there's a lot of partners that are just selling connectivity. Nothing more. Those are not your iTab. They're not your ideal partner profile, but there's this elite group of sellers. Some of them are old like you and I that decided it was time.
Eric Brooker:Sorry if I offended you in calling you old.
Lou Rabon:Oh, yeah. You can see this totally fit that description.
Eric Brooker:See, the nice thing for me is I've got a couple grays here, and I've got nothing up top. Some of us old guys have adopted the newer technologies, cybersecurity, and AI being on the forefront. For those of us that have, I think we're gonna clean house. This is a conversation that MSPs have had for many, many years before the channel started having the conversation. But we're reaching this pivotal spot in in the evolution of the channel where MSPs are now becoming agents and selling connectivity and contact center.
Eric Brooker:And agents are now selling managed services, including but not limited to cybersecurity. My thesis is they're gonna bump heads at some point, and the client ABC company is eventually gonna say, well, wait. Hold on a minute. I buy all of this as a service stuff from Eric, and then lose over here doing my managed services, but they're both telling me they can do what the other does. I'm gonna just work with Eric, or I'm just gonna work with Lou.
Eric Brooker:Cybersecurity is the linchpin in that conversation. Cybersecurity is the thing that keeps business owners up at night. Cybersecurity is the thing that and I hate that old adage, but cybersecurity is the thing that keeps c level executives up at night because if you look at some of the historically large breaches, I'm in Minneapolis. I immediately think of Target. People lost jobs.
Eric Brooker:People forget about the millions of dollars. Forget about the Hard loss. The the hard stuff. Yeah. Or what was was it Cloudflare that had that day's long outage a couple years ago that affected all the all the car dealerships across the country?
Eric Brooker:If it wasn't Cloudflare, it was somebody else. I apologize. But the impact of not addressing cybersecurity as a c level executive for the customer is their job, is the potential bankruptcy of their business. Cybersecurity is the hot talking point because everyone's arguing, well, Eric, sure, cybersecurity was, but now it's AI. No.
Eric Brooker:Because you can't have the AI conversation without having cybersecurity policies. Otherwise, you're just letting all your information, all your IP out into the public atmosphere. If your General Mills or three ms or Best Buy, three ms is a great example. They have a cybersecurity AI policy. You can only use the AI platform that they programmed and built because it stays in the building.
Eric Brooker:It stay stays in the three m family.
Lou Rabon:Mhmm. That's right. You know, AI, security, AI governance is data governance, and data governance is data protection is, you know, cybersecurity. So you're you're a 100% on. I'm glad you brought up AI because, you know, we're obligated to speak to it.
Lou Rabon:We had to. This is gonna be the AI secrets podcast maybe next year. But, no. It's, it's really relevant because you're right. Cyber is, still new, and I could tell you as a practitioner, the things that we're seeing.
Lou Rabon:I've been doing this for over thirty years now, roughly. So, you know, professionally. And before that, I was I was dabbling myself in things that, you know, we won't talk about. But the point is, like, the the problems haven't changed. It's actually that that's a shocking thing.
Lou Rabon:So, is new to be sold in the channel. Cyber is new and exciting and it's a door opener. That's a 100% and that's why we we really encourage TAs to to go out there and speak about it even if they're not comfortable because they're gonna no one is going to say or the people that say, you know, when you when you ask them, hey. How are you feeling about your cyber program? If they say, yo.
Lou Rabon:We got it covered. Everything's great. The the hugest red flag They're lying. They're lying to you. No one has it covered.
Lou Rabon:You know, to the extent that they'd like it to be. And there's always maturity too. It's like, okay. Yeah. We've got the basics down, but now we wanna move to the next level.
Lou Rabon:Those are the conversations we have. But, you know, it's it's really interesting because AI too yeah. Now AI is dominating everything up until that bubble burst, but it's not going away. AI is relevant. It's actually, it's definitely an accelerator.
Lou Rabon:It's kinda like, you know, going from the, you know you know, I don't know, horse horses by themselves to a chariot behind the horse or a cart, you know, like the wheel, basically. AI is to tech as the wheel was to, you know, farming and stuff like that and and commerce because it's it's really an accelerator, but you wouldn't put your whole, you know, business, model behind the wheel. Right? You would say the wheel is a way to go faster, but the wheel is not unless you're Goodyear or something, which they have an awesome commercial, by the way. But, I wanted to go back to, the what you talked about, the cost of a breach.
Lou Rabon:You're you're you were talking about, like, every every c level executive is up at night because they're thinking, like, what if and what might that cost? And you said, like, Target, etcetera, which that was through a third party HVAC vendor. That that was one of the classics. And, you know, the costs are not just, okay. Yeah.
Lou Rabon:This is how much we had to pay for an IR firm. This is how much we had to pay for legal counsel. This is how much we had to pay to, you know, do data ID protection for all the people that were hacked. There's there's regulatory fines. All that stuff too is is a hard cost.
Lou Rabon:Here are the soft costs. And again, this is what I've learned as a business owner now running a sales organization. What about your pipeline? Minute you give pipeline is so precious, right? And and the minute you start to give an excuse to those prospects to go to your competitor or for your competitor to have an a reason to drive them away from you to them, That's what breaches are.
Lou Rabon:There's there's a number of soft costs that you can't productivity. It's a three to five year cost, if not longer.
Eric Brooker:Yeah. Because the pipeline dries up, and then your salespeople, some of your top salespeople are under the gun. They're under pressure, and they ultimately decide to leave the business. I mean, I think of it like we're going through. I don't know when this will air, but at the present moment, we're sitting through a government shutdown.
Eric Brooker:And TSA and air traffic control are somehow deemed nonessential. So these are folks that for the foreseeable future going to come to work and not get their they will at some point get back pay but some of them woke up two weeks ago and said, hey, if we go to a government shutdown, I'm going to leave and certainly, you've got folks in the field that you can replace but you've got folks at the top that are living paycheck to paycheck that say, I I don't wanna live through another government shutdown. I don't know how long this is gonna be. We can't afford to go four months without. So people are going to leave.
Eric Brooker:So, yeah, to your point, the soft costs are astronomical and often not judged in advance.
Lou Rabon:Yeah. Yeah. We it's shameless plug here. We have a calculator that we post, and I'll, like, what are what are the real costs of a breach? And it does it even on only over two years, I think, and that's just an an idea, but it tracks.
Lou Rabon:We've done a bunch of research and stuff. So, yeah, the the things like pipeline, the things like productivity, the things like additional investment in IT, the things like your cyber insurance premium, if you even had one, and if you can even get another policy, that's going to go through the roof, just like if you had made a claim on homeowners or auto, etc. And they're getting much harder. It's interesting because with cyber insurance, we're seeing some of these policies were written, like, five years ago where it was like, you know, fog a mirror, tell us or whatever. We'll pay, like, this multimillion dollar policy.
Lou Rabon:We I've still seen those because we do, you know, breach response as well. So I've seen those, but, you know, they get paid. It's pretty shocking. But now the insurers have, the the carriers have gotten really, smart to all this, and they're like, here the the terms and conditions are like, you know, if they if you give them any reason not to pay that claim, which in a security program, it's just one person, you know, reusing a password across multiple sites or something like that, they're gonna say, sorry. You didn't have a a reasonable security program in place, and we're not gonna we're not gonna pay that claim.
Lou Rabon:So those are all the soft costs. So I I they're kind of a tangent, but I think, hopefully, for people listening, these are the reasons that when you're having these conversations with your prospects or with your customers and they're like, you know, why why should I even consider spending more on cybersecurity? These are the things, you know, kind of, answers you can give to them or even just questions. Are you comfortable if if something bad were to happen? Do you know all the costs that would be associated?
Eric Brooker:So I think the the real value is I see it that you guys bring as as as a business is if I'm an adviser, there's a good likelihood that I don't know the first thing about cybersecurity. So while the TSD may have given me a couple questions to ask on a spreadsheet, you know, I to identify a cybersecurity opportunity, I know that those businesses, the TSDs are often constrained. They've only got so many engineers where you are, as I understand it, a supplier that I can leverage to help me design and put together a cybersecurity tool belt, if you will, to deliver to that end user customer. So there's a I think there's a ton of value in what you guys are doing right now.
Lou Rabon:Appreciate that. Yeah. We that that's what we're here for. We we say to the TAs, it's okay to say, I don't know. It's okay to not you know, you can start that conversation.
Lou Rabon:And if it starts to get technical, you say, well, let me bring in, you know, a supplier like us. CDG, the team will come in, and then we'll start to we're we're also asking why. And in a lot of these podcast episodes, there's repetitive things. One of them is, don't just take the when when do you want a pen test? You want an assessment?
Lou Rabon:Like, why? Because those things are just the beginning of what a full program looks like. And the only way to protect, you know, a company these days is to really have a full program that is like lather, rinse, repeat. It's something that is repeatable, something that is is able to be, documented, and it doesn't matter about the tools. That that's a a real misconception that there's a lot of money in sales and marketing, right, to be thrown at people about the silver bullet approach for cyber.
Lou Rabon:The real value is when you have a program, and it's also not just throwing a body at it either, which is what we see a lot of mid market companies doing, and that's where we play mid market and enterprise. Mid market, they'll throw a body at it and say, okay. Or a couple buys. Or we we've got two people. Maybe they're, you know, half IT, half security.
Lou Rabon:It's not enough, and it's not the right strategy. You really need to have a formal program. So, yeah, we we we are here when when the TAs wanna reach out and, and speak, security to their customers. What are some other challenges you're seeing? We talked about AI, we talked about cyber.
Lou Rabon:What are some challenges that you've had to solve recently or that you're seeing kind of coming down, the pipe?
Eric Brooker:Yeah. Think the biggest challenge for the channel is for so many of us, myself included, having owned an agency at one point, I went at it without a business plan. And I think right now, we're seeing the evolution of the industry. Private equity came in. You said in the same meeting I did, now two weeks ago, they talked about more than $2,000,000,000 has been invested and the exponential growth that has happened.
Eric Brooker:I think the one of the biggest challenges right now is the big names in the industry, the blue waves, the up stacks, the ARGs, Amplex, OneSource, some of those. They've got a business plan. They've got a business plan in part because most of them are backed by private equity or debt equity. So they have to have a plan. But then there's solopreneurs, guys like me, entrepreneurs, guys like you that are going at it without a plan.
Eric Brooker:They're walking into an opportunity unprepared for the scale of the opportunity. I think there's some friends of mine, in the Pacific Northwest. All they do is sell connectivity. That's it. And yet they're walking through.
Eric Brooker:I listen. The connectivity nowadays might be 10 or 15% of the overall spend. If I'm gonna go put effort forth to earning a client, I wanna make it as sticky as possible. I wanna get as much of the revenue as possible. But I also wanna know what's going on in their network so I can so I can make sure what I'm proposing is right.
Eric Brooker:And so I think for us to be successful as an industry, and some of the TSDs are starting to do this, gonna educate some, not all, of the advisers on how to build a scalable business. Because when I when I owned my own agency about fifteen years ago, I was opportunistic. I'd call Fidelity National Title because I had done a big deal with them before, and I'd take my buddy Chuck to lunch, and I'd sell him connectivity in the, in the county that he was responsible for. But I didn't ask him for an introduction. I didn't have a business plan.
Eric Brooker:I walked into an opportunity that was a million dollars a month because they called me and asked if they could buy certain services. But I wasn't ready to have anything beyond the connect that was just connectivity. A million dollars a month in connectivity. So we've gotta start really planning for our success. What are our goals?
Eric Brooker:What are our objectives? What are the products that we're going to bring in to every single client in 2026? Are we going to have the AI conversation? Are we going to have the cybersecurity conversation? And if so, what's my first line of defense when I don't have the answer?
Eric Brooker:To your point just a minute ago, When when someone asked me a question and the answer is I don't know. Do I call CDG? Do I pick up the phone and call the TSD? At what point do I say, the TSD knows a a little or maybe they know a lot, but they don't have the resources. Getting them now is booked out as weeks in advance.
Eric Brooker:I wanna close the deal. So, I think we've gotta identify the partners need to identify what is it that they wanna sell and it's gotta be programmatic. You can't walk into an opportunity without expecting to ask the questions about AI or cybersecurity or BPO or whatever else is on their agenda.
Lou Rabon:Yeah. If you wanna be sticky, a 100%, because, it's a solution sale versus, you know, just a quick project or product sale. And I think that that that's what we've seen too, again, being, relatively new to this, understanding that, yeah, listen, million dollar a month sale. That's a much larger. I'd love to get there someday, but that's not the numbers we're putting up right now.
Lou Rabon:You know, we're our numbers are are lower, and and therefore, when they're like, okay. I can do something transactional quickly, get this through thirty day close, you know, sales cycle, or there's a six month you know, actually, we've just we just closed a a great one in in sixty days. So those sales cycles are now, you know, shrinking. But let's say sixty days versus thirty days, and there's work involved. It's like, okay.
Lou Rabon:I've got to have multiple meetings. We've got to scope back and forth, etcetera. They're gonna go a lot of these TAs have decided, hey. We're just gonna go with connectivity. But to your point, that's the the shortsighted, you know, approach, which is kind of like lifestyle business versus scalable, saleable business, something that you could exit from and and be rolled up with the PE firm with into an Amplix or or one of the other large TSTs or not TSTs, but TA firms now.
Lou Rabon:So it's interesting too because you you mentioned the connectivity. Again, going back to that in security, what we've all Stefan from from Yvonne is really famous for for saying this, which is it's what's adjacent. If if TAs don't understand security, they do understand connectivity, and they understand DDoS, you know, distributed denial of service, which would be, security related, and it would take connectivity down. So so that's that's how they can start to kinda get their foot in the door. And and I spoke to another TA, recently, and they that's what they said.
Lou Rabon:They started really just kind of selling one piece. It was like Cisco umbrella or something. And then that as they did that, they're like, wait a second. How does this thing work? And they were curious.
Lou Rabon:So I think what you're talking about, Eric, is, like, these these trusted advisers need to evolve a 100%, but they also need to be curious. It's like, listen. What lined your pockets, especially as as you get older, you see a lot of people that are, you know, later in their careers or they've they've already had their careers and this is a way to make pocket change. Great. You know, let they're they're that's a lifestyle company for them, and they're solopreneurs or whatever.
Lou Rabon:But if they you know, for the ones that are hungry that wanna grow, they they gotta curiosity has has to be one of their kind of driving principles.
Eric Brooker:Yeah. I completely agree. And and the opportunity has never been better. Whether it's AI or cybersecurity, the opportunity at scale is never been better, and I don't know that it will get better. So when I started back to our earlier conversation in this industry, twenty five years ago, about 17% of businesses made decisions, technology decisions through a channel.
Eric Brooker:That number now, twenty five years later, somewhere between 7682% of businesses are now making IT decisions through a channel. That means there's more buyers than there's ever been. That means with all of the sellers that are out there, all of the trusted advisers and some of the other channels, MSP, MSSP, and so forth. The opportunity at scale is is is great. I mean, back in the day, I was selling UCaaS but people had on premise phone systems back then.
Eric Brooker:There's still 40% of people still have on premise phone systems. The opportunity is great. But the inverse of that is and you may know the number. I don't. I would suspect it's in the low teens at best, have a cybersecurity position.
Lou Rabon:Oh, gosh. I mean, we we actually were doing a study. We started for the first time last year an annual study. I think that's a good question for our second annual study, which is gonna be coming up. We just started speaking to the firm today about or yesterday about, what we're gonna ask, and I like that.
Lou Rabon:How many companies actually have a security program, Like, a true formal security program? I can tell you right now. I mean, if it's out even outside even inside the Fortune 500, like, that's an effective conversation. They're throwing the money at it, they have a program. But is it effective?
Lou Rabon:You know, I've I I can tell you right now, a lot of them, it's not, obviously. That's why they're in the news. But mid market, you know, below the enterprise, I would it's it's probably a low teens, already because, again, they're just throwing a person or two at it. They've bought a bunch of tools. That's not a security program, and that's what we're helping with, you know, and that's what we're educating the channel with too is that it's been it's been a slog, you know, not gonna lie, to to really help the TAs understand and what's helping drive that is the customers, thankfully, because the customers are like, Okay, version one of this was, just need a bunch of tools or whatever.
Lou Rabon:Version two was, well, you know, our IT people can handle it, and then they learned that this the IT people actually can't handle when they're not dedicated to cyber. They're they're it's just kind of a bolt on. Then they said, we'll get a VC, so version three. Well, one person as a VC, so our virtual chief information security officer, it's saying do this, do that, and then coming back. That's not effective either.
Lou Rabon:So now our model is like version four, you know, gen four of what security needs to be as an outsourced when you look at it as an outsourced provider, and that is a program, a repeatable program that you can do. We're the market's coming to that, but, you know, that's, peer to peer selling is what you're talking about, and that's the difference. And I think, where did you get those stats, by the way, the 70 per se?
Eric Brooker:That came from a TSD national event. I believe it was last year. I can I can look that up and track that down for you, though?
Lou Rabon:That's awesome. I mean, I would love to if you don't mind, I'm I'm sure it's if it's published somewhere, but I I wanna definitely have our marketing team understand that as well, because that's a big number to go from 14%, 20% to 75%, but we all know it. Tell me the last time anyone that you've spoken to as a salesperson has even opened a deal based on a cold call.
Eric Brooker:Oh, no. Everybody everybody leverages a relationship.
Lou Rabon:Yep. No. I I made that mistake in the in the early days of CDG. I was like, you know, I got taken for a ride for one of these companies that are like, we're gonna make a billion calls a day, and we're gonna get you all these meetings. And it was like it reminded reminded me of when I was like a teenager, and they they had me selling, like, door to door China.
Lou Rabon:I that was one of my like and and the way they would get the people is it would be a sweepstakes. Like, you want a sweepstakes and then I would they would fill out or no. You can you're entering a raffle, which there was no prize for the raffle. It was just a way to collect leads. And then I would go to these people's houses, and they're like, who are you, and why are you here?
Lou Rabon:And, no, we don't want China. You know? So or or or flatware or whatever it was I was selling. So I think that's cold calling is is dead. You know?
Lou Rabon:I I hate to say it. I think the the the what the channel is showing, the reason those numbers are going up is because, yeah, you with Slack, with, you know, Discord, with all of with all the social media, LinkedIn. I mean, if you can especially if you're a decision maker in a midsize or large organization, if you don't have a network that you can reach out to, you know, you've been living on on Mars or something. There's just everyone is using their leveraging their networks, and that's where the trust advisers fit in. Right?
Lou Rabon:They're they're they're the network. They're the person that these these people should be reaching out to. And and then boom. Back to your original point, right, is, relationships.
Eric Brooker:That's really where it starts. I I but we also have to have relationships with the suppliers. Gotta have relationships with companies like yours. So when we ultimately need to transact or want to transact with you, we feel like we trust you. I think that's the biggest misperception in the channel is they'll do business with us.
Eric Brooker:I I well, a couple misconceptions. One of which is it takes time. As a supplier, it can take, you know, this two to three years to really turn the corner in the channel, and a lot of that is establishing and maintaining relationships. People wanna know that you're going to be around for the long haul. There's so much that goes into it, but we gotta like and trust you.
Eric Brooker:It goes back to cold cold calling doesn't work. I mean, if I look at you introduced me earlier as an author and a keynote speaker and all that, I just realized the other day, I I did a quick run through of all the talks I've given over the last few years. You know, I haven't gotten one of them from a cold call. They've all come from people that I know or for those that think LinkedIn is a waste of time or from LinkedIn. I got one too this week from LinkedIn.
Eric Brooker:Hey. I love what you're doing on LinkedIn. We'd love to hire you to come and speak for us. The value of relationships is where I think many of us fail in sales because we treat it like it's a transaction, and it's so much more than that.
Lou Rabon:Yeah. Yeah. People buy you mentioned it earlier. People buy from people. They don't buy from businesses.
Lou Rabon:That's why if you get up and, you know, you you might work for Xerox and then you go work for Rico. You know? All of a sudden, those people are gonna buy from Rico, not because Rico necessarily has a superior product, but they know Eric, and they wanna do business with Eric. You know? They trust Eric.
Lou Rabon:They have a relationship with Eric. So, yeah, kind of pivoting to, to the personal stuff. You know, what do you have, like, a a story about cyber that that's affected you personally?
Eric Brooker:Oh, golly. A story about cyber that has affected me personally? Well, I think as an individual, the thing that comes to mind is, the data breaches and the impact of those data breaches on on us individuals. I get all the same phone calls you do. I get all of the the we get we had a a huge storm about two months ago that tore up a bunch of trees, and every roofer on the planet is calling my cell phone.
Eric Brooker:But beyond that, the breaches that impact me on a daily basis where I've gotta, you know, get a new debit card or golly, the other day, Verizon's network, I probably shouldn't have called them out, but Verizon's network was down across the country just a few weeks ago. And my understanding is it was a breach of some sort. They shut the network down in an effort to stop the breach. I just happened to walk into a store that day in which point they told me, hey. We we can't sell you anything today because we can't do anything.
Eric Brooker:They were all standing outside. I walked up and thought there was some big party. You know, I was gonna get, a free piece of cake and a and a cup of water or something, But I was turned around. And so the impact, I mean, I can think of times over the years I've been at Starbucks. They the the impact of Starbucks, here's a great story.
Eric Brooker:Here's two quick stories. Do you know what Starbucks at least when this happened to me, what their policy is when they're when they can't process credit cards? Close the store? Free drinks. Oh, that's interesting.
Eric Brooker:Because they don't wanna lose you as a as a they don't wanna lose you as a customer, so they'd rather give out free drinks. It's a brilliant culture move in terms of creating the culture that you want. But I walked into Starbucks years ago. They gave me the drink for free, and I half heartedly joked when she wouldn't take my debit card. I said I should've something for my wife and kids.
Eric Brooker:She said, what does your wife want? And how many kids do you have? Well, Lou, you know this. I have seven kids. We got a lot
Lou Rabon:of Do free drinks that
Eric Brooker:you know what? Do you know what, again, this this a little dated, but Best Buys policy when credit cards can be processed is to do the old triplicate form from when you and I were kids under a thousand dollars. In my mind, the number of credit cards after the cybersecurity event, when things get back up and running, then they process, they get declined, must be staggering. Right? Impact of an event for me or for you generally is seen as a mild inconvenience.
Eric Brooker:Right? I can't get my coffee or I can't buy my $4,000 TV, or my identity was stolen or something like that. But in the grand scheme of things, the impact of that is pretty pretty minimal for even me where the breaches occurred. But, again, going back the impact of a Target or a Cloudflare or Delta Airlines or some of these others that have had significant incidents, It's jobs. It's unemployment.
Eric Brooker:It's all sorts of things, and it's and it's millions, if not billions of dollars annually.
Lou Rabon:Big time. Big time. The businesses bear the brunt for sure. But, yeah. Gosh.
Lou Rabon:Seven kids. I have so much respect for you, you know, and you don't have a farm, which is real or do you? Do you have a farm?
Eric Brooker:We we have we have one animal. It is a it is she is a dog and seven kids, six to almost 20 five. 25 later this month.
Lou Rabon:That's amazing. That's amazing. That keeps you very busy, obviously. And you you wrote a book. You are enough.
Lou Rabon:What what can you tell me about that? I I think I need to get a copy.
Eric Brooker:Send me your address. I know a guy. I'll send you a copy.
Lou Rabon:May as long as it gets signed by the author.
Eric Brooker:I you know, I actually totally digress. The guy that wrote the cover quote, you'll see Andy and I were together maybe six weeks ago, and he looked at me and he talked about giving away free books as a part of a way to, like, bring people in and keynote speak and all that. He said, oftentimes, I will hand it to, my seatmate on a plane as I get off. I will hand one of my books to someone I'm sitting next to. He says, and you can steal this and make it your own.
Eric Brooker:He said, I will often hand it to them and say, hey. I'm done with this book, and my wife really likes the author. So, short story, totally unrelated to tech. I wrote a book. I went on a journey.
Eric Brooker:I'll I'll ruin the ending a little bit, but we have an estranged relationship with our almost 25 year old. We've not spoken in eight years, and that's a lot of what the book is about. This idea that everybody we interact with in the channel or outside of the channel, every single person we interact with today is going through something. The loss of a loved one in a strange relationship, divorce, miscarriage. The flip side of that is there's also really good things going on in the world.
Eric Brooker:People are getting new jobs. People are getting promoted. People are getting married, buying houses, getting pregnant, all of those things. But the way we interact with people is often missed. We we often miss the fact that we recognize something's going on.
Eric Brooker:We don't know what it is. We're not asking the questions. I'm not leaning in saying, hey, Lou. How are you? And then saying, actually, Lou, how are you really?
Eric Brooker:How's the week going? What I'm doing is I'm saying, hey, Lou. How are you? You're saying, man, I'm great. How are you?
Eric Brooker:Saying I'm good, and then we jump into a podcast. The barista at Starbucks, the person bagging our groceries at Target, the guy that cut us off, the the woman at the restaurant that gave us a bun when we said no bun. Man, for all we know, her mom just died, and she's gotta go to work to pay rent. And we don't take the time to interact with people. So I share some of the highs and lows of not just my life, but people that I've interviewed on my podcast, people that I've met candidly through LinkedIn that have shared their stories with me.
Eric Brooker:In fact, there's a story about a woman in the channel in the book as well and how she met her husband. But, it's been a great journey. I'm writing a second book. Just started. It'll be done.
Eric Brooker:I haven't said when it'll be done. I'm gonna say it'll be done by the '1, published probably summer of next year.
Lou Rabon:Amazing. I mean, that's it's impressive to write a book. I love the premise of this first book. You are enough. And and I love that premise, Eric, because I think that in today, the way that, you know, we we dipped into politics a little bit without, you know, any political leaning on any side.
Lou Rabon:Like, we just need to start speaking to each other. As a matter of fact, we need to start speaking to each other on both ends of the political spectrum together. Like, if you're, you know, far left and, you know, the other person's far right, you guys everyone needs to start speaking and understanding that we're just humans, like, you know, on this planet for a really short time. So I sorry. You got me philosophical, man.
Eric Brooker:No, man. I I I love it. I I'm 45. I'll be 46 in a few weeks. And about three months ago, I lost a relationship with my childhood best friend.
Eric Brooker:We've known each other forty years, and he called me guns a blazing, politics ready, and we've all we've disagreed on everything for forty years, political and religious and otherwise. And I'm I'm fine with his decision. It's devastating. I think about it a lot, but I can't change it. What I realized, I I was filling out a form the other day for a a a coaching thing I'm doing in January.
Eric Brooker:And the question was, what was your favorite book? Now my podcast is a 150 some odd episodes deep. I've read nearly every book from every guest I've ever had on the show, so I've read a handful of books. And the one that really sticks is a book called love is free guac, like guacamole, guac is extra, and it was written by the now former CEO of Chipotle. He started when they had 750 employees.
Eric Brooker:He retired when they had about 75,000 employees. So he was there for significant significant growth. And he talks through the book of, how he leads, how he hires, how he builds a tremendous culture because candidly and they I think they've lost their way a little bit as a business since he retired. But the thing that he talks about in that book that really sticks based on what you just said is we are more united than we are divided, and I'll get a little political here. I don't care whether you lean left or lean right.
Eric Brooker:I enjoy hanging out with you. I'd love to grab a drink with you next time we're in the same room. And politics and religion and all those things aside, that's that's the little stuff. It it may have a big impact, but we're more united. We there's more that we have in common than we have that we don't have in common.
Eric Brooker:And yet here's the political part. The media wants to tell us otherwise.
Lou Rabon:Yeah. Because we'll buy some more crap. I think we just need, like, an alien invasion, like, literally aliens from another, you know, galaxy. It's I
Eric Brooker:read on I read on the news. It's happening tomorrow at 3AM.
Lou Rabon:Oh, perfect. Perfect. Alright. So we'll all get together. It'll be like Independence Day.
Lou Rabon:But, the movie that is. So, how can people connect? You've got a lot of, you know, ways to connect.
Eric Brooker:Channel folks can find me at thechannelstandard.com. My book and my podcast can be found on ericbrooker.com, or just find me on LinkedIn. My cell phone number is on LinkedIn. Feel free to call me. I'll give it to you now.
Eric Brooker:It's (480) 296-9777. I will make myself as available as I can.
Lou Rabon:That's bold. I'm impressed. That it well, it's so oh, wait. You know, we don't have a huge audience, so that's probably safe actually.
Eric Brooker:Your mom your mom call me and thank me for coming on.
Lou Rabon:My my mom's gonna be calling you after this. But, Eric Bruker, thank you so much for for coming. This has been super enjoyable, this conversation. We've gone we've we've touched on a lot of things. Thank you so much.
Eric Brooker:Yeah. Thanks for having me. Great conversation.
Lou Rabon:Big time. And, thanks to everyone else, that's watching and or listening. If you learned something today, laughed, or cried even, please tell someone about the podcast. Thanks again, Eric. This has been another exciting episode of Channel Security Secrets.
Lou Rabon:See you next time. That's a wrap for this episode of Channel Security Secrets. Thanks for tuning in. For show notes, guest info, and more episodes, protecting your business, don't settle for reactive. Partner with experts who build resilience from the ground up.
