During my Force Management training years ago, I remember listening to Brian Walsh on stage say that all people in sales need to be ready to “call an audible”. This means that wherever the audience or customer wants to pivot to the direction that you need to be ready to go there. And this is how I like to approach my demo preparation at these events. There’s always a canned script you can build and follow, but you never will follow it exactly. Cyber PMMs need to be audible-ready.

Especially at the larger scale events like RSAC, you will be in front of a wide variety of users or just curious spectators. One year I remember finishing a lengthy demo and the listener was taking notes, asking all kinds of questions and only at the end did I learn he was from a competitor! This happens all the time. Don’t be that PMM.

This is why you need to ask your audience who they are and what they’re interested in learning about first. Never just dive in. I’ve seen way too much energy wasted by subject matter experts (SMEs) diving into the depths of our products without first even asking the basic questions such as: 

• Tell me more about you – what’s your role and what are you looking to learn here today. 
• Explain a little about your role at said company. 
• Describe what problem or challenge are you trying to resolve.  

Note: another neat trick I also learned in my Force Management training was using the TED Method which I just used. Tell, Explain, Describe. This leaves questions open-ended, or else you’ll get Yes/No responses. It’s highly effective. 

Anyway, finding out these basics UP FRONT not only prevents you from wasting time with a competitor, it will also save you from going off on some tangent that leaves your audience wondering how quickly they can escape to the next booth. Nobody wants to feel trapped by some vendor pitch. I’ve been the victim of this myself, as I like to walk around the show floor to better understand our industry and sometimes find myself trapped by someone diving way too deep into the weeds to try to make themselves seem important. When it comes to these conversations, try to think like an economist and trim the excess talk time. 

There will be cases where you do need to be ready to explore the full variety of value that your product offers to prospects. When speaking with an actual customer or prospect, this is a very exciting opportunity for you to bring your product messaging that you’ve worked so hard on to life. It might also be hard-hitting in terms of how your product is able/unable to solve the use cases and challenges they are faced with. It can be very tricky though, because as product marketers, we are not always able to understand what every click does within some of our more complex security products. 

Let’s keep it real. Cyber PMMs don’t spend as much time using our own products as users or the engineers building them. PMMs are not sitting in our products all day long and we aren’t called into customer calls to diagnose issues. We are busy with many other activities and we spend little time dealing with our products in real world scenarios. So we have to balance an overview-level conversation with anecdotes such as “this area is where you will see data related to the detection and you can expand into that if needed”. You’re guiding them, not diagnosing specific problems they have. They might ask something like, “Can I cross-reference my VPC Flow Logs with these user parameters and the attacker’s IP?” If they are a current user with a technical issue, you can bring in a SME that’s on site. 

Sometimes it’s best to say, “I’m honestly not sure but we can find someone who knows the answer.” So you don’t have to dive into the weeds, but as long as you understand the basic workflow, you should be able to navigate through some variation of a threat detection, investigation, and response workflow within your product. I do think we should know our products, and there’s nothing worse than speaking with someone that doesn’t when you want answers, so study up on the latest features prior to entering your shift. But there are limits to product knowledge for PMMs. There has to be. It’s the difference between being the engineer that knows the size of every nut and bolt in the engine and simply being able to describe the car’s main features and value.

Surviving Theater Talks

Early in my career, I was terrified of booth theater presentations, and I tried to get out of them. There was something about being labeled as a “carnival barker“ that gave me a lot of anxiety. The show floor at conferences like RSAC are very intimidating for newcomers into our industry. Here are some factors that would give anyone sensory overload:

• the noise level with the sound systems pounding all around 
• the hundreds of random onlookers
• the random questions and conversations
• the variety of competitors you’re surrounded by
• the moving screens and pulsating colors
• the food and drinks flowing around
• the barrage of technical information
• the pressure to perform
• the sense of fatigue from standing for hours on end
• checking your phone for “real work” in between
• being out of your comfort zone 

It’s overwhelming. And when I approach the booth theater podium and get mic’d up, it all seems to start to move in slow motion and I ask myself existential questions like, “how did I end up in this job?”

To survive this environment when giving your theater talk, I have learned to look first at my audience and really understand them and ask them questions at the beginning. Instead of nervously reading a scripted presentation, I learned that I have nothing to be nervous about. In a funny way, it’s like the old saying, “it’s more afraid of you than you are of it.”

Most of the attendees at these big events are at your theater talk to: a) receive a t-shirt, or b) sit down for a rest. After you realize that, it’s pretty easy to take a breath and then just give a 10 minute talk based on 10 slides that you know like the back of your hand. 

Honestly, the only thing that would stand out is if you began to trip up and take awkwardly long pauses or have a nervous breakdown. Just keep it moving and smile. They probably aren’t listening to every word anyway. Tell a joke and have fun.

My favorite tactic is to weave in some hand-raisers and ask the audience questions to keep them engaged. You can also learn a lot up front by asking, “just by show of hands, how many of you are security analysts?” When 1 out of 15 attendees raises their hand, that guides your next question or step. One time I asked that question, and 12 out of 15 were Japanese exchange students learning about cybersecurity! KNOW YOUR AUDIENCE. 

Also work with your colleagues that are standing around the booth. If they are staring at you just call them out, “Jane over here built this slide – right Jane?” Just own your content and your environment to inform your audience in a fun way. Also ask your team to grab a photo of you when you’re presenting and hang on to it. These pics are usually good shots of you doing your job and presenting your content to an audience which is what product marketers should be doing! 

Closing

That’s it for Part 2. In the Part 3 of the RSAC Survival Guide Series we’ll dive into surviving San Francisco!

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