Grow

Enterprise Account Executive

The "undefeated sales objection"

I'm working on solving a problem I came up against selling to Healthcare customers at Salesforce. Many of these customers were sensitive about:

Hosting data with any Salesforce product.
Data needing to stay within certain regions around the world
Having more control over data privacy using SaaS products

I went 0 and 7 on these kinds of opportunities. It's why Salesforce rearchitected its platform to run on any customer cloud infrastructure.

( https://www.salesforce.com/products/platform/hyperforce/).

Selling SaaS to companies that have strict data requirements is HARD.

How are you guys/gals addressing these data requirements when/if they come up during meetings or procurement?

Thanks!

👑 Sales Strategy

🙅‍♀️ Objections

18 comments

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Kosta_Konfucius

Politicker

Sales Rep

Maybe I am not persistent, but when I come up against an objection similar to this. I mark it down as "we aren't a good fit". If I am unable to meet their data privacy concerns and its a big part of the decision criteria, I will discount more but thats about it.

Feel like its important to know, not everyone is a perfect fit for the products I sell

Maximas

Tycoon

Senior Sales Executive

I second this!

Diablo

Politicker

Sr. AE

We have servers at multiple continents so sometimes there is a challenge. If that’s a deal breaker unfortunately you cannot do anything as that’s not in your control. However, I always make it a point to share the security document for their team to review and set up a call is if required.

CuriousFox

WR Officer

🦊

Security should be on everyones minds.

Grow

Valued Contributor

Enterprise Account Executive

Agreed.

Grow

Valued Contributor

Enterprise Account Executive

Thanks for your response here Diablo! It makes sense to get in front of it early on in the cycle.

TennisandSales

Politicker

Head Of Sales

I sell into a specific side of healthcare. Data security and regulations are super specific.

the fastest way to gain trust with the right ppl is to have documentation that our solution meets requirements that are needed.

have examples of customers that are doing it.

call our the workflows that help the customer prove they are in compliance

Grow

Valued Contributor

Enterprise Account Executive

Yea I agree, social proof goes a long way.

Sunbunny31

Politicker

Sr Sales Executive 🐰

Wait until you try Canada. BC and NS are particularly strict about data.

Grow

Valued Contributor

Enterprise Account Executive

Yup! I ran into this. Canadian company that also operated in the UK. They couldn't use a specific Salesforce product because the data would be out of their total control.

Sunbunny31

Politicker

Sr Sales Executive 🐰

They take GDPR very seriously. Good for them, but certainly something to be mindful of.

Pachacuti

Politicker

They call me Daddy, Sales Daddy

Hmm... I know that SF is successfully selling into major US utilities who have fairly strict data protection and security requirements.

I'd be very curious to know where SF is falling short in these requirements.

Grow

Valued Contributor

Enterprise Account Executive

I fell short on these deals when a customer has operations outside of the U.S. So those deals where we tried to expand their SFDC footprint were bust because data can't leave the region.

Pachacuti

Politicker

They call me Daddy, Sales Daddy

Ok, so it’s a matter of outside the US vs inside the US. Understandable.

JustGonnaSendIt

Politicker

Burn Towns, Get Money

I sell data privacy solutions as one of my lines of business. I love customers with strict data requirements :)

BTW, several data privacy suppliers sell solutions that are able to intercept database calls and do encrypt / decrypt on-demand specifically for SFDC data.

E.g. you could keep the data in a protected state in SFDC (encrypt prior to data landing in SFDC cloud), yet selectively decrypt depending on user roles, without impacting the referential integrity of the data. This helps meet this strict data security requirement.

Maybe try to find one of these suppliers to partner with for the project?

Location of data is a tough one though. That's something that the architecture of the SFDC solution would need to be designed to support. (didn't read your link, perhaps that's what it's pointing at).

SaaSguy

Tycoon

Account Executive

Healthcloud?

ZVRK

Politicker

Enterprise Account Executive

I wouldn't wait for the deal to get to procurement and then address their data privacy/residency reqs. I do this usually right off the bat, especially with companies that i suspect might have a strict data residency policy (like federal entities etc).

I learned this the hard way too. I`ve had a client close to signing only for us to find out it`s a "hard requirement" for them, that the data stays in the country, they wouldn't even hear about all the security present at the data centers we use in EU and USA, nor the cyber security insurance we have in place.

So, yeah, be upfront, and qualify-out if needed..

GingerBarbarian

Opinionated

Lead Sales

Salesforce has actually acquired a company called Mulesoft that works directly with the National Health Service in England. You may want to reach out and see if there is a partnership possibility.

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Grow

The "undefeated sales objection"

18 comments

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