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Enterprise sales cycles are long, complex, and often die in one place – security validation. A vendor can have the best product in the world with solid pricing and internal champions at the potential customer. Still, if the vendor fails to provide sufficient trust evidence, its deal dies in procurement review.
The problem lies in what security evidence these vendors obtain or what certifications show security evidence that fail to align with what’s needed most by enterprise buyers. Companies waste dollars on certifications that look good on paper, but fail to get deals over the line. Understanding what trust signals are most appealing to enterprise-level buyers changes everything for service companies looking to invest in compliance.
What Enterprise Procurement Actually Looks For
Inherent in every enterprise procurement team is a security checklist they must fulfill before they can move forward with a vendor. These aren’t optional gates – no level of relationship or product superiority will allow them to move forward if they fail to check these boxes.
For example, a procurement team may ask questions about data handling, access controls, incident response, and disaster recovery. Yet here’s where smaller vendors get tripped up – procurement doesn’t want to hear your answer; they want validated third-party trust evidence that you do what you say.
Self-assessment questionnaires kick off most vendor evaluations, but they won’t get the deal closed. Procurement teams are savvy enough to understand that any vendor will check “yes” for all security assessment questions. Still, they seek independent corroboration from auditors who have seen your controls firsthand and observed your operations over time.
But Not All Audit Reports Are Created Equal
Not all third-party reports carry weight when it comes to enterprise buyer assessment. A penetration test report may indicate that your systems are hard to breach from the outside; however, it does not inform procurement whether your internal processes for handling their data on a day-to-day basis work well, reliable, or even exist.
That’s why SOC reports answer operational inquiries from enterprise clients. They verify that a company has established controls and that those controls work as described. When dealing with service providers who manage financial information or critical business operations, a soc 1 type 2 report substantiates that controls ran effectively for multiple months instead of just at one point in time. Inherently risk-averse enterprise buyers need to see sustained effectiveness.
The difference matters because enterprise buyers are looking for ongoing services – not services required for one transaction. They need to have confidence that your security and operational controls will function appropriately forever – or at least throughout the duration of their contract – which may span several years. That one-time argument is not acceptable.
The Credential Hierarchy
When enterprise buyers analyze competing vendors, they intrinsically create a hierarchy among security credentials. At the top are comprehensive audit reports from established frameworks. The middle ground consists of various security certifications and assessments. At the bottom are claims of self-reported compliance and internal documentation.
Where two vendors compete for the same enterprise deal, the vendor with more stringent credentials has an enormous advantage – not because the actual security posture is more effective, but because it provided the evidence in a format and breadth procurement could validate and substantiate to their internal parties.
This creates a pragmatic reality – companies looking to enter the enterprise space need credentials enterprise buyers embrace. Having a special approach that’s new or different does no good if it can’t be validated through frameworks procurement teams recognize.
The Security Questionnaire Dilemma
Every enterprise sales cycle includes the dreaded security questionnaire – 50 to 300 questions assessing every category from security requirements to compliance and operational practices. Vendors spend days completing them only to answer a slightly different rendition of those questions for the next prospect.
This is where the appropriate trust evidence will save tremendous time; companies with comprehensive audit reports can cite whole sections through their existing documentation. Instead of providing an entire narrative about how backups work, they can point to the relevant section of their SOC report where their auditor already substantiated this.
This significantly speeds up the sales cycle as a procurement team would rather review an audit report than interpret a detailed explanation through a questionnaire response. That’s not to mention that following standardized formats make more sense for procurement teams who have familiarity. Plus, audited evidence is trusted more than self-reported answers – resulting in fewer follow-up questions and faster approvals.
The Financial Services Exception
Financial institutions – banks, investment companies, insurance organizations – have stringent vendor requirements. They’re regulated entities that face consequences if their vendors have security issues, so they’re incredibly diligent in validation.
Financial institutions might have certain types of audit reports required depending on the service you’re providing. HITRUST is adequate for healthcare standards. But general security certifications will rarely suffice.
The precision matters because financial services firms know what audit reports question exactly; they’ll want to know scope versus limited scope; observation period; whether or not exceptions occurred; and how exceptions were remediated. If you don’t have the appropriate type of report or valid credentials, you won’t even make it through the door.
Healthcare and Government Criteria
Healthcare institutions and government agencies have specific preferred trust evidence. HITRUST holds serious weight in healthcare compliance – a one-stop shop for HIPAA requirements and related standards applied across other security frames.
For federal contractors, there’s a whole other set of requirements typically associated with specific standards like FedRAMP or CMMC. These are not optional – they’re required for access to specific contracts. While adjacent certifications are good; without the requisite credential that federal procurement teams desire, the door remains closed.
This means an industry-specific nature of trust evidence that must be assessed by targeted organizations before compliance investment occurs. Healthcare sales won’t be appropriate for financial services and vice versa.
The Competitive Advantage Early
Companies that get their trust evidence worked out ahead of time gain a competitive advantage over those who wait until they need it. When an enterprise opportunity arises, gaining access should happen right away instead of telling the prospect it needs six to twelve months before certification happens.
This timing advantage makes all the difference in competitive deals; if enterprise customer X has three vendors under review and two have appropriate audit reports while one is “working on it,” then that last vendor is out of contention. Enterprise buyers won’t wait if they have qualified alternatives available now.
The vendors that win these circumstances are those who invested in compliance credentials during their earlier growth stages – even if they were looking at compliance as more of a long play at this point.
Cost Versus Opportunity Cost
It’s not cheap to get comprehensive audit reports – from preparation and remediation of issues that might be found through an audit to payment for the audit itself; companies can easily shell out $25,000-$100,000+ depending on how extensive their needs are and what frameworks they want.
Especially for small companies, this is a massive investment.
But it turns quickly into opportunity cost worth investing – for every deal over $100,000-$1M annually; if having access to trust evidence helps you secure even one additional enterprise contract annually, then all spent was worth it.
The greater expense is opportunity cost – not being able to go after deals because you lack required credentials. Many companies learn how many opportunities they miss out on once they achieve certification and find themselves qualifying for RFPs and vendor evaluations they’d been excluded from before.
Smart Companies Build Trust Evidence Before They Need It
The smartest companies position trust evidence strategically instead of reactively; they explore what enterprises need most before they come onboard; they talk to current enterprise clients about what got them over the hurdle; they learn which credentials will get them through doors most based on their respective markets.
This could mean getting one comprehensive audit report instead of multiple smaller certifications. This could mean staggered timelines for achieving compliance so that when the sales pipeline develops, they’ll have credentials ready once they’ll have major prospects going through serious evaluation stages.
The bottom line is that it’s not enough to generate trust evidence as just a compliance checkbox – it’s a sales opportunity value add. Those who see it this way make better investment decisions and get better return on their compliance spending.
Intelligently Investing Trust Evidence
Once trust evidence is invested in appropriately, it should be amplified correctly; this means training sales teams so they’re comfortable talking about audit reports persuasively while compliance credentials are front-and-center in marketing efforts – and audit documentation made readily available for qualified prospects.
Unfortunately, companies spend time getting audit reports and then talking almost nothing about their credentials when it comes time for sale discussions – this is an excellent value on the table.
Trust evidence should operate throughout the entire sales cycle – from preliminary qualification through final procurement review approval.
It’s not any trust evidence that’s going to get you the enterprise deal; it’s trust evidence that’s appropriately positioned as audit reports or reputable security measures validate – infringing sustained operational effectiveness (not point-in-time effectiveness) that prioritizes enterprise procurement’s unique focus over industry vertical compliance itself – that sells the deal.
Companies that purchase compliance-specific trust evidence and position it correctly under various verticals no longer need watch their deals die in security review; instead, with access to appropriate evidence that facilitates sales, they’ll go through without red tape conflict as long as they’ve built it right.
