Decision Makers: State of mind

We did a quick look and calculation to see how bad the market drop has been; essentially from High to Low. It's in the neighborhood of about 47% when averaged across the F500.

Ouch. We know that it's bad now, and with everything going on it's scary times ahead. So why am I mentioning this?

Well, because we went from, "when do we get back to normal?" to "what does it look like after this?".

As I've been chatting and catching up with various technology and cyber leaders, there are a couple things that are consistent that I want to share.

1) As market cap is being slashed, so are budgets..yes...IT budgets too...and even Cyber budgets. "But wait Cyber is UBER important!!"...ummm. Yes, Cyber is important as long as a company can survive. I would go so far as to say that Cyber is a great "luxury" of a company that is not in crisis mode on whether it survives. Profitiability and sustainability of a business are critical things that must be resolved BEFORE leadership really talks about Cyber security. Yes..it's critical..yes...consumer privacy matters...yes...I'm going to get beat up for this bullet item...but...in the end; if a business can't survive it doesn't matter. Budgets will be allocated to survival first, in the same way that our bodies priortize blood and oxygen to key organs vs others.

2) Most leaders are not in a mode of buying new solutions. They are dealing with crisis management, preparing for resiliency concerns, thinking about capacity and support of a sustained remote workforce...but they are not in a mode of checking out a new piece of technology to solve a problem. I think it's a reality that many solution providers should be thinking through what if scenarios of zero sales for n number of months...(possibly 3-6)

Things that were priority in January, are being re-considered. Can they be delayed, can we save the OpEx to save some staff from losing their job? Not only have conferences been cancelled, but it should be a given that pretty much all travel budgets for the remainder of the year will be re-purposed and re-allocated already. If your bounce back plan was bigger trade show presence in Q3/Q4....you may want to re-think that.

3) Churn is going to be a real thing this year. As enterprises are working through this new reality; they will be spending additional time reflecting on where they are truly getting value. Driven by efficiency needs and combined with new/upcoming internal priorities I envision that solution providers will find this to be a potentially challenging year of renewals. 

It's definitely an interesting and scary time. It feels like this is a one way door a bit; not sure how this changes things in the future but confident that things are definitely changing in a dramatic way.

Oh, last thing. If your about to send a marketing email about how Cornavirus is related to selling your product set/solution...just don't....I can assure you it's not going to land the way you are hoping it will. Best case; you fall into the noise of everyone else..worst case...your message lands as tone deaf.

*We are not mathematicians so please forgive minor errata*