In the video, Graeme Scott and Josh Haselhorst delve into a real-world case involving a global resort management company that needed to replace its firewalls. They discuss the importance of asking the right questions to uncover deeper issues, such as logistics and operations challenges, rather than just focusing on the immediate need for new firewalls. The conversation reveals that understanding the customer’s true pain points can lead to unexpected sales opportunities and a more streamlined process. They emphasize the significance of flexibility in sales discussions and the necessity of collaboration with engineers for success. The session wraps up with a commitment to future discussions and continued learning.
Transcript is auto-generated.
Welcome to Inside the Wind. We’ll break down real world wins showing you exactly how strategic partnership with our experts empowers you to tackle your most ambitious opportunities with confidence. Let’s jump in.
Alright, everybody. Welcome to another session. My name is Graeme Scott. I’m the vice president of networking and mobility with Telarus. And joining me here today on the call is the one and only Josh Haselhorst, affectionately known as Hass. Hass, how you doing today, my friend?
I’m awesome, Graeme. I’m awesome, man. Thanks for, thanks for asking me to get on this.
Yeah. We love it, man. We appreciate it. I know you have so many conversations throughout the course of a week.
Just a lot of great insight to provide to our, tech advisor. So we’ve got a great one here just for the audience. Let you guys know really what the point of this is is we’re gonna talk about a deal. We’re gonna talk about an actual deal that came into the engineering team, and Josh is gonna break it down and walk you through his process, how he started the conversation, where they started, what kind of things they uncovered along the way, and then ultimately where they finished and what that looked like for the TA and the end user customer in terms of success.
So without further ado, Josh, let’s jump in here right away, both feet.
This one kinda came in in a unique way. Right? Tell us a little bit about how this opportunity came in the door, and, you kinda started engaging here without really knowing a whole lot about the customer.
Yeah. The the partner engaged me and basically said, you know, hey, Hazelhurst. I have a call with x y z company. They wanna talk about firewalls.
Can I get on your calendar? Perfect. So we booked the meeting. That’s all I knew.
We’re blind. We’re talking about firewalls. That’s all I got.
Yeah. And and that’s great. And so you get on the call, and they start asking you questions about firewalls. Then what happens next?
Yeah. Yeah. So, I mean, they introduced me to the customer. This ended up being a a global resort management company.
And, as I was talking to them, I’m thinking in my head, you know, and looking them up and doing some research while I’m talking. But turns out there’s hundreds and hundreds of locations, and each location has multiple buildings in each campus.
And they were talking we need to replace some, if not all of our firewalls.
So my initial question is why?
Well, I mean, why bother? What’s the problem? Well, it turns out as they’re doing, mergers and acquisitions and buying other resorts, every time they buy one, it’s got a different OEM, a different manufacturer, a different firewall, a different interface, a different portal, a different management plane. And so this is just impossible, man. We can’t unless we standardize across the organization and standardize on one platform, management and visibility into firewall configs, firmware, patches. It’s this is impossible. It’s a it’s a full time job for a whole team.
Right. And and these guys talk a little bit about that team. How many folks did they have on staff to handle what sounds like a fairly significant, network?
Yeah. Funny enough, they had a pretty big staff. We hear a lot about all these guys are lean IT, so they need help. Now these guys had, cybersecurity engineers on staff, network engineers on staff, dev ops guys on staff. They had a team of probably fourteen to fifteen engineers.
Logistics and operations of having staff and talent wasn’t necessarily the beginning issue. The beginning of the issue was I have too many tools, too many management portals to manage. So, yeah, I’ve got three guys on my firewall team, but I’ve got four, five, six different firewalls that I have to log into four, five, six different locations at a hundred and something physical campuses.
This is just impossible. It’s it’s it’s a full time team of operators just to go hunt down an anomaly in a firewall lock.
Yeah. So you’ve got a a a fairly significant team, but continuing to need more resources to handle what’s going on, feeling limited with what they have. I mean, you’re right. We often hear the opposite, but that doesn’t mean those problems don’t exist in some of these bigger organizations as well as we saw here. So, obviously, you guys start the conversation with firewalls.
What kind of questions are you asking the customer when you’re on that call to try and really drive to the heart of what’s going on here? You know, where where did you start the conversation? What kind of questions did you ask? And, you know, ultimately, you know, let’s talk about the information they gave you that really helped you diagnose what the right solution was here.
Yeah. It’s funny. We started talking applications, application risk. We started talking what other cybersecurity countermeasures do you have in the organization.
And the reason I started talking about that about things like endpoint detection response, manage detection responses, because there’s a lot of next gen firewall platforms out there that have those services embedded natively in into the solution. Right? There are also some firewalls that are just basic firewalls. URL filtering, content filtering, blacklist, white list, port blocking, whatever. But I kinda wanted to get to the what are the because remember he said, I have so many tools we can’t do our job. I’m trying to think about is there a way to collapse some of these tool sets into more of an all in one platform and and reduce those tool sets so we can actually do our jobs daily? Right?
As that conversation morphed and and and and grew into the, okay, I’ve got CrowdStrike for this and I’ve got Rapid7 for this. And all I’m thinking is is more tools, more management, more tools, more management. And then we got into the conversation of what do you have visibility into? Like, if there’s an issue, how do you know there’s a issue at a a campus or one of your small locations or the coffee house?
He’s and he said, I I I get phone calls. Like, Internet’s down. I get a phone call. Or my POS application is clocking.
I get a phone call, and I have no way of having any visibility to easily troubleshoot what’s going on in any any location that I’m that I’m getting a a trouble taken on.
So despite all the tools, right, all the things, you’ve got this overwhelming amount of portals and platforms that you’re working in. You still don’t have the information you need.
No. And in fact, so at that point, their network architects started getting on the call, and, we started talking about Internet and and transport. What kind of connectivity do you have? Are you running, you know, DIA and broadband and four g and satellite and whatever.
Right? And the answer was kinda all of the above. It it depends on the use case, depends on the the state, the country. If I have access, sometimes I need satellite, sometimes I need point to point, whatever.
Right? And the next question was, how do you have visibility into transport?
How do you know if a circuit is up or down? How do you know if a application is slow? Do you have any way to proactively manage a problem or is it always somebody’s going to call you with their hair on fire? And it was a yeah. We don’t see anything because we buy directly from the Internet carriers at every single one of these locations. So any problem that I have to escalate to the carrier, I have to call Spectrum for that location and Cox for that location and Comcast for that one and Nitel for that one.
My god.
So we started uncovering something even more sinister than I need new firewalls.
Yeah. And I love that because, you know, if you had sort of stopped the questioning after you talked about the firewall port. Right? You knew, hey.
The problem was too many portals. We can bring in one platform and do that, but you continued the conversation to talk about what was going on at the network level as well because I think, you know, that is something that we really, you know, try to get our TAs to focus on is, hey, just ask that extra question. Right? Ask that one additional question to figure out what else is going on within there.
You’ve got one problem. Sure. We know they’ve got an issue with their portals, but asking that extra question ended up uncovering a lot more opportunity. Right?
Yeah. It did. And people’s, you know, what keeps you up at night? Blah blah blah. People don’t buy anything unless it’s painful enough that they have to.
Yeah.
So I wasn’t asking him what keeps you up at night and what’s the pain or whatever. But just having a a flowing conversation, we kinda uncovered that I need a new firewall wasn’t the most painful thing going on in there. The most painful thing going on in there is I have no idea what’s going on at any of my locations because I have no way to have a a centralized management plane where I can see things and proactively troubleshoot.
I don’t have a technology issue. I have a logistics and operations issue.
Yeah. So obviously, at this point, you you feel like you’ve got a pretty good idea of what’s going on the landscape. Were there any additional surprises that popped up, during the conversation? Anything else that kinda jumped in that that you were, you were able to sort of take a look at as well?
I think, one of the other things that came up was we have this team and our team works pretty much eight to five. We don’t but our but our buildings, our campuses, our resorts are twenty four hour resorts.
Right.
So even if I had visibility into everything in the world from eight to five, what what happens when something goes wrong at one of these big resorts that’s making a million dollars a day at eight o’clock at night?
Right.
Uh-oh. Right? So then it became, do I need an after hours support world? Do I need to hire more people?
And really the answer was no.
What we needed to do is we needed to find a global systems aggregator to suck in the telemetry of all pipes from all, carriers and bring them into a network operation center as a service, put it in a co managed way so they get they get visibility and readwrite access into absolutely everything during business hours.
But after business hours, you’ve got a twenty four seven three sixty five network operation center doing everything for you. And what did that just do? One, reduced all the tool sets that they had to use to manage, you know, everything. Two, they never had to deal with an underlying carrier ever again. And three, now they got a twenty four seven network operation center that they pay a monthly subscription fee to and fixed all of the logistics and operational holes.
And we still haven’t gotten into the firewall yet. That deal alone, Graeme, was fifty five thousand dollars in monthly reoccurring, and they signed without a hesitation.
Wow.
See, I love even gone to the firewalls yet. We’ll get to that.
Talked about the firewalls yet. Yeah. So, obviously, you’re talking solutions now. We we we pitched the, you know, the operation center, whatever. Let’s talk about what steps you needed to take to kinda help the TA close this one. You know, what you’ve you’ve done a pretty good job of laying out the case. Anything special that you kinda brought to the table or any special points that you brought in to close this?
Yeah. And it is super common for everybody to get excited, myself included. Oh, this is a huge project. We’re gonna do everything. We can do this and that and this and that and this and that and this.
Stop.
Slow down.
Yeah.
We cannot boil the ocean even though we want to. We wanna tell these customers we can do anything and everything for you. But when you throw seventy five options on the plate, you know what the decision is made is is none. Right?
It’s confusing. It’s overwhelming. It’s just too much. So it really was a everybody, even the customer, take a step.
Take a step. Take a breath.
We need to prioritize everything. Step one, the most painful thing in the world is is I have no visibility into up down stats of is my Internet up Internet down applications or whatever. Step one. So it was a k.
Stop. We got that covered. Let’s bring in this aggregator, show them the portal, show them the the the level three, you know, support mechanism and the engineering pods that they get and the the network operations center and stuff. Bingo. Let’s get that done.
And why was that important? Because that was the most painful part of this situation.
Painful part.
So let’s take that most painful part, and now I can breathe.
But hear me out on this one. We started with a firewall conversation. Right? I didn’t even know if we have budget for firewalls. It didn’t matter at that point.
The money that we save them in time dealing with the direct circuit ISPs, the visibility, the money we save them in time and cost is going to fund the next project. So let’s get them to breathe easy. I can go home now. I don’t have to stay late. I can see everything even remotely. Yay.
And accidentally, the byproduct was a huge cost savings. Right? They paid, you know, paying fifty five thousand dollars a month, but they were doing fifty five thousand dollars a month in just man hours chasing their tails.
Yeah. I love that. You know?
They really stop them sometimes.
Yeah. Yeah. So just sort of, hey. Let’s let’s kinda take this thing down one piece at a time because you’re absolutely right.
A big project like that can be paralyzing. Right? And sometimes, hey. Maybe it’s painful doing things the way we are now, but at least we kinda know what we’re doing.
So bringing something like that, it has to be simple and it has to be rolled out. So I love that breaking that into pieces. So let’s talk about where the deal is now, Josh. So, obviously, we’ve kinda rolled out.
You know, we started with phase one. I assume we moved to some additional phases.
Anything interesting that you uncovered as you were implementing some of these services?
Yeah. So as the aggregator was was putting in in circuits and and bringing them into the knock, Remember, I told you these guys had a pretty big staff. They had a couple of their resorts that were large resorts that had a bunch of their own servers and storage server and storage arrays on prem in their own wiring closets.
Well, the staff is remote staff. Right? That was the whole point of doing the management and visibility plans so I can manage these things remotely.
So the conversation internally to the customer was maybe we should get rid of some of these on prem servers and storage rates. Maybe we should start sending these to public clouds, private clouds, a hybrid of sorts or whatnot. They determined that their equipment, their servers and storage were fairly new. They had a pretty big investment in them.
So nobody wanted to even me. Nobody wanted to rip and replace and and, okay, throw that stuff in the garbage. Your investment is gone. That’s just gonna get people in trouble.
Right? So basically, it was a lift and shift of existing gear. Let’s put it in a colocation facility on the eastern seaboard or east coast and another one on the west coast.
Yeah.
And I’ve got g r redone at DCs. Basically, we’re just doing colo. Right? But we spun that up and seemed like less than thirty, maybe sixty days. And just that colo migration was another forty grand in monthly recurring.
Wow. Love that, man. That’s so sweet.
Still haven’t talked about firewalls, Chris.
Still haven’t talked about firewalls. Yeah. I love that.
But why? Because the firewalls weren’t the most painful thing. That was what the network architect and and the security guy wanted to talk about. Yes. And we’re gonna get there, but that wasn’t the most painful thing.
So So let’s bring this baby home here, Josh. So I I assume at some point, we did talk about the firewalls. Where did we end up there with the firewall solution?
So we’re still in talks.
When we determined which global out aggregator was correct, we had already had conversations with the client of potentially what next gen firewalls would be the best fit for them. So we rattled off some OEM names. Right? Should this be a Fortinet player?
Should it be a Cato player? Whatever. But in the back of my head, I’m thinking, okay. If I can lock down probably potentially what are the three or four firewalls that are perfect fits here, I’m gonna table that, put that under my sleeve.
And the aggregator we’re gonna bring to the table, I I already know in the back of my head are proficient in Meraki’s and Fortinet’s and Kato’s and Versa’s. I already know this. So flipping that next switch which is the next project is literally just add them to your contract. You’re already working with these guys.
You already love them. Let them deploy these things out. And by the way, in the same management portal that you have all your Knox services and and and circuit services with. So not another tool, Graeme.
Right.
Yeah.
And so we started with firewall. We’re what? About a hundred and what was the number on this one? Where are we so far with billing?
A hundred and twenty thousand ish, something like that.
MRR booked and invoicing today is about a hundred and twenty thousand dollars in monthly reoccurring.
Obviously, whatever commission percentage to the agent. So a really, really good deal. But we have another sixty grand to go.
Yeah. And we still haven’t sold them any firewalls.
No. And you know what’s cool about it?
Like, because they love the aggregator that we brought to the table so much, they don’t even the end user doesn’t even engage the partner or me anymore. We’re still in talks about the firewalls and should it be at Sassy or SD WAN or whatever. Right? But they just order directly from the aggregator.
I need another circuit, order. I need another this, order. I need another that, order. And it just keeps building and building and building and nobody in in the Telarus ecosystem or even that partner ecosystem has to make any effort at all.
It just keeps growing, and the partner just keeps making more and more money every single month.
Love it. So let’s wrap up here with a few lessons learned. I think, obviously, the the big one that I take away from this is, hey. Regardless of where you start with the conversation, asking a couple of questions here and there along the way, you never know where you’re gonna finish up. This one started out with firewalls.
Yeah. We might get there eventually with some firewalls, but you sold a whack of stuff in between without even talking about the firewalls. Josh, am I on on on point with that or, any other lessons you took from that?
Yeah. And and and we hear it all the time. Right? Hey. Sell me this. Hey.
Sell me that or I wanna buy this or I wanna we have to slow down sometimes. Me.
Me talking slow down. I talk so fast. It’s hard for me to slow down. Yeah.
But we we need to we need to uncover what the real pain is. What is the real project? And what is really driving the customer to say I think I need this or I think I need that? What because usually that’s not the real project.
That’s an ancillary piece of the real project. We’ve gotta find the real pain and the real project and we gotta fix that first.
Yeah. Love that. When they come to you with a product they wanna buy, let’s dig a little deeper and find out why. Right? Like Yeah. What what business outcome are you trying to achieve by purchasing this product? And I think, obviously, this, this scenario gave us a really good example of how that can play out, to the benefit of both the customer and and the tech advisor, at the end of the day.
Yeah. These these type, I call them wrap accounts, but these things are not unique. They are super, super common. And partners and selling agents out there, they don’t have to know all this stuff.
They got the hardest job in the world. Book a meeting. Bring your Telarus engineers to the table. We will pull out the shovel shovels, and we will dig for the real use case.
Yeah. Well said, my friend. Way to end it up. Thank you so much for joining us.
Folks, hope you enjoyed this session. Don’t forget we got plenty more of these coming out. Hope you caught our last one with Jason Stein and Trevor Burnside. That’s it for us for now.
We’ll catch you on the next one. Thanks so much.