Selling security is selling a judgement, not a feature
The buyer is often the person who will be blamed if something goes wrong. That changes the conversation: they are not comparing feature lists, they are deciding whether they trust you.
A seller who cannot hold a technical conversation gets found out in the first meeting. One who can, but who oversells, gets found out in the second. The narrow profile you need sits between those two failures.
Hire the sales engineer earlier than feels comfortable
Most founders hire an account executive first and a sales engineer months later. In security it is usually the other way round: the technical seller creates the credibility that lets the commercial seller work at all.
Until then the founder is the sales engineer, which works right up until it becomes the reason the roadmap slips.
Read the track record properly
Quota attainment on its own says very little. What was inherited, what was built, how big was the territory, who else was on the account, and was the product already known in the market?
A seller who hit eighty per cent of a hard number in an unknown product is often a better hire than one who hit a hundred and twenty with a brand behind them.
- Was the patch new or established?
- Did they sell to security teams, or through them to a budget holder?
- What was the average deal size and cycle length?
- Who did they lose to, and why?
Expect the search to take longer, and plan for it
The pool is small, well paid and rarely looking. A search that would take four weeks in general software takes longer here, and compressing it usually means lowering the bar rather than moving faster.
Starting the conversation before the role is signed off is not premature. In this market it is the only way the timeline works.
In security, credibility is the product the commercial team is selling. Hire for that first and the rest of the funnel gets easier.
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