What Can Kill a Salesforce Deal?

John Somorjai says security is the one function that can hold up the red flag and kill a deal. Across 14 functions on every diligence process, a technology stack that is easily open to hacking is a real problem.

A company has to be ready and organized so the data keeps flowing. Trouble getting access to data is a warning. Many companies lack strong controls over their financials or data on customer contracts, and they do not understand customer attrition. A lot of founders focus on one metric alone, annual recurring revenue. Annual recurring revenue is a wonderful metric, but it masks attrition. Very high attrition usually means a lot of unhappy customers, and he allows there might be product quality issues as well. High attrition is one of the big red flags. Data privacy is another area they ask about in diligence. Before a process starts, a company should red-team the technology stack and identify the vulnerabilities, because his team will run penetration testing and find the problems.

A process goes better when a company is totally buttoned up, all of its data is accessible, and its technology is secure.