With over 20 years of Sales, Marketing, leadership and Inside Sales development experience, Kelly carries a diverse background in building revenue-driven inside sales teams within high-growth, high-tech organizations. As a five-time winner of the AA-ISP Most Influential Sales Professionals, Kelly is a noted expert on how to train, build and grow exceptional teams. Prior to Avanan, she had founded InsideOut Technologies group to assist companies in building their own Sales Development teams. Kelly has led the Inside Sales, Market Development and SMB teams at Razberi Technologies, Carousel Industries and LifeSize Videoconferencing, a division of Logitech. Kelly holds a Bachelor of Arts, Communications from Bentley University.
In this outstanding expert interview, Head of Worldwide Sales Development for Avanan, Kelly Lichtenberger, discusses email security, how advanced AI can protect the inbox and more. Don’t miss these must-read insights.
Where is the email security market headed? The email security market is not slowing down. The need will only intensify and it is estimated this market will be an 11+ Billion dollar industry by 2030.
Please bring the audience up to speed. Would you like to share a bit about Avanan? Avanan was the first to market with cloud-based email security and is API-based to be able to block attacks before they even reach the end-user inbox. Traditional solutions like Secure Email Gateways weren’t built for the cloud and in many cases actually make companies’ default security worse. Avanan leverages the power of AI and can actually reduce phishing attacks by 99.2% with its patented technology.
Why are businesses approaching Avanan over the email security competition? Cyber attacks are on the rise and companies need to make sure that they are protected against phishing and ransomware attacks. These attacks start with email and without the power of AI and API, attacks aren’t a question of if but when. Data is what drives AI and with Check Point and Avanan joining forces, we have the strongest AI through ThreatCloud, which is the largest threat-feed in the market, finding over 6,000 new types of malware every day.
Tell us about your role at Avanan and the team that you manage? I manage the global Sales Development team. We are a team of 12 with reps in EMEA and APAC also. We are responsible for finding new prospects to show our solution to and/or introduce Harmony Email and Collaboration to existing Check Point Customers and partners alike. We do this through calling and emailing thousands of people people per day and getting them interested in seeing a demo of Avanan.
When you joined Avanan, what did the sales process look like? When I joined Avanan we had not joined the Check Point family yet. We are doing a lot of the same processes but we get the benefit of working with 5,000 additional employees that can help open doors and continue to increase the Avanan message that we are the only complete cloud email security solution on the market today.
Where are companies commonly getting ‘stuck’ in the buying journey and what recommendations do you have for them in accelerating security purchasing? It always seems easier to stay with what you are currently using or to trust names like Microsoft, but that is old school thinking and most likely you are doing more harm than good. You need to be looking at a solution that combines being inline with installing via API. Being inline can stop attacks before they even reach the inbox. By integrating as an API, you are also protecting the entire cloud suite and being embedded allows Avanan to cull the rich data to continue to improve our AI. No one else can say this.
How have you seen buying patterns change across the last year? How is Avanan meeting continually evolving customer needs? By being part of the Check Point team, we are now the largest overall security company in the world. We can meet all security needs of the customer, but most importantly, we can lead with email security and stop the most dangerous attacks there are phishing and ransomware.
What is the best motivator that spurs customers to purchase email security? Unfortunately, its having an attack. We encourage prospects to look early and often at solutions. This market is ever changing and more companies are coming to market, but no one has the AI that Avanan has and it matters. In today’s threat landscape, 51% of advanced phishing threats require AI and machine learning to identify and stop issues. Without good AI, a majority of the attacks aimed at your company will not be blocked, leaving an organization at risk. Avanan’s AI is the best because it is trained on the most sophisticated and most accurate data and additionally gets to take advantage of Check Point’s ThreatCloud, an unrivaled threat engine.
What are you most enthusiastic about in looking towards the future? I am so excited to be part of this market that’s continuing to grow and to be the market leader for email security. No matter who is in the market today or who enters the market, Avanan was the first with the best data. Everyone else is a legacy solution.
Is there anything else that you would like to share with the C-level Cyber Talk audience? Phishing is the number one cause leading to breaches today and they are happening more and more frequently. If you are not evaluating how many attacks are getting delivered per day at your organization, you are most likely headed towards a breach. Avanan scans and stops the attacks that others miss. Avanan is a 5 minute deployment for email and all of your collaboration tools. Isn’t it worth a demo or trial to see for yourself?
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