September 4, 2026
The real reason cybersecurity deals stall
And one of the unintended consequences is that cybersecurity solutions are becoming harder to sell.Selling products and solutions has never just been the task of the sales department. It’s a dynamic ecosystem that includes sales, marketing and enablement. Traditionally, there has been some disconnect, even rivalry between sales and marketing, but today, alignment has never been more important because, simply put, misalignment equals loss of revenue.
However, this complexity doesn’t just make solutions more difficult to sell; it makes it harder for sales, marketing and enablement to stay in sync while selling them.
The road to close is getting longer
It’s not just that solutions are becoming more sophisticated in response to the changing threat landscape – cybersecurity buyers are better informed and more educated, which means go-to-market (GTM) teams need to change their approach, something we looked at in one of our recent blogs.
There are also more people in the buying journey / decision making process. According to Forrester’s The State of Business Buying 2026 report, there are now 13 internal stakeholders and 9 external influencers involved in making that buying decision. And this number increases for more complicated or strategic purchases – like cyber security solutions.
Built into that process are a number of hurdles to overcome – mandatory security / compliance questionnaires, proof-of-concept periods, technical validation and legal review.
As a result, the sales cycle is longer.
Why buyers struggle see the risk
If the security challenge is about visibility, the sales challenge is about translation. And that’s where the complexity really starts.
The product is invisible by nature. The thing being protected isn’t a device or even a person; it’s a relationship between two systems no one in the buying committee has ever seen. And that buying committee doesn’t agree on what they’re buying: a CISO hears risk reduction, a platform engineering lead hears operational overhead, a CFO hears a cost with no obvious return – all in the same meeting, evaluating different products.
There’s also no single moment of urgency to force a decision. Unlike a phishing incident or a data breach, machine identity risk builds in the background, so the case has to be made rather than triggered, which leans harder on presales and technical validation than most sales motions, and demands messaging that simplifies without becoming inaccurate.
That last part is the real tightrope, and it’s where GTM teams either earn their place or lose the room.
13 decision makers. 1 story. Zero room for misalignment
More stakeholders. Longer cycles. More technical validation at every gate. Each of those elements affects who needs to be involved in a deal, and when.
A buyer with 13 internal stakeholders isn’t evaluating your solution based on one set of criteria; they’re all asking different questions related to budget, compliance, functionality, usability and relevance. Marketing has to speak to all of them before sales ever gets in the room. Sales has to keep the story consistent once they’re there. And when a technical validation call or proof-of-concept comes up mid-cycle, enablement needs to have already armed the team with the right material and have the answers to any potential questions.
Traditionally, selling used to be sequential, with marketing generating interest and sales closing it. Now it’s concurrent. A prospect might be reading a case study that marketing published last month at the exact moment a sales rep is on a call referencing a completely different message. If those two don’t match, it doesn’t just look sloppy, it gives a skeptical buying committee a reason to slow down and ask more questions, which is the last thing anyone wants in a cycle that’s already stretching months.
No single function can carry a deal like this alone. And the wider the buying committee gets, the more places there are for a disconnect to show up.
The deal starts before the buyer ever sees you
If misalignment shows up as rivalry between sales and marketing, the fix isn’t always a process or a Slack channel. Sometimes it starts earlier than that – with who gets hired, and how.
In our Q&A series with cybersecurity leaders, Claire Pitman-Massie, VP of Field, Digital and Channel Marketing, EMEA at Ping Identity told us she builds alignment into her hiring process directly:
“When I am recruiting, depending on the level, I involve the sales team and the channel team because there needs to be that alignment between individuals and team. There needs to be chemistry! Otherwise, it just doesn’t work. That lack of alignment is often where you find the rivalry between sales and marketing.”
“Chemistry” can sound like a soft consideration when you’re hiring. In a complex GTM environment, it isn’t.
If sales and marketing don’t trust each other, they’ll create workarounds. If they don’t communicate, they’ll create conflicting messages. If they don’t understand how the other team works, those problems eventually become the buyer’s problem.
You can have the right messaging framework, handoff process and shared dashboards, but still end up with friction if the people in those roles were never evaluated for how they’d actually work together.
That’s particularly important in cybersecurity, where a deal can move between marketing, sales, channel, technical and customer-facing teams over several months.
There isn’t much room for internal friction when a buying committee is waiting for an answer.
The goal isn’t for every team to think the same way. It’s for everyone involved in the deal to understand what they’re selling, who they’re selling it to and how the different parts of the GTM team fit together.
Get that right and the buyer gets a consistent experience, from the first LinkedIn post they see to the sales conversation, technical validation and final negotiation.
Internally, things move faster too, because people aren’t constantly waiting for someone else to catch up.
The goal isn’t fewer stakeholders – it’s fewer disconnects
Buying committees aren’t shrinking. If anything, AI is adding another layer of technical scrutiny, governance and risk to cybersecurity purchases.
That creates even more opportunities for sales, marketing and enablement to fall out of step.
Alignment therefore can’t be something you fix after a deal stalls. It has to be built in before the deal even starts; in how messaging gets made, in how handoffs happen, and, as Claire from Ping put it, in who you hire and how deliberately you choose them to work together.
They’ll be the ones that make it easy for a complex buying committee to understand the problem, trust the solution and get consistent answers from everyone they meet.
And that starts with building the right team.
Building a GTM team where sales, marketing and enablement work well together isn’t easy. That’s where we can help. We focus not just on finding the perfect match for your GTM team, but doing it in a way that reduces your hiring risk and protects your runway. Get in touch to find out how we can help you scale your GTM team.
Already have the chemistry and looking for the right team to join? Submit your resume and let’s find it.