How to sell to Product leads at Cybersecurity companies
Product leads in cybersecurity, such as CPOs or VPs of Product, are primarily measured on product adoption rates. They respond positively to outreach that demonstrates a clear understanding of the compliance challenges in their industry, particularly around SOC 2 requirements. Show them how your solution can streamline compliance processes and reduce time spent on audits, which resonates with their daily priorities.
Written and maintained by the SoloRiff team, who build outbound software and run outbound with it. The figures below are our own: we measured 569 cybersecurity company domains over public DNS on 2026-09-03. Last updated 2026-09-03.
What actually hurts
- increased audit preparation time
- team burnout during compliance cycles
- difficulty in maintaining security standards
- misalignment between product and compliance teams
The playbook
- 01
Identify recent SOC 2 audit announcements
Start by filtering for companies that have recently announced SOC 2 audits. Use news aggregators or industry-specific websites to find these announcements. This indicates a focus on compliance and may signal a need for tools that simplify the audit process.
- 02
Segment by product maturity stage
Create a list of companies whose products are in the beta or early launch stage. These companies often seek to ensure compliance early on to avoid future setbacks. A product lead here will be more receptive to solutions that help them navigate compliance from the start.
- 03
Highlight integration with existing tools
When reaching out, emphasize how your solution integrates with tools they already use for product management or security. Product leads are often hesitant to adopt new tools that require significant changes to workflows, so showing seamless integration can alleviate this concern.
- 04
Address potential resource constraints
Acknowledge that product teams may be stretched thin, especially during compliance crunch times. Offer insights or case studies that demonstrate how your solution has helped similar teams save time or reduce workload during audits, making it easier for them to justify the investment.
- 05
Follow up post-industry events
After major cybersecurity conferences or events, follow up with insights or trends discussed that relate to compliance. Product leads often reflect on industry changes during these times, making them more open to conversations about new solutions that can address emerging challenges.
Can cybersecurity companies even receive your mail?
We measured the DNS of 569 cybersecurity companies, sampled evenly across company sizes, to see how many authenticate their own email. It matters in both directions: a domain that does not authenticate is a domain whose team is used to mail going missing — and if your own domain is in the gap, yours is the mail going missing.
Publishes a DMARC policy of quarantine or reject — the domain actually asks receivers to act on failures.
The gap is the finding: 30.3% of 1–10-person companies against 91.3% of the largest — 61 points apart. Small companies are where the unauthenticated domains are, and small companies are who most cold outreach is aimed at.
Where does your domain sit?
Same three lookups, run live against your domain. Nothing is stored and nothing is emailed to you.
How this was measured
Company domains were sampled within employee-count bands, then queried over public DNS for SPF (TXT at the apex), DMARC (TXT at _dmarc.) and MX. One domain per company, deduplicated. Anyone can reproduce any single row of this with dig.
DKIM is deliberately absent. A DKIM key lives under a selector that cannot be enumerated from outside the domain, so a company with flawless DKIM under a name we did not guess would be counted as having none. That would measure our guess list, not the industry.
Domains with no MX record are excluded rather than counted as failures — parked and redirect-only domains would otherwise drag every figure down and make the result an artefact of the sample.
Sampled within bands, so this describes the population of companies, not of employees: a 10-person company counts once, as does a 10,000-person one. Each band is at least 60 domains; bands below that are not published. Figures are percentages of the sample, not of the whole industry, and we publish no company names — only counts.
Measured 2026-09-03. Re-measured monthly.
The full census across every industry — sortable, with sample sizes, free to reuse under CC BY 4.0.
Subject lines that fit
- Streamline your SOC 2 process
- Reduce compliance preparation time
- Insights for product compliance challenges
Questions
- Why do product leads in cybersecurity ignore outreach about compliance tools?
- Product leads often receive numerous outreach messages and may prioritize those that directly address urgent product needs. If your message doesn't clearly connect how your solution alleviates specific compliance pain points or integrates seamlessly with their existing workflows, it may be overlooked.
- What compliance challenges do product leads face in cybersecurity?
- Product leads frequently encounter challenges such as aligning product features with compliance requirements, managing audit timelines, and ensuring team readiness for compliance checks. These pressures can lead to delays in product releases and increased stress within the team.
- How can I make my outreach more relevant to product leads?
- To enhance relevance, tailor your messaging to highlight specific compliance issues they face, such as SOC 2 requirements. Use industry jargon and reference recent trends or news in cybersecurity to show you understand their world and the unique challenges they encounter.
- What objections do product leads commonly have regarding new compliance solutions?
- Common objections include concerns about the time required to implement new solutions, potential disruptions to existing workflows, and the perceived complexity of integrating new tools with their current systems. Addressing these objections directly in your outreach can help facilitate a more productive conversation.
Or have it run itself
SoloRiff does every step above on its own — finds the companies, finds the people, writes each of them individually, and handles the replies. Drop your URL and watch it work before you sign up for anything.
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