My ode to Rapid7
Posted by SecBarbie on Wednesday Feb 17, 2010 Under RSA Conference, Sociability, Social Media, Tools, security
<Fade IN:>
A few weeks back, I was sitting in my office in the middle of a meeting with one of my Directors and my phone rings. It came through as one of our trunk lines, so I knew it was a transfer form the receptionist, I was in a good mood, so I answered it. Low and behold it was my first call from a Rapid7 Sales representative (First that I actually answered that is). Knowing that Rapid7 recently acquired Metasploit, I gave the gentleman a listen. He talked up the RSA party, HD Moore, and the products that Rapid7 is currently marketing compared to some of the competitors. All in all, it was a perfectly fine conversation and I did walk away with some value add. My only critique was that it was pretty long, and I’m pretty busy to spend that much time talking about a product that we aren’t yet seeking a new vendor for.
<Announcers Voice:> Later the same day
I receive another call from a Rapid7 sales representative who had no idea that I had just spoken with a gentleman earlier! I might have been a little curt on the phone, but please refer back to the fact that I am actually extremely busy, and had already invested 40 minutes on the phone with the previous representative.
Later the same day I asked my twitterverse for information about Rapid7 products, because I trust my colleagues who have used them more then I could EVER trust a demo. Thanks to the great social community of Security Twits I gathered a great deal of information. Additionally, I learned from someone close to internal Rapid7 that Rapid7 follows all the Rapid7 mentions on twitter... what fun would a day be without throwing a #Rapid7 after some tweets?
<evil-grin>
In all seriousness, Rapid7 is doing some very positive things for the industry in regards to sponsorship of the SecurityTwits event at SourceBoston, employing some AMAZING researchers, and advancing the MetaSploit project with commercial funding!
Rapid7, please work on a sales team lesson in positive versus negative social media networking. Here are my examples of Rapid7 Negative Social Media Marketing:
- Requests to professionals who they have never met or never worked with:
TwitterNames Ommited: “ Anybody know what’s the bright idea with Rapid7‘s sales team suddenly trying to join people’s networks on linkedin??”
“ Ok @Rapid7, your salespeople’s newfound relentless addition of my linkedin have grown irritating & bothersome. Please DIAF.<- Ah :”
- The February 16th slew of LinkedIN Spam from “Business Developers” that most of my colleagues received. Not cool!
Twitter:
- Rapid7 twitter feed is just a Press Release reel, there is no interaction with the community, same can be said for the Facebook page!
Notable mention:
Having the “JR” account reps monitor twitter for Rapid7 mentions — Boiler Room meets Rapid7!
+
The RSA Party!
I’m sure everyone is thrilled that Rapid7 is hosting a party at RSA. But again, this is another marketing fail. They might not want to use the acronym “VIP” as it generally doesn’t mean invite everyone in the world, post it on twitter, then brag about having 1,000+ people at the party.
In case you didn’t RSVP… you can do so here http://www.rapid7.com/forms/rsarsvp.jsp
Come on Rapid7, you can do better then this!
I’m sure you are a great organization, it sure looks as if your employees have fun working there, but I have to say that Rapid7 Sales and Marketing gets the *first ever* Official SecBarbie FAILBarbie award of the month for doing bad all by themselves!
February 17th, 2010 at 2:24 pm
You forgot to mention all the linked-in Spam they sent out. I don’t even use Linked-In!
Sure, I will go and drink thier free booze at RSA but I will think twice about further funding thier marketing efforts.
- SR
February 17th, 2010 at 3:22 pm
Sad, but true. Can we all admit now that we were thrilled for HD and the whole Metasploit team, but we all thought “couldn’t it have been anyone but Rapid 7?”. They have very good tech people, they appear to be honoring their commitments to HD and Metasploit, the project is moving forward- if only they would put the sales weasels on a shorter leash.
February 17th, 2010 at 9:32 pm
Sad but true, I got linked in spam just yesterday and actually wrote them and asked whats up. For years they have been known as “aggressive” in terms of sales. But recently this is over the top. Plus the attempt at social media marketing is pretty transparent. They need to re think it.
February 22nd, 2010 at 8:43 am
I’m also a victim of their inept marketing and linked in spam. I told my sales rep (who is actually pretty good and responsive) in no uncertain terms that this either stops or they loose any hope of business with us.
February 22nd, 2010 at 10:19 am
Here is smth even funnier: I got that LinkedIn in spam wave from R7 as well. Have you looked at some of those (presumably fake) people?
One example had a previous job of a bartender and then R7 BD role. That is so totally cool
February 24th, 2010 at 7:25 am
Rapid7 has a history of predatory sales and PR. They were successful in removing themselves from my list of potential vendors a couple of years ago when after being told repeatedly that I wasn’t ready to buy a solution they continued to hound me. Then one day I was called in to the CIOs Office because they had tracked down his cell phone number and called him personally. They told him that I was interested and wanted to know if he could “push it through”.
February 24th, 2010 at 8:36 am
One of their guys called me and wouldn’t stop talking even after I said I wasn’t interested and wasn’t buying anything right now. Needing to get back to work, I finally said good-bye and hung up on him, with his voice still chattering as the handset hit the cradle. Phone rings again, same guy.
“I know you just hung up on me, but I didn’t get a chance to finish what I was saying,” he says.
“People hanging up on you is a sign that you need to work on your approach. Here’s another chance to practice,” I say, hanging up again, his voice again still chattering all the way to cradle.
February 24th, 2010 at 8:01 pm
Good post – after all that you seemed to be a good sport about it. It looks like many people can relate to your pain – as shown by the tweets and comments. Is there any vendor you (or anyone else here) feel does a good job in social media in the security space? Enough that you follow and care what they say on Twitter or other places?
Thanks
Matt
February 25th, 2010 at 8:21 am
Those guys call (multiple times) at the end of every quarter asking if I’ve got extra $ in the budget I want to get rid of.
I haven’t had to hang up on them, but they are a PITA to get off the phone even after I explain I have no need for their products presently.
The item that rubs me the wrong way the most is they call from a blocked #, every other vendor who calls leaves their # unblocked, it just comes off like trickery (who answers calls from blocked #’s anyway?)
@JD, I had the same reaction re: Metasploit
February 26th, 2010 at 9:51 am
I’ve had the same experience. We actually did a bake-off from several potential vendors, including R7. They lost after in-depth testing showed gaps on coverage for products deployed widely at our org.
After rounds of “nuh-uh, we do cover that!” from sales, my SE and the first two levels of support engineers, I finally got someone to acknowledge what our testing found.
So, they lost out… FF about, oh… a week. First cold call. Me: “We eval’ed you like 2 weeks ago, you failed because you missed serious CVSS 10 shit vuln we have.” Sales: “Nuh-uh”. Me: “Ok, show me the plugin that covers that vuln.” Sales: “…((crickets, din of boiler room quite audible))…” Me: “Yeah, learn to use CRM.”
Now, wash, rinse, repeat conversation at least 3 more times since then.
Now here’s the kicker – that high-pressure sales shit works. After buddying up to the reps whose products I was evaluating, it was clear that they were scared shirtless of the Rapid7 sales juggernaut, which I used to my advantage at contract time.
March 11th, 2010 at 11:09 am
If there product was half as good or as persistant as their salespeople it would be a dangerous product.
One word comes to mind when thinking about rapid7…hyperbole. Advice to anyone who takes rapid7 sales call. List all the competitors they claim to be better than, hang up the phone and call them immediately. Legitimate companies dont need to bash the competition.