How To Improve Collaboration Between Sales and Security Teams

Quick Summary

This article covers strategies to improve collaboration between sales and security teams, including goal alignment, centralized security documentation, automation of inbound security questionnaire reviews, and CRM integration. By streamlining and automating workflows, teams can close deals faster without compromising security. To learn more about how to eliminate security review bottlenecks, visit the SafeBase Resource Center.

Struggling to Align Sales and Security Teams?

Sales wants to close deals fast. Security needs to ensure compliance. Too often, these teams clash, slowing down deals and creating friction. But what if there was a way to streamline the process without sacrificing security or speed?

In this SafeBase article, we’ll break down practical strategies to align Sales and Security, from centralizing security documentation to leveraging AI-driven automation.

But first…

Why Listen to Us?

At SafeBase, we’ve helped 1000+ organizations, including Jamf, Asana, and ClickUp, bridge the gap between Sales and Security. Our Trust Center and AI-powered tools eliminate bottlenecks by centralizing security documentation, automating questionnaire responses, and integrating seamlessly with sales workflows. By reducing friction and improving transparency, we enable teams to close deals faster while maintaining strong security and compliance standards.

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The Challenges in Sales-Security Collaboration

Aligning Sales and Security teams is easier said than done. Here are the key challenges businesses face:

Slow Security Review Process

Security questionnaires are a necessary part of enterprise sales, but they can drag out deal cycles. When security teams need to manually review and respond to lengthy questionnaires, Sales is left waiting; sometimes for weeks, while prospects lose momentum.

Communication Barriers

Sales and Security teams often speak different languages. Sales is focused on closing deals, while Security is focused on risk management. Without a common workflow or shared understanding, misalignment leads to delays, redundant questions, and unnecessary back-and-forth.

Manual Workflows Create Bottlenecks

Many organizations still rely on email chains, spreadsheets, and disconnected tools to complete security reviews. This outdated approach creates inefficiencies, increases the risk of errors, and makes it difficult to track progress.

Scattered Security Documentation

When security policies, compliance certifications, and other critical documents are spread across different systems, Sales teams struggle to provide prospects with the information they need. Without a centralized hub, security reviews become a time-consuming, manual process.

Lack of Visibility Into Security Review Progress

Without clear tracking mechanisms, Sales teams are often left in the dark about where a security review stands. They don’t know if a questionnaire is being worked on, if additional approvals are needed, or when they can expect a response. 

Strategies to Improve Collaboration Between Sales and Security Teams

1. Align Security and Sales Goals from the Start

For seamless collaboration, sales and security teams must work toward a shared vision. Without alignment, friction arises, slowing down deal cycles and complicating security reviews. A structured, goal-driven approach ensures both teams contribute to business growth without compromising security.

Key Steps to Achieve Alignment:

• Define a Clear Security Review Process: Establish a structured workflow that balances speed and compliance, minimizing disruptions to sales while ensuring security standards are met.
• Set Service Level Agreements (SLAs) for Faster Approvals: Standardize response times for security reviews to prevent deals from stalling due to prolonged assessments.
• Equip Sales with Basic Security Knowledge: Provide training on essential security concepts so sales reps can confidently handle common security questions without unnecessary back-and-forth.
• Continuously Optimize Security Workflows: Regularly review and refine the approval process based on feedback from both teams. Identify bottlenecks and make iterative improvements.

2. Centralize Security Information for Easy Access 

Lack of immediate access to up to date security documentation creates unnecessary delays in the sales process. When sales reps must constantly request documents from the security team, deals slow down, and customers lose confidence. Sometimes the wrong or out of date documentation is shared by Sellers in an attempt to accelerate the deal, but once recognized can cause additional delays in the process. A centralized security hub ensures consistency, reduces redundant requests, and accelerates security reviews.

How to Streamline Security Access:

• Leverage a Trust Center for Instant Access: SafeBase’s Trust Center empowers sales teams to securely share compliance documents with prospects in real time, reducing bottlenecks and eliminating unnecessary back-and-forth with security teams.

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• Maintain an Up-to-Date Compliance Library: Store and regularly update key security certifications like SOC 2, ISO 27001, and GDPR, as well as policies, compliance controls and more to ensure prospects always have access to the latest information.
• Enable Self-Service for Prospects: With a Trust Center already in place, prospects should have direct, self-serve access to security documentation without relying on a sales rep.

3. Automate Security Questionnaire Responses

Security questionnaires are a major bottleneck in the sales process. Repetitive, manual responses slow down deals and increase the risk of inconsistent answers. Automating this process helps both sales and security teams work more efficiently while maintaining accuracy.

How to Streamline Security Questionnaires:

• Leverage AI-Driven Tools: Use AI to auto-populate responses based on previous answers, minimizing manual effort and ensuring consistency. SafeBase’s AI Questionnaire Assistance streamlines this process by pulling directly from your existing security documentation, generating precise responses in real time.

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• Maintain a Pre-Approved Response Library: Store standardized, compliance-approved answers to ensure consistency across all questionnaires.
• Free Up Security Teams for Complex Reviews: Let automation handle repetitive inquiries while security experts focus on high-risk assessments.

4. Leverage CRM and Workflow Collaboration Tools for Transparency 

Disjointed communication between security and sales teams leads to delays, missed deadlines, and frustrating bottlenecks. Integrating security workflows into CRM and collaboration tools ensures both teams stay aligned on deal progress, reducing friction and improving deal velocity.

How to Improve Transparency and Collaboration:

• Proactively share Trust Center URL with prospects early in deal cycle: Enable sales reps with your Trust Center URL so they can share it with prospects early in the deal cycle. Security reviews can then proactively start without waiting on security teams to initiate the process when it’s crunch time.

Offer prospects secure, self-serve access with robust CRM integrations: SafeBase integrates directly with CRMs like Salesforce and comes with robust governance, permission controls and rules engines that allow prospects, customers, and partners customers secure, automated Trust Center access and NDA approvals without delays.

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• Automate Notifications for Security Reviews, Updates, Approvals and more: Use triggers to alert security teams, SMEs across the business, Sellers, and other cross functional partners when approvals, updates, or reviews are needed, preventing last-minute roadblocks.
• Integrate with Slack, Jira, and Other Workflow Tools: Enable real-time collaboration between teams by bringing security discussions into the platforms they already use daily.  

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5. Enable Real-Time Security Visibility and Analytics 

Real-time visibility into how prospects interact with security documentation empowers both sales and security teams to optimize the review process, address potential concerns proactively, and reduce deal friction. By leveraging data-driven insights, teams can refine their approach and eliminate unnecessary roadblocks.

Key Strategies for Enhancing Security Visibility:

• Track Document Engagement: SafeBase’s Analytics Dashboard offers real-time insights into security document interactions, helping sales and security teams understand which policies, compliance controls, or certifications are of the most interest to your prospects. 

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• Prioritize Open Pipeline Deals: Use analytics to pinpoint which open pipeline deals need security reviews first. 
• Understand Security’s Impact on the Topline: Data-driven insights also allow security teams to see how their streamlined process has impacted Closed Won revenue for the business. 

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6. Ensure Continuous Collaboration

Seamless and continuous collaboration between sales and security teams requires ongoing communication, visibility, and feedback.

Best Practices for Continuous Collaboration:

• Be Proactive vs Reactive in the Security Review Process: Leverage the right technology to proactively begin the Security Review process early in the deal cycle. This prevents last minute scramble between teams to push it forward. 
• Ensure visibility across teams on deal progression and review status: With the right integrations across systems, Sales can view progress on the security review, and security can see what open pipeline deals need attention. Eliminating surprises and stress will boost productive collaboration.
•  Meet Team members where they work everyday: Stay connected to cross functional teammates with integrations into workflow productivity tools like Slack, Teams, Salesforce, and Jira. This ensures speedy response time, ease of collaboration, and unlocks deal acceleration. 

Streamline Sales-Security Collaboration with SafeBase

Misalignment between sales and security teams can slow deals, create friction, and lead to missed opportunities. Security reviews become bottlenecks rather than business enablers, frustrating both teams and prospects alike.

SafeBase eliminates these challenges by centralizing security information, automating questionnaire responses, and integrating seamlessly with your existing sales workflows. With real-time visibility, self-service security portals, and AI-powered automation, SafeBase empowers sales teams to move faster while ensuring security teams maintain control and compliance.

Don't let security slow down your sales pipeline. Book a Demo with SafeBase today.

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