10 brutal truths from the CISO's chair.
Real talk from a CIO & CISO who has sat through hundreds of pitches. The Buyer's Seat cuts through the noise and shows you how enterprise decisions are actually made — by the people accountable for the budget, the outcomes, and the business impact.
I'm Aysha Khan. CIO, CISO. I've been in the operator's seat long enough to know what vendors rarely see. Where trust actually breaks. What makes a renewal safe before it's even discussed. Why the best pitch in the room still loses to an engineer who says it doesn't work.
I write because the gap between how vendors sell and how buyers actually decide has real consequences. For budgets. For careers. For the teams caught in between.
GTM leaders and executives kept saying this needed to exist as a book. So it does.
"If you're losing deals you used to win, the buyer didn't change. The game did."
Pulled straight from the book. These are the things vendors rarely hear out loud — and almost never in time to fix the deal.
120 pitches a week. Donuts, plants, clever cold opens. CISOs aren't ignoring you — we're filtering fast, and we don't have time for gimmicks.
77% off zero value is still a bad deal. You can't "logic" a buyer into renewal using list prices.
You think the sale starts when we meet. It doesn't. You're stepping into a process that started weeks before your name came up.
Win the engineers, analysts, and architects, and you've already won the CISO. If they're quiet or frustrated, no ROI model will save the deal.
"Time saved" and "happier teams" don't show up in my quarterly review. If it doesn't move a number my CFO tracks, it's not ROI — it's hope.
It's not your pricing. It's not your competitors. It's the slow, invisible drift between what you promise and what you deliver.
Login frequency isn't adoption. Real adoption is when my organization becomes more capable because you exist. Lock-in is the opposite signal.
A "yes" isn't just a signature. It's a personal risk calculation — will this strengthen or weaken my credibility with the Board if it fails?
SaaS optimized for visibility. What it didn't optimize for was action. In six months I've replaced more vendors than in the previous three years.
They show up all year — with ideas, with feedback, with consistency. By the time renewal comes around, the decision is already made.
The Buyer's Seat is the finest articulation of a buyer's point of view I have ever read. There are CISOs who say a lot of things but say nothing at all. And then there are CISOs like Aysha, who say few words, but each word has profound meaning and impact.
Mehul Revankar Co-Founder & CPO, Quantro Security
Before the book, there were essays. Eight pieces from the buyer's seat — the same writing sales leaders and executives told Aysha had to become a book.
Attention gets you in the door. Trust keeps you there. The strategies that actually land — and the ones that get you deleted on sight.
Read on Substack Post 02 · Oct 2025A behind-the-scenes look at the ten behaviors that earn loyalty after the contract is signed — and quietly erase the competition.
Read on Substack Post 03 · Oct 2025It's not the pricing. It's not the competitor. It's the slow drift between what you promised and what you delivered.
Read on Substack Post 04 · Oct 2025What really happens behind closed doors when buyers decide who earns the deal — and who quietly gets cut.
Read on Substack Post 05 · Nov 2025How real buyers measure value and what actually survives budget review when the spreadsheet hits the boardroom.
Read on Substack Post 06 · Nov 2025If customers can't thrive without you, they won't stay with you. The line between adoption and dependency.
Read on Substack Mid-Series · Nov 2025Grounding the mission. Six posts in, what the series has uncovered and where it goes next.
Read on Substack Post 07 · Dec 2025A real buyer case study in broken trust, bad delivery, and avoidable churn — and the playbook every vendor wishes they had.
Read on SubstackAysha is announcing The Buyer's Seat on a major GTM and security podcast. Subscribe to be first to know when the episode drops — and where to find her next.
One email. No noise. Just the launch announcement, the chapter samplers, and the podcast roundup.