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The "3-Month Tax" killing your security deal velocity

We're in the final stretch of the year and your deals just got 3 months longer

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Brief Bites
December 21, 2025

☕ What You Need to Know Today

The Headline: Demand hasn't disappeared, but it has slowed down. The culprit isn't a lack of budget—it's procurement friction. Deal cycles are stretching 3-6 months longer than they did in 2021 as CFOs demand rationalization over innovation.

The Numbers:

  • 3-6 Months: The added delay in current evaluation windows vs. peak periods.

  • 470: The number of HR Tech vendors at a single trade show (and why buyers are overwhelmed).

  • $100M: Asana’s 3-year deal proving hyperscaler-grade security is the new table stakes.

The "So What": If you're selling "best of breed," you're losing. If you're selling "we eliminate 3 other contracts and a procurement cycle," you're winning.

📉 The New Competitor: "Internal Friction"

Raise your hand if you’ve heard this recently: "The budget is approved, but we’re stuck in procurement."

You aren't alone. In the last 48 hours of conference calls, a clear pattern emerged: The enemy is no longer the rival vendor; it's the sheer administrative pain of buying things.

Zscaler CFO Kevin Rubin dropped the playbook on how to beat this at the Barclays Conference (Dec 11):

"One of the other natural byproducts of these longer-term broader contracts is... every time a customer wants to expand, deploy more technology, they don’t have to get their procurement teams involved. They don’t have to stand up additional PRs, purchase requisitions and purchase orders internally."

Translation: Smart vendors are structuring contracts to bypass future red tape.

Braze CFO Isabelle Winkles backed this up (Dec 11), noting that customers are effectively paying a premium to avoid the "procurement tax":

"So once if they want to try something new, they don’t have to engage in a new procurement cycle... it reduces friction in the original sales cycle."

The Takeaway: Stop selling features. Start selling "pre-approved expansion." If your customer has to open a new PO to buy your new module, you’ve already lost the expansion deal to a platform that bundled it in day one.

🔪 The "Cost Arbitrage" Play

CFOs are no longer interested in "adding value." They want to displace cost.

In late 2025, the winning pitch isn't "we make you faster." It's "we let you fire your firewall vendor."

Kevin Rubin (Zscaler) explained this perfectly on Dec 11. It's not just about buying Zero Trust; it's about what you stop paying for:

"You no longer need all of this heavy legacy hardware equipment… You don’t need your SD-WAN architecture. You don’t need your VPN architecture. You don’t need your firewalls... when you adopt Zero Trust through Zscaler, those costs go away."

Real Talk: This is the difference between a "nice-to-have" and a "must-have." If you can't show a spreadsheet where Column A (Your Price) is lower than Column B (Legacy Tools Eliminated), you're going to get stuck in the CFO filter.

🏗️ Confusion is the Forcing Function

Why is platform consolidation happening now? Because buyers are drowning in point solutions.

Paylocity CFO Ryan Glenn painted a chaotic picture from the HR Tech conference (Dec 10):

"I think there was 470 vendors there this year… when you just think about the general willingness for – on the customer side for vendor consolidation... Are you seeing just more willingness like before I wanted these best-of-breed solutions. Now [your company] has that solution, and I can just bring that together."

The "So What": 470 vendors is a nightmare, not a market. "Best of breed" is dead; "Good enough and integrated" is the king.

nCino CFO Gregory Orenstein (Dec 10) noted that this isn't just about IT headaches—it's breaking the customer experience:

"If they go into a different part of the bank, that bank actually has no idea who you are as a customer because it’s a completely different system."

Translation: Siloed tools = broken customer trust. Sell the platform as the fix for their operational mess, not just a tech upgrade.

🔢 By The Numbers

  • 250,000+: The number of seats in Asana's recent $100M deal with a major hyperscaler. CFO Sonalee Parekh (Dec 10) noted they are "the only CWM platform that could scale to that level."

  • 2 Weeks: The timeframe Varonis CEO Guy Melamed (Dec 10) cited for a spike in scrutiny: "Deal scrutiny kind of increased as we watched it in the last two weeks." (Heads up: Q4 close is going to be a grind).

  • 3 Categories: The minimum displacement Zscaler is pitching (VPN, Firewall, SD-WAN) to justify platform spend.

✅ Actionable Takeaways (Your 72-Hour Plan)

Based on this week's signal, here is your playbook:

  1. Build a "Cost Displacement Calculator"
    Don't just show ROI. Show replacement. Create a simple sheet that lists the legacy vendors your platform replaces (e.g., "If you sign with us, you can cancel these 3 contracts by Q2").

  2. Audit Your "Pre-Approval" Language
    Review your contract templates. Do they require a new Order Form for every expansion? If yes, fix it. Pitch "Z-Flex" style models where customers commit to spend but deploy modules without triggering a new procurement cycle.

  3. Target the "Distracted"
    Braze CEO William Magnuson (Dec 11) mentioned "capitulation happening with more subscale or point solution players." Identify the competitors in your space who are struggling or recently acquired. Call their customers with a "Stability & Consolidation" offer.

🔮 The Bottom Line

The market has shifted from "Growth at all costs" to "Efficiency via Consolidation." The winners in Q1 2026 won't be the ones with the coolest features—they will be the ones who make it easiest to buy.

If you require a customer to get three different signatures to buy three different products, you are engineering your own churn.

💧 Water Cooler Wisdom

"The enterprise competitive set is distracted and stagnating in many ways."
— William Magnuson, CEO of Braze (Barclays Conference, Dec 11, 2025)

SOURCES

  • Zscaler (ZS): Kevin Rubin, CFO | Barclays Conference | Dec 11, 2025

  • Braze (BRZE): Isabelle Winkles, CFO & William Magnuson, CEO | Barclays Conference | Dec 11, 2025

  • Varonis (VRNS): Guy Melamed, CEO | Barclays Conference | Dec 10, 2025

  • Paylocity (PCTY): Ryan Glenn, CFO | Barclays Conference | Dec 10, 2025

  • nCino (NCNO): Gregory Orenstein, CFO | Barclays Conference | Dec 10, 2025

  • Asana (ASAN): Sonalee Parekh, CFO | Barclays Conference | Dec 10, 2025

Enjoyed this? Forward it to your CRO.
P.S. If your Q4 forecast relies on "verbal approvals," double-check that the PO has actually cleared procurement. The "last two weeks" of scrutiny are real.