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Archive for the 'Sales Strategy' Category

May

Making Money w/ Security Day Two…Questions

Categories: Opportunities, Sales Strategy and Sound Bites
Tags: David Stelzl, House & the Cloud, sales training, security

Yesterday we completed day two of our Making Money w/ Security Workshop (Online). A couple of questions came up that might be helpful to anyone selling security solutions…

Sound Bites and Helpful Articles

One person asked about some of the sound bites I mentioned as we went through the session on how to effectively use sound bites.

1. I mentioned a WSJ article that describes how the CISO/CIO needs to be involved in the overall security architecture – Here’s the link.
2. In a recent interview with Richard Clarke, reported on by Ron Rosenbaum, the statement was made that Every Major US Company Has Already Been Hacked Into – where is the article? Here’s the link…
3. The WSJ article that references how 70% of small businesses think they are secure -I comment on this in one of my blog posts – here it is.

Typical Responses to the Question, “What are you trying to protect?”

One of the three questions I ask in my book, The House & the Cloud, is “What are you trying to protect?” When given the opportunity to sell a security product, this should be your first question. It’s an Asset Owner question. IT can’t answer this question – so don’t look for answers like – servers, storage, network, etc. Rather, you are looking for internal systems and applications business people rely on. Your best answers are going to be the internal names of systems they use. In one business I worked with, the company kept referring to their FIS system – FIS for Financial Information Systems. I worked on another project involving the ARMS systems – Account Relationship Management. These are the internal systems asset owners use every day to do their job.

Another possible answer might refer to intellectual capital, R&D data, trade secrets involving a new development or secret formula such as is used in Coke products or Michelin tires. The bottom line is, if you’re asking a technical person, you’re not likely to get what you need. Learn to speak the internal language and you’re likely to get a lot further down the road on the sales process.

Today we will be covering effective security assessment strategies. I will be going through several real assessment projects, looking at deliverables, and showing why a thorough security assessment that did uncover “Bad stuff” doesn’t necessarily lead to remediation work. I also want to show some simple ways to rewrite the assessment deliverable to drive that remediation process forward.

May

Integrating Physical and Technical Security – Ingram Micro Sponsored Webinar Replay

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Categories: Sales Strategy and Video
Tags: Information Security, ingram micro, physical security, training, VTN, webinar

Last week Ingram Micro’s Physical Security Marketing Group sponsored a webinar going through the House & the Cloud model with particular emphasis on the physical security side. You can replay this event right here:

WATCH THE INGRAM MICRO REPLAY!

May

Ingram Micro Playback – Making the Move From Vendor to Adviser, David Stelzl

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Categories: Channel Management, Opportunities, Sales Strategy and Video
Tags: author, David Stelzl, distributor, ingram micro, sales training, technology resellers, trusted adviser

Make the Move!

Earlier this week Ingram Micro – distributor for all kinds of technology, sponsored a webinar on Moving From Vendor to Adviser – for it’s technology resellers. In my book, I talk about at least 12 things resellers need to start doing if they want to remain relevant in the coming years. In this 50 Minute webinar I provide five key things to start doing and relate them to information security.

( CLICK TO LISTEN )

Summary:

Becoming a risk adviser to the companies you serve
Conducting effective demand generation programs (See my recent ebook on Event Marketing)
Implementing the secrets of high-priced consultants
Using value-based pricing strategies – no more block time or time and materials.
Redefining the way you approach the proposal process – writing great proposals that actually close business.

Also, make sure you have a copy of my book, The House & the Cloud – available on this blog sidebar for free – in PDF format.

Apr

Returning From Australia: Understanding the Presales Consultant Role

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Categories: Sales Strategy
Tags: David Stelzl, presales consultant, security, solution architect, systems engineer, training

Melbourne Airport

Quick Note On Travel In Australia

Well, finally back in the states, but not yet home…my flight from Melbourne to Sydney was delayed, causing me to miss my flight to the US on Monday…Lessons learned:

Don’t fly Jetstar when you’ve actually got to be somewhere. I flew JetStar four times this week, back and forth from Sydney and Melbourne. Each time, I would sit in the airport listening to announcement after announcement of JefStar delays and cancellations. While the staff seems nice enough, you just can’t count on them. I am still wondering if they will compensate me for the extra hotel stay and meals.

So I ended up flying out of Sydney on Tuesday…scheduled to be home on Wednesday evening.

The Importance of Presales Consultants

More importantly, we finished up our training class on Friday in Sydney…this class was directed specifically to presales consultants / presales SEs. Most companies fail to train their presales consultants. It’s assumed that sales people can sell when they’re hired, so they rarely receive updated sales training – but the role of the presales technical person is more likely to be ignored. I guess the assumption is that the sales person will take care of the selling part – but that’s wrong thinking.

Presales consultants have a very important role in the sales process. Teaching sales and marketing skills to presales consultants is a great investment. In fact, of the many classes I conduct over the course of a year, these attendees seems to be the most appreciative. It provides clarity to their role and a process to follow in moving the sale forward.

NOTE: You might consider sending your presales people to my upcoming online security sales workshop

In class, I encourage sales people to position their presales technical people as mentors of the client’s IT group. Rather than having sales people peer with IT, it is better to set up this mentor relationship with people the IT group will look up to. IT doesn’t tend to look up to sales people simply because they don’t value the sales process. They value technical insights which sales rarely has. When sales people try to peer with IT, it leaves the presales person out – positioning them simply as a supporting role, rather than someone to be respected and looked up to.

When the presales person takes on the trusted adviser role with IT, they are advising them on technology and career direction. IT needs this kind of input. When done correctly, it is valuable to the IT person – far more so than the sales person will ever be. But it also frees up the sales person to move up in the organization without causing IT to feel like they are going over their head in the sales process. Some of the comments I received after class:

“This is a great way to explain our role.”
“Best training I’ve ever received.”
“All the training we’ve received has been product oriented up until now…not very helpful.”
“This will allow me to play a much more strategic role in the sales process.”
“I think I have a better understanding of how I can work to support the sales people.”
“If only my sales counterpart understood this – we could really close some business.”
“How can we get more of our presales people to understand this?”

It’s been a great trip – I’m looking forward to seeing my family. Unfortunately, when I landed at LAX this morning, I found that my connecting flight is delayed until 3:30 – getting me home at 11 tonight. That would be okay, except I have to fly to Chicago at 7:30 am tomorrow…another character building day with the airlines.

Apr

Melbourne Australia, Day Four – The Power of Assessments

By Dave Stelzl's Blog 2 Comments

Categories: Opportunities, Personal Development and Sales Strategy
Tags: board meeting, David Stelzl, Information Security, Making Money with Security, sales cycle, sales training, training

Pizza at Tazios

We’ve completed our second day of the Making Money w/ Security Workshop in Melbourne. Lunch was a highlight of the day – a chance to try out a new pizza place in Melbourne and spend some quality time with the group.

The Role of the Presales SE is Paramount

As we finished up some of our work on the role of the Presales SE, and the powerful influence they can have on the sales process when positioned correctly, one of the attendees was able to share with us how he used some of these principles to line up 7 million dollars in business in one account. This demonstrates the power of performing the asset-focused assessment I talk about in my book, From Vendor to Adviser.

During the course of looking at products with a his client, rather than providing a simple firewall quote, or pricing on a router, he moved toward the risk assessment. Within four hours he was able to compromise this major client’s defenses, and present highly sensitive data to his client – this lead to an opportunity to meet with the board of directors – an honor not many sales people have had. And with the right audience in front of him, he was able to describe, in brief, concrete terms, just how vulnerable this company’s intellectual capital was, and a plan to “get-well”.

Meeting with Board Members

In a typical board meeting you have just about 30 minutes to get to the point – and the delivery must be executive level in language and presentation style. What do they want to know?

What assets are at risk – high impact issues?
What’s the likelihood they’ll be compromised?
Trending – is the risk growing or shrinking and why?
How are we managing this risk?
What steps do we need to bring us down to an acceptable level of risk?

If you can present this in simple, concrete language, providing a credible story with some new insights, you’re in. It’s more about the presentation than it is the written document you provide, however the written part must be short, to the point, and executive level. Be prepared to support your findings with some more technical documentation to be used later with their technical people.

Does this create a longer sales cycle? Absolutely not. You might invest more in the discovery process than you normally would, but the end result is much bigger, and the overall sales cycle generally shorter. If you’re not signed up for my upcoming Making Money w/ Security workshop – you’ll want to get on the list now while there are seats available. (Click the link here to read more about it.) – this one’s virtual so you can do it from your home or desk!

Mar

Bangalore India Day Two: Understanding the Security Sale

By Dave Stelzl's Blog 1 Comment

Categories: Pizza, Sales Strategy and Technology Trends
Tags: bangalore pizza, computing, David Stelzl, mobility, security, speaker, systems engineer, training, vdi, whitefield marriott

We completed our first day of security sales training, but more importantly, here’s an update on Bangalore pizza! On this trip I was happy to see that Marriott (my preferred hotel chain) finally has a hotel in Whitefield, just outside of Bangalore India. The last time I was here I wrote about the surprisingly great pizza at the Oberoi Hotel. I was disappointed to find that the Marriott does not have a pizza on their menu – however, when I showed up for breakfast yesterday, there was a pizza on the breakfast buffet! Notice the egg in the middle of this pizza…if you are looking for my expert opinion on this pizza, you’re out of luck – This is just a little too weird for me…so I opted for a picture instead. The crust looks pretty good for international pizza, but that’s as far as I can go. The good news is, the rest of the breakfast buffet was outstanding.

Our training session was a great experience for me. I love learning from sales teams around the world, hearing about their experiences and how different cultures approach the sales process. Last time I was here it seemed that the Indian run companies were not that interested in security – they felt like they had it covered and the threat was not that great. Things have changed. The tech business is going strong, and the level of security awareness is high. Our class focused on the systems engineer’s role in presales support…my goal here is to give them the tools they need to identify security opportunities emerging from their existing projects – mostly data center, VDI, and core infrastructure as well as mobility projects (BYOD).

The SE role is an important one – and with a little sales training, and some coaching on public speaking, this role can become a tremendous asset to the sales organization. And since most companies neglect giving their engineers this kind of training – those who do create a amazing competitive advantage.

The SE should be the bridge between highly complex technology and the business leader who doesn’t have time to wade through mounds of technical jargon. They need to make decisions. In a two day board meeting there might be 30 minutes on the agenda to review the company’s security posture. Most CIOs are not going to be able to accurately pull together the company’s position, provide accurate insights into the top threats, show how likely the company is to experience loss, and show whether the company’s security posture is trending up or down. IT most likely can’t provide this information either, in a format board members can consume. So who will be that bridge? It should be the presales systems engineer…

Over the next 12 months technology providers would be wise to add this skill set to their existing engineering group. It may make all the difference in the world.

Mar

Bangalore India Day One: ROI on Training SEs

By Dave Stelzl's Blog 1 Comment

Categories: Marketing, Opportunities, Personal Development, Sales Strategy and Value Proposition
Tags: bangalore, board room, cisco systems, David Stelzl, sales training, SE training, security training, selling to executives

747 Frankfurt to Bangalore

I arrived this morning at 2 AM in Bangalore India – I’ve spent the last 9 hours on the plane to the left, a 747 Lufthansa aircraft (traveling from Frankfurt to Bangalore). Note, that’s after spending 9 hours traveling on a USAirways Airbus 330, Charlotte to Frankfurt. Tomorrow I will be working with SEs from Cisco Systems on executive level conversations around information security…everything from global cybersecurity trends, to creating justification, to presentation skills required when engaging executive level audiences.

Two Wall Street Journal articles grabbed my attention while laying over in Frankfurt yesterday. One on the importance of training your employees, the other on the need for better presentation skills when working with executives on information security issues.

The ROI on Training SEs to Sell

The article on training didn’t concern SEs – however it did say that today’s employees, especially those with more desirable skill-sets, are going to demand further training. Everyone wants to grow, everyone wants to improve – at least those employees worth keeping. It’s a sign of poor character to accept the status quo. The writer went on to say that the promise of training is important when trying to attract the right people to new jobs, and that attrition is significantly reduced when training is regularly offered. My focus on the SE is just an observation. It’s been my experience that SEs tend to like sales training. They get the technology – and of course they want to continue to grow that, but adding the ability to sell to their resume is a big boost to their value. The person who is both tech-savvy and knows how to sells is rare and desirable.

A seat with a view

When I teach sales classes I find that SEs are often more attentive, and more serious about learning the content than any other group of people attending. I’ve seen some very technical people become superstars overnight simply by learning how the sales process works, and how marketing science is almost exactly the opposite of the way an SE tends to approach a sale. When a technical person’s eyes are open to the influence they can have, simply by changing a few things about the way they approach sales, a powerful transformation begins to take place. Both resellers and manufacturers of technology would do well to invest more into their SE’s training programs – specifically on sales and marketing strategies. In fact, I know of two very successful resellers who have grown significantly, without the addition of more sales people, simply by empowering their SEs through this type of training.

An added benefit is that it helps sales people work more closely with their SE team on the sales process. When both parties understand where the conversation is going and what it will take to close the sale, they stop stepping on each other’s toes in the sales process.

Board Level Presentations Have to change.

The article on Board-Level Presentations was specific to information security – the topic we’ll be addressing over the next two days. Really, this applies to all executive level management. The bottom line was that executives and board members need to know about security. However, when IT people, and even CIOs and CISOs approach these discussions, they tend to go into too much detail (according to the article). I was excited to see that the very graph I use in my book, The House & the Cloud, was described in the article as “What they need to know”. I’m talking about the “Impact vs. Likelihood” graph. In my Making Money w/ Security workshop, I refer to this graph as “The Most Important Part of The Assessment Deliverable”. Almost nothing else is needed other than some basic descriptions of what goes on the X and Y Axis of this graph. If the technical part of the organization (or more importantly – you) could figure out what assets belong on the X-Axis (the high-impact applications), and how high on the Y-Axis to put them (the measure of likelihood – how likely the organization is to experience a breech or loss of data), executives would know what decisions must be made. Of course they will need to believe your data is correct – but that’s the definition of Trusted Adviser – trustworthy and able to advise – as stated in my more recent book, from Vendor to Adviser.

My seat for 9 hours

On Friday this will be the topic of discussion in our SE workshop. We’ll learn how to take the raw data and put in into this format – and then, more importantly, how to present it. This is something every company that specializes in cybersecurity offerings should be doing.

Feb

Metrics, Smart Numbers, and Critical Numbers

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Categories: Leadership and Sales Strategy
Tags: business plan, cold calls, critical numbers, financial management, KPIs, marketing events, value pricing

This week I’ve been working on several things in the financial realm. I’ll be speaking this weekend out in California at a financial conference and yesterday I was working with a company out in Kansas on value pricing and managing financial metrics.

Financial matters are important to your business. I often see them on the goal sheet. “Make this much money this year…” I don’t consider this a goal – instead, think of it as the result of achieving well planned goals. Tacked up on the cork board in my office I have two sheets of paper – it’s my two page business plan. Why is it so short – because, just like a business owner I spoke with last week, I will never look at my plan if it’s buried deep inside my MacBook Pro. I need it printed – hard copy! Tacked up right in front of me. On it I have several numbers I track…in fact, I maintain three other sheets, which are in large point-size fonts, right above my plan. These are my scoreboards, and they track my monthly numbers – metrics I am keeping track of as I go through my year. Everyone should have this – if you plan to hit certain targets. Here are some numbers you should be watching:

Target Numbers: Call them whatever you want, but these are my annual numbers. Consider the target numbers you need to hit between now and your year-end. I track GP (Gross Profit), MMR (monthly recurring revenue), Overhead % (which I try to maintain at 10%), and Retained Earnings. If you’re in sales – GP and MMR are probably your two key target numbers, but you may have others such as new accounts this year, or a GP number on one of your major accounts.

Critical Numbers: These are generally events or ratios I care about, or that I believe will help me achieve my goals. For instance, I track No. of Speaking Days/month, No. of Public Workshops/quarter, No. of eLearning Workshops/quarter, and No. of consulting days/month. Pick one - I know that if I hit 75 speaking days in a year, my financial targets will likely be met – I track this monthly to make sure I get there. My scorecard, tacked up right above this plan tracks these speaking days by month using a bar chart. One of the clients I am working with is focused on converting a large list of active clients to a new offering we have been working on in the area of security services. This is a simple ratio – what percent of the clients have been converted? We’ve set a goal for this year to convert 25% of them. If we do that, we’ll know our offering is headed in the right direction.

KPIs: Drilling down to the quarter, I have created a table to track the quarter – this gives me a quick understanding of how my year is going. On this list I have important goals to be achieved, along with a metric they will impact. These are my Key Performance Indicators.

Some of the things you should be concerned with if you manage a business or run a division – resource utilization numbers, burden cost, project overruns, and gross profit (forget about Revenue numbers unless you are publicly held), etc.

If you run a sales organization, you should be conducting marketing events. In my book, Event Marketing, 7 Secrets to Profitability, I discuss several points of conversion – these are numbers to track on a scoreboard – numbers that can be improved to drive net-new business. I’ve included a conversion sheet in the appendix of this book that will allow you to start tracking your progress.

If you’re still tracking “number of calls you made today”, and “how many meetings resulted”, you may want to rethink your sales strategy…this is old school thinking.

Jan

Is Security Still a Good Business to Pursue?

By Dave Stelzl's Blog 1 Comment

Categories: Leadership, Sales Strategy and Solution Strategy
Tags: bob bragdon, business plan, cso magazine, cyberwar, security practice, selling security, technology reseller, var

Well in Denver earlier this week I was out and about with just a suite jacket…it was close to 60 degrees during the day. That was the first half of my week. On to Chicago, and it’s definitely winter (as you can see from my snowy car picture).

Today I’ll be working with a company on their security business strategy – their go-to-market plan to grow security sales in 2013. Hopefully you have one of these…if not, it’s not too late. But don’t go into February without one.

This morning’s Wall Street Journal answers the question on how relevant this business direction is: “Security is moving from a functional IT area, often below the paygrade of CIOs, to strategic importance at the highest levels of corporations. IT security’s rise from being a functional area to a board level concern is maybe the fastest I’ve ever seen,” say’s Thomas Sanzone, senior vice president of consulting firm Booz Allen Hamilton Inc…so is this a smart direction? Yes!

I had the privilege of sharing the stage with Bob Bragdon of CSO magazine earlier this week (in Denver), and he shared with us that only about half of Fortune 2000 executives belief they are well equipped in their security strategy. He then showed us a study CSO conducted, showing that really, only about 8% of them actually have something in place – the rest are in big trouble. In an article I referenced last week, Wall Street reported on security, quoting cybersecurity experts who believe that every major company in the US has been infiltrated by hackers – the new wave of threats, according to Bragdon, is more focused on stealing intellectual capital than credit card fraud. Other countries are slowly shifting us of our innovation and intellectual capital. There is no one single incident big enough to lead us into a war, but if we don’t do something soon, we’ll find ourselves completely exposed and crushed in a market of copycats and cheap overseas products. This is not good. (Worse, they are in our DoD systems!)

In a recent meeting with the former CIO of a large Florida university system, who also served in the military working with intelligence, I was told that, “Our country is behind in the area of cyberwarfare.” Other countries are attacking – note the recent attacks on major banks in this country, yet we are unable to prove who is responsible. “It’s no longer a 2-dimensional war” he said, “That’s all our military leadership really understands…”

So is security still relevant? It’s probably more relevant today than it was 10 years ago when organized crime began raiding databases to steal credit card information.

Jan

Another One Day Sales Cycle – It’s a Recipe, Not a Numbers Game

By Dave Stelzl's Blog Leave a Comment

Categories: Marketing and Sales Strategy
Tags: business growth, grow your business, how to close business, recipe for growth, security assessments, writing proposals

It’s a recipe – not a numbers game. (But wait! Notice the picture on the left – somehow Hilton decided to select me as their guest of the day. Little do they know, I’m a devout Marriott Elite customer – but the service here was excellent). Last night I received a call from one of my clients – in one day he closed a new client deal for managed services! How? He was so excited, he called me just to share the excitement.

It’s the conversion process I outlined in yesterday’s video blog post. There’s some event – this can be anything that leads to an assessment. I like 1-to-many events because they’re efficient, but it can be something one-on-one. It must be educational. It leads the prospect to want to at least take a look.

Then there’s “Creating the urgency”. This can’t be FFUD (fabricated fear, uncertainty, and doubt) – it must be real. Usually, if you look closely at the business, in the security space, there is an urgent issue. A high percentage of the companies you call on have a serious problem they don’t know about. My client’s SE found it – they were running critical applications and their back up solution was failing.

Converting the next step – to fee based business, is a matter of persuasion; guiding truth around other’s mental road blocks. My client executed on this flawlessly – the result…contract in hand…master the recipe and grow your value – this leads to business growth.