Sound Bites « Dave Stelzl's Blog

Archive for the 'Sound Bites' Category

Oct

Marketing Requires Passion

Categories: Marketing, Sound Bites and Wise Counsel
Tags: assessment, David Stelzl, discovery, marketing consultant, need analysis, selling, technology sales speaker

Everyone wants one!

Passion drives the sale. If you’re not passionate about what you are selling, change jobs. As I prepare for next week’s Venture Tech Network conference in Las Vegas, it occurs to me that no matter how great your questions are, your references, the technology you sell, or the team behind you, if you don’t look and sound enthusiastic, the sale is dead.

I was reading a book on Disciplines over the weekend which stated, “Only 10% of employees like their job.” 10%! That means in a group of ten people, nine don’t like what they spend most of their day doing. This is sad. How can these people perform at peak levels if they don’t enjoy what they do? In fact they can’t. The chapter went on to say that most employees are not performing well.

I can imagine that in a factory setting or some monotonous manual work regime, that the job can still be done with some level of quality, but not sales, and not marketing. If you don’t love what you sell, move on to something else. On the other hand, if you can find the excitement in what you do, attitude outsells skills and features every time.

How do you do this? In my coming book, From Vendor to Adviser, I talk about people groups; the importance of figuring out the people group you want to serve in the work you do. When you love the people you call on, work takes on a whole new meaning. When you see your people group’s situation improving because of the value you bring them, everything changes. Try this, stop focusing on the products you sell, and consider really taking an interest in the people you serve. Discover their needs at a personal and business level, and see how you can remove stress from their lives by improving how they conduct business. This brings much greater fulfillment than simply selling a widget.

Aug

Anonymous News; trends we should be watching

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Categories: Demand Generation and Sound Bites
Tags: anonymous, attack, David Stelzl, hacktivist, security briefing, technology speaker

Anonymous – just in the past few days these events have either happened or been announced as threats. As I prepare to speak at a luncheon for technology managers in the Northeast this week, it is clear that the trends are changing – information theft is still a huge problem, however, Anonymous clearly dominates the cybercrime headlines with their hacktivist agenda. As you work with your clients, “briefings” on what actions companies should be taking, should be forefront in your mind. Especially if you call on larger accounts, it makes sense to educate business leaders on the trends we are seeing here, the types of activities that might be targeted by such a group, and what defense systems must be deployed to counter such an attack. It’s clear that putting up a firewall doesn’t work.

1. Facebook threat – Nov 5th…we’ll see what happens! – protest over privacy concerns.

2. Fullerton Polica (California) – announced attack over homeless man’s death

3. Bart (San Francisco) train system…shut down due to protest

4. Operation Britain – scheduled for Oct 5 in response to Governments “Iron fist”

5. Syrian Ministry Of Defense Website Hacked By ‘Anonymous’ for brutality

6. 7.4 GB file with emails and personal information from 56 different law enforcement agencies

Aug

BART Clearly Does Not Have it Covered

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Categories: Sound Bites
Tags: anonymous, bart, firewall, reseller, security, Technology

Again, Anonymous proves that IT does not have it covered. Announcing an attack, and then successfully executing, is a demonstration of the power hackers have. This time a political move over blocking cell phone coverage on the train, Anonymous posts customer lists with associated information of those traveling on BART.

The real problem here is in BART’s approach to security, not Anonymous and their agenda. Who is responsible for BART’s security strategy? Are people mad at Anonymous, or those watching over BART’s data. If Anonymous didn’t exist, it would be someone else. It’s a wrong mindset to think cybercriminals should go away – because they won’t.

Jun

Is the LulzSec Group a Threat to Your Clients; David Stelzl Comments…

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Categories: Sound Bites
Tags: anonymous, David Stelzl, hacker, lulzsec, sales training, security speaker, technology sales speaker

“On Friday the group posted a torrent on The Pirate Bay containing internal documents from the Arizona DPS to protest its anti-immigration policies…,” Are your clients at risk?

This happened today, an attack on the AZ state police department – following a long list of incidents brought to government organizations as well as Sony, Sega, Nintendo, and others, by the LulzSec and Anonymous hackers. Are we less safe all of the sudden? The answer is no…it’s just more apparent. These groups are using the same tools and techniques expert hackers have used for years (I’m not suggesting I know exactly what they used to break in). My point is, companies have been completely vulnerable for a long time. The problem is, the evidence has been hidden. These groups have chosen to make a political statement, while groups such as those who worked along side Albert Gonzales were stealth.

The change here of course is the nature of the attack. Suddenly you are at war if you take a stand that opposes another’s ideology. The issue here:

“SB1070 is a controversial anti-illegal immigration measure in Arizona that makes it a misdemeanor crime for aliens in Arizona who have been required to register with the U.S. government to not have their registration documents with them. It also imposes stiff penalties on people who harbor illegal aliens. “

This could be government policy, your client’s position on a government policy or social issue, or a new product launch or customer service issue your client is involved in that somehow disturbs an opposing group. Suddenly your clients are at risk if they do anything these groups don’t like. The next step will be for groups like these to attack on behalf of disgruntled people who are willing to pay to shut someone down. Of course this sort of thing is not new, but expect this trend to continue, even if law enforcement does manage to track these individuals down. It’s a small scale cyberwar.

What’s at stake? Many companies, when asked, say they aren’t that concerned with security. They don’t have anything worth money, or they don’t really care about down time. What that really means is, they really think something will happen to them. In other words, the likelihood is low, therefore the impact is not worth worrying about. AZ police are suddenly concerned…

“AZ DPS documents …show a mishmash of …files, including various situational awareness bulletins, a complementary invitation to a border security conference, and a street price list for various illegal drugs. There also are personal photos of men holding fish, ostensibly after catching them.

Additionally, the torrent contains a graphic video–apparently taken from a camera inside a police cruiser–showing an AZ law-enforcement officer throwing an unidentifiable metal object across a highway and then being hit by a car. The files are assumed to have been extracted from the email accounts of AZ DPS personnel.”

On one video I viewed online, the issue was security of their officers. Interviews online explain that having stolen documents and personal information put their team in jeopardy. This would be true of just about any company. While the IT people are claiming to have it covered, and company budget approvers are half listening but more intent on saving money, employees are at the mercy of hacker groups who could easily have their payroll and personnel records published online in a few hours.

WHERE DO WE GO FROM HERE?

Putting cybercrime briefings together for your clients is likely the highest value you can be providing to those who believe they have it covered. This issue is almost always a belief that they are not likely to suffer harm for whatever reason. If you want to reach decision makers, put your high end consultants on the stage discussing what is happening, showing why, relating possible impact of local business leaders, and offering advice on what to be doing.

COMMENTS and EXPERIENCES WELCOME…

** Quotes taken from InformationWeek: http://www.informationweek.com/news/government/security/231000377

Jun

Citi Hack – Caught By Detection, More Justification to Sell More Security

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Categories: Sound Bites
Tags: citi group, Compliance, credit card hack, David Stelzl, hacker, Managed Services, security, security trends, technology motivational speaker, technology sales training, Value Proposition

Can companies really say, “We’ve got it covered?

Caught by detection, but too late to stop thieves from accessing over 200,000 customer credit card credentials. Citi is a big company under strict federal security guidelines, and compliant as far as we know, at least up until this latest discovery. As I read these reports, I recognize that compliance is needed – companies don’t take action just because there’s a threat. But having worked for one of this country’s largest banks year ago, I know security is taken seriously at firms like Citi. The problem is, you can’t really keep every door closed and locked, every day. Especially when insiders can be paid off. In this case, there is no report of insider cooperation (that doesn’t mean there isn’t any), however we’ve seen this before – a website used as the open door to gain access to sensitive data. The world demands access to their “stuff” through portals, VPNs, and through the use of personal computing devices that now include smart phones and iPads. Can companies really keep data safe? It’s almost impossible to lock down every access point and still provide access. Software has bugs in it, and bugs represent holes to be exploited. Foreseeing this in every case is just not reasonable.

What an we expect going forward?

According to experts – “The expertise behind the attack, … is a sign of what is likely to be a wave of more and more sophisticated breaches by high-tech thieves hungry for credit card numbers and other confidential information.

The “… demand for the data is on the rise. In 2008, the underground market for the data was flooded with more than 360 million stolen personal records, most of them credit and debit files. That compared with 3.8 million records stolen in 2010, according to a report by Verizon and the Secret Service, which investigates credit card fraud along with other law enforcement agencies like the Federal Bureau of Investigation.” New York Times…

It’s been some time since Albert Gonzalas made his way into larger companies including the historical breech at TJX. Recent news has focused more on politically motivated attacks by Anonymous and the LulzSec group – attacks that didn’t target financial information and seemed to be motivated by something other than ID Theft. This article brings us back to the bigger issue that has plagued companies for over a decade – tens of thousands of hackers and hacker groups targeting financial information that will in turn be sold online for billions, and in recent reports, over a trillion dollars in revenue.

It would seem that, while companies can be doing a lot to beef up security, it is simply not true that some IT group out there has their company covered. Technology companies must be equipped to address this either internally of through partners. Application providers can greatly increase their value by having security experts on staff, and managed services providers should be approaching their offering from a security point of view. Data center experts, unified communications, SMB resellers and larger enterprise consulting groups; everyone should be thinking – Security.

Mar

New York City: Speaking On Security Trends

By Dave Stelzl's Blog 1 Comment

Categories: Sound Bites
Tags: data security, David Stelzl, Demand Generation, gawker, hack, Marketing, partner, power grid, speaker, stuxnet, symantec, weakileaks

Photo taken by David Stelzl

Heading home from New York this afternoon after a great two day trip. I spent day one working with sales people on effectively presenting security strategies to their clients in a series of one-on-one meetings. Day two, I was invited by Symantec and one of their top partners, to speak to a group of executives over lunch at Jack’s Steakhouse. A couple of things that make this particular time in history interesting….

If you’re not up to date on Stuxnet and how malware evolved to a new level over the past 18 months, you need to be. It’s rare that I read Vanity Fair, but this a linked article is worth a read to catch up on over a year of analysis and developments – cyberwar is finally a reality! But just as important – this kind of technology poses an entirely new level of threat to your clients. (Read it!)

Secondly – while Wikileaks and the fiasco involving Pvt. Mannings is not new news, the implications are significant. Reading through the developments between the Anonymous group, Mastercard, Paypal, and Amazon demonstrate that groups like this do have the power to affect large corporate networks at will. Add Gawker in there and you see that stealing the account database and decrypting it is not that difficult when dealing with real hackers.

Most of my audience didn’t know our power girds, airforce traffic control, and F-35 databases have been hacked over the past year. Why? These are important events that demand companies take action and start thinking seriously about securing data. This is not a simple task…learn to articulate this and you may find yourself advising these firms at the highest levels.

Feb

Presenting with the “End in Mind”

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Categories: Sound Bites
Tags: call blitz, call list, data security, follow up, lead follow up, leads, leads group, permission marketing, presentation, reseller, sales, Sales Plan, sales training, selling, seth godin, Technology

If you’ve read Stephen Covey’s classic on life management, Seven Habits of Highly Successful People, you may remember habit 2, Beginning with the End In Mind. This is key to any great sales call, marketing event, or other demand generation activity. Having done many executive luncheons, one of my clients’ first questions is always, how many people should we invite. On their mind is, “How many can we attract”. My first question back is usually, “How many can you effectively follow up?”

Obviously there are the preparations that take place before a call, but what happens after you present? Do you have a planned ending to your meeting that leads to, what Seth Godin terms, Permission? And more importantly, do you have the bandwidth to stay on top of everyone who responds to your “program”? Going in without a plan is like going in with a plan to waste your call list.

Jan

Calling on 100 Prospects at One Time!

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Categories: Sales Strategy and Sound Bites
Tags: David Stelzl, educational marketing, event, lunch and learn, powerpoint, presentation, sales machine, sales training, solution selling, speaker, Stelzl, Technology

How Did we Call on 100 Prospects at One Time?

With the right presentation you can sell to hundreds of people at one time. Just this morning I met with nearly a hundred CIOs and executives in Charlotte, North Carolina. Most sales calls target one company, and most lunch-and-learns can hardly be considered sales calls. But in this case we are combining the two to create a more efficient sales effort. How does it work?

First, lunch and learns are generally done by inviting existing IT-level clients. This is a great way to express appreciation to your clients while providing technology updates with the hopes of discovering new projects within the group. In my experience, most of these efforts produce immeasurable success and rarely lead to anything you wouldn’t have found just be staying in contact with your customer base; still, not a bad thing to do for your best customers.

Educational marketing is different. It targets a group of buyers using educational presentation material relevant to the executive audience; people who can buy. It’s like casting a wide net to capture a large group of potential buyers. We market the event much like you would a wedding, including professional looking invitations with an RSVP. It’s “invite only” in order to limit lower level attendance, and generally done over a meal to encourage a networking sort of event. Creating a place for executives to network within their circle makes this type of event work.

The keynote I gave this morning was designed using the marketing concepts I teach and continue to talk and blog about; mainly, knowledge gaps, commitments, interruptions in thinking, and other, to create an Aha! moment. I want my audience sitting their asking themselves, “Are we addressing these issues?” If the issues I bring up are urgent and credible, I can move my audience to the point of believing, it would be foolish not to at least check! Educational content that leads to urgency – followed by an investigation. This process is then used as the discovery aspect of the sales process, which then creates opportunity for remediation or other project efforts. In the case of liability issues, these sales lead to recurring revenue or annuity. In many cases we will motivate seventy-five percent of our audience to move to an assessment, and many of my clients experience up to ninety percent of these moving to projects and managed services.

This is the power of presentation. Every sales person should be capable of delivering this type of program, or perhaps putting this type of event together with an outside speaker and following up. The results far out perform traditional selling efforts.

Oct

The New Denial of Service Attack

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Categories: Sound Bites
Tags: denial-of-service attacks, firewall, Information Security, information security budgets, information security spending, international cyber-theft ring, security sales training, selling security solutions, The cyber-theft ring, zues

“If the financial institutions can’t reach the victims to ask about the suspicious activity, the transactions often go through” (WSJ)…Here’s how it works. Hackers, using automated dial programs, bombard companies with calls, tying up their phone lines, while raiding brokerage and banking accounts. The banks will try to contact the business if they suspect foul play, but if they can’t get through, they will likely let the transactions go through. Knowing the trends puts you in the adviser role with your clients – here is just one more example of the simple, but effective tactics being used by cybercriminals right now.

In a recent string of crimes, hackers “allegedly used a “malware” program called “Zeus Trojan” to hijack accounts, embedding it in email messages and attachments. Once installed, it grabbed user names and passwords from banking and brokerage accounts, enabling the alleged thieves to drain the accounts.” Once again, firewalls were no match against tactics that use unsecured email systems to break in. Another opportunity for securing email and monitoring network activity as well as end-node security.

And this went on for a week with some victims! Read the article, it’s worth the 5 minutes it will take you: (CLICK)

Sep

The New Identity Theft – Businesses are victims too

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Categories: Sound Bites
Tags: corporate identity theft, security sales training, selling security solutions, stopping ID theft

The 9/23 Denver Post Article on Business Identity Theft is a “Must Read” (CLICK)!

Especially if you are calling on business owners or top executives of privately owned businesses. The article focuses on Denver, however they explain that this is an easy hit, and likely happening all over the country! Here are the basic sound bites, then read the article to fill in the details…if you know of other articles on this subject, please reference them in the comments section of this blog post…I think business owners will get this message if delivered properly.

It’s easy! “Corporate information is hijacked and millions of dollars in phony credit purchases are made…”

1. Corporations are all registered online today, so with an Internet access point, anyone can access public records of a corporation. The point of doing this is to make changes, which anyone can do if they pay the fee – which might be around $10. By doing this you can simply add your name to the corporate records as an officer. Another tact is to find the corporate records of a dormant account – a company that is not active, of which there are many.

2. Once this is in place, the new officer can apply for credit. The credit checks will be done through D&B and of course they will be looking at the public records to verify that you are in fact an officer. (Note, it is possible to protect this information, however it costs more money and many companies have not spent the extra money to do this).

3. Once credit is approved, and given this is a company, credit allowances are likely to be much larger that individual credit lines, the fake officer now has the ability to get credit cards and begin spending. This is so easy, I’m surprised it took this long for someone to figure it out.

What’s the point? If you sell information security solutions, you now have one more thing to advise executives on. The key to selling security is demonstrating an ability to measure impact and likelihood of loss, and then showing that likelihood is higher than expected and high enough to demand action. This is just one more area where likelihood is high, and business owners are in the dark.