We just finished up an exceptional customer facing event in Miami…In Seth Godin’s book, Permission Marketing, he explains what effective marketing is; the different between interruption marketing and permission marketing.  You can’t effectively mass market solutions and consulting services using interruption or typical marketing strategies.  Instead you must gain permission through things like education, providing value to  the client.   Combining this with something as urgent as data security provides a winning combination, allowing you to continue growing the relationship, increasing permission levels, as you provide trustworthy advice (the ingredients of being the trusted advisor).

In this case we brought together a group of clients, people already working with a solution provider, and gave them the next phase in curriculum…this builds the next level of permission.  We now have permission to meet with executives to discover assets and risk, where as before we only had permission to sell “products and install” to IT.  Using risk analysis, I can gain permission to talk to almost anyone in the organization, without wearing my sales hat. I’ve moved from vendor to adviser.  This is the next step in taking your business to the next level.