We’re continuing today in our workshop, switching gears from security trends to  sales and marketing strategy.  How successful are you when it comes to moving up and connecting with decision makers?  Many sales people will have a meeting or two upstairs, but how many are maintaining these strategic relationships.  I have found that maintaining these relationships requires some serious attention to delivering regular value at the executive level.  Being a nice guy only goes so far…

Selling high tech solutions means staying on top of the IT and security trends.  The sales process is changing – sales people that fail to move up to a more strategic level conversation are going to miss the boat.  If you find yourself getting lazy with new trends and technology, because your large accounts are keeping you busy, you just might find yourself without a job down the road.  Don’t let success destroy your future.  A few links on recent trends to get you started…

• Super cookies : A new stealthier way of collecting browsing history, allowing marketers to build more complete profiles of an individual.  These super cookies are legal, and are not deleted when you delete or deny cookies in your web browser.

• Electronic Communications Privacy Act – it sounds like you have a right to privacy, but in reality the US Government has the right to secretly obtain information from people’s email and cellphones without a search warrant.

• Virtualization requires a different approach to security, but also offers some new approaches to end-point protection.  Cisco, VMWare, and others are working on this right now.

• Federated IT approaches – this may change some of the politics when calling on larger organizations.  Cisco and Microsoft are both doing this – how does this affect your future sales strategy? Will this make companies more secure or less?

© 2012, David Stelzl