“Heartbleed, Just Another Excuse to Sell Me More Products…”
You and every one of your competitors want to jump on the bandwagon and talk about Heartbleed to sell your customers something new.
Just today, a sales rep in my SVLC Insider’s Circle was called out by his client – accused of selling on the heels of Heartbleed. It seems like a great time to bring up security, but this client has already been hit with so many calls, he’d become sarcastic over it.
What Approach Could you Take That Would Allow You To Break Away From the Competition?
Today in our SVLC Insider’s Circle Web Session, we’ll be covering this. Heartbleed is all over the news, all over the web, and already the topic of every sales call. At some point people get tired of this. But it’s not over. It’s a real issue that needs to be addressed. The question is, can you inject some freshness into this catastrophe and shed new light on it?
We already know SSL needs to be patched and people need to change their certificates. That’s in motion in most companies right now (I hope). In fact, in many organizations, it’s already done. What’s next?
What is the impact of this news to the business? Where are the holes that no one has thought to patch? Where might there be a need for education and guidance?
Forget about selling for a moment and focus on the assets and asset owners. I repeat this over and over in my book, The House & the Cloud (Which is close to being complete in it’s second edition!). I love the idea of setting up executive briefings on this sort of thing. Do managers and executives really understand what happened and where a response or education is needed? Could you or your company come out with something unique like this?
The Power of Executive Briefings
First, the executives are probably getting some input from their IT people, but in most cases they don’t consider their own IT to be the expert. This kind of thing takes some initiative, research, overtime effort, and a quick response to make it work – so it may already be too late. But don’t give up! Give it a try. Try answering questions like:
- What does this really mean in plain English – something managers might be interested in.
- What happens when the end-users in finance visit their favorite shopping sites, and have not changed their passwords – and get hacked? How easy will it be for cyber-criminals to gain access to that company’s digital assets?
- What about people using their home systems – with compromised passwords on their favorite Yahoo sites – and then use that same infected computer to access company systems?
- What about BYOD companies – how will they protect themselves from all the users who don’t change their passwords?
- What about corporate communications? Any advice as to how your clients should be communicating with their customers who are likely using that company’s online web services?
These are just some of the questions I would want addressed if I were a non-technical manager in a large corporation, handling lots of sensitive information.
Briefings like this are not built to pitch a product, they are services you provide to build credibility, and to position your firm as the adviser. If the briefing is designed correctly, it will raise questions. It will build credibility, and it will position your firm to make some recommendations. It will also allow you to understand more about what that company is doing to sure things up after this major cyber event.
This is just one of the many ideas I worked with my clients on. And given a message, we can now start looking at different ways of getting the message out – the media we use. We’ve worked on interviews, videos, special reports, live briefings. There are endless ways to do this – it all boils down to focusing on the people who really do need some help with this, developing a unique and educational message, and delivering in a media/format that will move them to action.
Do something new and innovative with this – don’t get caught trying to pitch another product.
© 2014, David Stelzl
High Tech Business Growth 