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By Ann Grove, Logical's President
Original post: 8/2/2017 Updated: 4/11/2019 If you are looking for opportunities to keep your finger on the pulse of security, podcasts fit the bill. Here are some of our favorite security podcasts, in alphabetical order.
Let us know if you have any podcasts to add! About Ann Ann Grove, president of Logical, is Logical’s lead consultant. Logical's clients include security and compliance vendors as well as penetration test consultants.
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Ann Grove, Logical's President  Photo credit: Unsplash Recently I stumbled across an article that opened my mind to the value of making peace with rejection. The fledgling author set out to get 200 rejections but along the way heard "yes" to many great opportunities and increased her income by nearly 1500% .
So it set me to thinking about rejection in a whole new way. Really, if I got every gig I went after, it would be a sign that I was aiming too low. I've decided that rejection is simply a sign that I am striving to fulfill my full potential. Reach, my friends! The world is full of opportunity for those who are willing to face rejection.  By Ann Grove, Logical's President
Note from Ann: I wrote a draft of this article in 2012 and just stumbled across it today. Still true! Whatever you are bringing to the market, you really don’t need to create a brand … because whatever you want to brand, even if it is brand new, already has some brand attributes. A brand is simply the feelings or themes associated with an item or experience. When people think of you, your company, or your products or services, they probably already have some adjectives in mind. That is a brand. What can have a brand? Practically any noun has a brand. Your dog, cockroaches, a bridge you travel, your mother-in-law, the governor, and Homeland Security, to name a few. Each evokes a certain connotation when mentioned. Even some experiences such as sky diving have a brand. Examples:
So really your goal in a branding exercise is to better manage or even change your brand’s themes and messages and also to differentiate your brand so that it is distinguishable from other brands. You want to influence the picture that pop’s into people’s heads when they think of your brand. That’s not always as simple as adjusting your messaging; in fact often, especially with mature brands, upleveling brand perception requires a dedicated effort to deliver that delightful customer experience the brand already aspires to. Yes, it can be hard work. But since the market consistently moves to commoditize every product and service to create a race to the bottom for costs and fees, brand management and brand differentiation are absolutely necessary for brand success. Other thoughts Here are some related topics I might hit in future articles:
Ann has been writing about branding since at least 2007 when she created a job hunter boot camp, titled “Personal Marketing 101: The Brand Called You.” She would love to work with you on your next white paper project or any other compliance or security documentation you need. Reach Ann using the Contact page. By Ann Grove, Logical's President  Photo credit: Unsplash True story: I once helped a client go from winning an average of one out of 10 Requests for Proposal (RFPs) to winning 12 out of 15. In other words, they went from a 10% win ratio to 75%. For my three crazy months with them, we won won won.
Another success: a different client had an existing customer that issued an RFP specifically written to my client’s perceived weaknesses. After reviewing our response, the customer canceled the RFP and continued retaining my client. More typically, I help organizations that have a 10 to 15% win ratio; together we increase the win ratio to 35 to 50%. A good foundation Of course, these organizations have a good foundation to build on. They typically have an understanding of their own strengths and the strengths of competitors, a system to identify opportunities, and a system to make good go-no go decisions to ensure they aren’t shooting blind. They also have some great, willing client references. Still the win ratio doesn’t align with these strengths. Incorrect focus The most common problem that depresses an organization's win ratio is that it values holding down expenses more than it values increasing sales. It saves money by not hiring a skilled RFP writer or perhaps not hiring enough of them or not deploying technologies that allow a team to scale. Therefore, a significant portion of RFP responsibilities fall to others such as sales, business development, administrative, and technical personnel. Although some organizations believe that sales and business development professionals are well positioned for proposal development because they are intimately familiar with clients and sales messaging, these people are talkers, not writers. Because the gold is still in the phone for the most part, let’s keep those people talking and find someone else to do the writing. But don’t look to technical and administrative parties to pick up the slack; they are unlikely to get exceptional results due to the burdens of their primary (sometimes billable) roles. Some bad math The irony is that making do in this case doesn’t actually make sense mathematically. How much is an organization saving if the lack of a solid proposal generation infrastructure is keeping the win ratio at 10 to 15% instead of 35 to 50%? Besides suppressing revenue, this approach holds down the average deal size, significantly limits the number of RFPs an organization can pursue, and distracts the organization. Win more often Even without a dedicated writer, it is possible to win more often by doing what that top-notch writer would do. He or she would help the proposer differentiate and stand apart from competitors based on factors in addition to price. Think about the RFP process – it is designed to create a level playing field so that the buyer can compare apples to apples. An RFP demands a structured response that drives buyers and proposers to view offerings as commodities with a heavy emphasis on price. In fact, the RFP system is founded on the belief that all offerings are roughly equivalent. The only way to combat this push toward commoditization is differentiation. The winning offer stands out from the pack, demonstrating that the winner is proposing not merely an apple but a superior fruit. The response points out how the buyer will not be well served by an apple. This doesn’t eliminate consideration of price but it does demote its importance by placing it within the context of other factors. I’m not talking about using slippery sales language. I’m talking about helping the buyer understand its true needs. For instance, my responses often include follow-up questions that the buyer may want to put to short-listed vendors, to deepen the buyer’s understanding of proposed offerings. Conclusion Let’s get to the bottom line. What is required to win more often? An organization begins winning more when it realizes that the RFP response and any short-list presentation are opportunities to address the requirements hidden behind the stated RFP requirements. About Ann Ann Grove, president of Logical Writing Solution, Inc., helps security teams and security vendors with all sorts of communication including RFP responses, proposals, and statements of work. She also helps enterprises with security policies and documentation. Learn more at https://www.logicalwriters.com or call Ann at +1.717.891.3282. By Ann Grove, Logical's President  We can expect major shifts in the common practice of requiring potential buyers to provide personal information in exchange for access to white papers and webinars as regulators begin enforcing the EU’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) which became effective in May 2018.
The GDPR decision against Google today directly relates to these lead generation practices. The French GDPR regulator (CNIL) found that Google users were automatically opted in to have their data tracked for the purpose of delivering personalized ads because the opt-in checkbox was ticked on by default; the default should have been a clear checkbox to indicate opt out. In addition, the blanket consent should have been split into multiple checkboxes so that a user would consent separately for each use of the private information, CNIL found. “This sanction is particularly detrimental to Google as it directly challenges its business model and will, in all likelihood, require them to deeply modify their provision of services,” Sonia Cissé, Managing Associate at Linklaters, a law firm, told Reuters (https://www.reuters.com/article/us-google-privacy-france/france-fines-google-57-million-for-european-privacy-rule-breach-idUSKCN1PF208). Many Business-to-Business marketers employ practices similar to Google for “gating” content and so may likewise soon find themselves reworking their business models. Gating is the process of requiring users to submit private contact information in order to gain access to high-value content such as white papers and webinars. Potential GDPR problems with gating include:
In addition, certain conditions render consent invalid under GDPR. For instance, consent is invalid when private information is not realistically needed to deliver a service. This seems this would directly apply to gating. The UK Information Commissioner’s Office’s Guide to GDPR explains that organizations should “avoid making consent to processing a precondition of a service.” Since GDPR enforcement is relatively new, the exact impact on gating is unclear. However, it is clear that by focusing on the collection and use of private information, GDPR regulators are taking a markedly different approach from US privacy regulators who focus fines almost exclusively on breaches. In part to avoid GDPR risk, some organizations such as ChartMogul have discontinued using gating for now (https://blog.chartmogul.com/gated-content/). About Ann Ann Grove, a Certified Information Privacy Professional, writes about security and privacy for vendors and consultancies. She also helps enterprises develop policies and procedures and documents workflows for security and compliance. Please ask Ann if you would like to republish this article. |
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