To my Friends in Sales: I get a lot of sales calls, and I don't mind it, but it means that I've got to keep them quick or they quickly take up too much time. So I created this list of tips for you so we can make the best of your time and mine: I will ask questions on the introductory call about features and prices. Please be ready to answer those. I want that information so I can decide if it would be worth your and my time for a demo. If you don't have the information or can't give it to me, then that's probably as far as the call will go. I appreciate that you are trying to be friendly by talking sports and weather etc., but I'd rather get to the point. Keep it on topic please. Please don't use leading questions like: "If you could succeed in this difficulty, how would that help you?" and such. I know my own situation just fine, what I don't know is your product. So let's keep the conversation on that please. If I decide to ge
Employees are frequently cited as being the weakest link in security. Rather than argue this point, I'm just going to reference a few articles here and move on ( Fortune , Fraud-magazine , Forbes ). Now, in general, employees are considered the weakest link because they don't always make smart decisions. For example, in one company I was at, a phishing email was sent out to many of the employees. The email was from "Emily", the subject was "New Pics" and the body was simply "Check out my latest pics" with a link. I was amazed at how many people clicked on that link and consequently installed a virus. A similar attack came a few months later, but spread over chat instead. I felt that we needed to train our employees better. I should note here that there is a good argument for security software that is idiot proof, that prevents employees from hurting their networks or losing information. I entirely believe in using such software, but hacker