paul@paulmisner.com

If you are concerned about your agency’s
information security, I’d encourage you to take a look at one of the
two reports that came out last week regarding the cyber attack on the
Office of His Holiness, the Dalai Lama.

(Overview: Video http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tnK0s6aWzCM,
Text http://government.zdnet.com/?p=4498 )

The Dalai Lama’s organization  made the analysis
public, which is unusual for an information security breach of this
nature.   The reports are available at

http://documents.scribd.com/docs/1jiyoq3c13a9a4udh2s7.pdf

and http://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/techreports/UCAM-CL-TR-746.pdf

It could be argued that there is nothing new in the findings in terms
of attack vectors, exploits, and payloads. What can’t be argued is that
this was a highly structured attack after specific high-level
targets.  This attack is similar to those we’ve seen at many
Federal Civilian Agencies.

One of the big differentiators I saw in this attack was the use the
content of legitimate outbound emails as a way to strengthen the target
profile. The attackers took the content of legitimate outbound emails,
and added malicious payloads hidden in Word and Acrobat
files.  There was no distinction between the text of a
legitimate email, and a compromised email, because they were written
with the same exact text.

The reason that the web and email are exploited as attack vectors is
that these vectors allow non-security personnel to essentially make
network access control decisions. It’s the user that makes the decision
to click on the URL or download the application to their desktop. In
the past, many security people have felt that the problem with web and
email security was due to users who didn’t understand or care about
network security. The Dalai Lama attack shows that there are web and
email based attacks that even the most vigilant and knowledgeable
security person would not be able to determine on face value.

I was enthusiastic about the analysis and detailed forensics in this
report. But it was painfully obvious to me that these reports fell
short when it came to providing solutions.  Some of the
recommendations were to use user based access controls, like SeLinux,
which arguably are very difficult to implement in any environment that
interacts with the outside world.

Preventing attacks like these is the reason why talking to Websense
should be required for your organization. Websense has the technology
to minimize exposure to these sophisticated, multi-channel
attacks.

• Websense Web Security Gateway can categorize, analyze, and inspect
  both known and unknown URLS, including those that contain malware and
  spyware. We can identify zero-day exploits, and provide protection
  before anti-virus definitions or patches are created. It is all but
  certain we would have blocked the links that contained the malware in
  this investigation.

• Websense Data Security Suite can discover, monitor, and protect
  sensitive agency information from being disseminated
  inappropriately.

• Websense Email Security can remove suspicious URLs in the
  cloud,  even before they bridge your network

If your agency is concerned about these types of attacks, it would be
beneficial to talk with my engineers and myself.  To schedule
an appointment with my team, please call  me at
410-740-3490, or email
pmisner@websense.com

• See reports and videos on Websense Security Gateway
  at  http://www.websense.com/wsg

• Information on Websense Data Security can be found at
  http://www.websense.com/dss

• Information on Websense email can be found at

  http://www.websense.com/content/HostedEmailSecurity.aspx

Communications, Information Security, Spirituality

Bob, thanks for coming in. Grab a seat. Sit down. Do you want a cup of water? Listen, I know you only have about 15 minutes, so if you don’t mind, I’m going to do most of the talking. If you like what you hear, then let’s set up another time to have a real two-way conversation.

Well, I took a look at your resume, and it’s great. You read and write Hebrew and Greek, we can really use that. The Founder wasn’t really into documentation, and we really need someone who could help us get some of his speeches down in writing. We’ve got one guy, Mark, whose just about ready to finish up something, and I hear another guy, Matthew is planning on doing some kind of revision.

I see you were referred by Paul? Did you know him when he was a cop? Yeah? I know he really has changed a lot since then. Seems a few years back, our Founder’s Son came down to recruit Paul into the organization. They had a brief talk, and Paul joined up. Changed his name and everything. We really had a lot of doubts about Paul at first, but he’s been one of our top performers, really working hard to penetrate new territiories and develop new markets for us. He’s started a number of User Groups, and he’s written some pretty good white papers for us too. We’re planning on adding Paul’s white papers to our user’s manual.

The first thing I want to tell you is that we are selling the perfect product. Everybody needs it, millions have been asking for it, and there are millions out there who need it, but don’t even know that they do. We really need to get out and push the messaging.

Let me tell you a little about ourselves. We’re an established start-up. We’ve been in business for about 5 years now. Our Founder’s Son started this territory, ran it for about three years, and then returned to Corporate. He’s still actively involved with us, in fact I recommend that you talk with him as much as you can. I’ve heard one of the things he’s working on now is a Sales Club for our top performers, and it’s going to be so incredible, that once you’re there, you’re never going to want to leave.

We had some independent agents do a little bit of publicity for us prior to starting the territory, but by in large, people weren’t getting the messaging. Corporate was getting very concerned about this. If we maintained the status quo, this territory would have just folded to the competition. So the Founder sent his Son down to see if we could change things for the better.

Immediately, the competition tried to do a friendly takeover, and was in discussions with the Founder’s Son. He turned them down, and went out and hired 12 inexperienced salespeople, and made them regional managers. We had some turnover, one of the regional managers later left after he leaked some priviledged information.

The regional managers did a pretty good job with the Founder’s Son’s help. The Son is a amazing public speaker, and he could do some amazing demos. He gave the ability to demo to the RM’s but to be honest with you, sometimes they just lacked the necessary confidence to to the demos as good as the Son. They are starting to get stronger with more experience and faith.

We brought on some more people, but now we are thinking about developing a multi-level marketing program. We’ve just found that our customers make the best salespeople.

I want to be straight with you. There are some bad things about this opportunity. . We have some major competition in our marketplace. We don’t hold marketshare right now. The market leader is a company called Darkside, Inc. They have some real slick marketing materials, and they are extremely aggressive in the market. They will say anything to make a sale. They don’t require a lot of committment, but once a customer has signed up, it can be very difficult to leave, even though Darkside has a very poor product satisfaction rating. The salespeople at Darkside just keep promising and promising, and their customers hope they deliver. Unfortunately, Darkside never delivers.

We did start a competitive trade-in program against Darkside about 20 years ago, and while we are not getting the response we’d like, we are extremely delighted even when we can get just one person to make the transistion. And I’ve never seen a customer who’s used our product correctly feel disappointed after coming from Darkside.

The converse is also true. Nothing makes us more upset than losing a customer to Darkside. Darkside promises everything to the customer, but when they sign up, they will find that the most important things are missing.

Also, there will be a lot of travel. The size of the territory is tremendous. You’ll be living on the road much of the time. We don’t have any cars or planes available at this time; you’ll be limited to foot travel and the occassional donkey ride. You can expense your sandels though, within reason.

We don’t have a lot in the way of technology either. No cell phones, no powerpoints, no laptops, no TV or radio marketing. We are expecting these things in future budgets, but right now, you’re going to have to rely on word of mouth, getting out in the field and pressing the flesh. The one technology that we do have is instant messaging with the Son and the Founder. If you need Him, He’s always available.

Ok, I’ve been beating around the bush. We’ve got a problem with regulations in some of the territories in which we operate. I’m sorry to say this, but our product has been determined to be illegal by the authorities in those territories. In some places, allthough we aren’t illegal, we’ve met such a hostile reaction from the locals, that we might as well be illicit. Some of reps and customers have been arrested, jailed, and even killed. You really need to consider the possibility of this happening to you and your people before you accept the position.

We’re not backing away. We feel that our product is so important, that we have to bring it out to the field, even if local governments feel differently. If we can penetrate some of the markets in these areas, we could overturn these laws barring our service.

You won’t be alone managing. After He left, the Son sent down one of His assistants to work in the field. You really should take advantage of this resource if you take the position. I’ve been told that working with the Assistant is like working with the Son himself. This assistant is very efficient, He seems to be working everywhere at the same time.

I know I’ve given you a lot to think about. Go home, talk it over with your wife, and get back to me. Here’s some of the Founder’s speeches to look at while your making the decision. We are going to add these to the User’s Manual. My personal favorite is the one he did at the Mountain some time back.

Sales, Spirituality

I received a phone call this morning, (Christmas Eve Day)  from a friend/customer of mine, that gave me some (at the time) very upsetting news. A very large opportunity that I was working on for a number of months is likely to have been scrapped due to budgetary requirements.

I felt pretty bad, and I know that this customer will more than likely will have to “take it on the chin” in order to realize that what I was offering them would have protected them. (I sell Internet security and Data Loss Prevention products.)

Then in church tonight, it dawned on me  how myopic my vision has been, and what this one deal had done to me over the past few months. I truly didn’t know what “the big deal” was.

Seems like everyone in my profession is a workaholic, or has the potential of being one.  And I stand before you guilty as charged.  But for the past 3 months, I took workaholism to the extreme.  I was working 12-18 hours a day, 7 days a week,  putting together pricing, presentations, and responding to my other customers. I didn’t take care of myself, I stopped working out.  I neglected my writing, my solutude, my education, and my spiritual life. And worst of all I lost contact with my friends, my boys, and my wife.

And eventhough I put in all this time, I didn’t get my work done to my satisfaction. My performance suffered, and I for the first time ever, I really started to hate being a salesperson. I wasn’t doing what I like to do,  which is calling on customers, and going to appointments.  My job had transitioned from salesperson to desk jockey.

I also love the technology, and wasn’t getting a chance to play with it. That’s how I learn, hands on, so I didn’t have the level of confidence speaking about my company’s technology that I usually have.

Honestly, I was thinking about my family, my church, and my education, when I worked all these hours. This was not about personal gain, but a chance to drop a few grand in the collection plate,  go on a nice vacation, and pay for my Master’s degree.  But in the course of all of this, I totally lost perspective. I forgot about all the other “big deals” in my life.

I forgot that

• God is THE big deal.
• My friends are a big deal.
• My health is a big deal.
• My education is a big deal.
• Rest is a big deal.
• Having fun is a big deal.
• My boys are a big deal.
• And my wife is a great, beautiful, loving, and special big deal.

And yes, my customers and my job are a big deal. But it’s not big enough to warrant excluding all the other big deals.

A salesperson’s job is like a black hole.  I find that I get sucked up in the hole every few months or so.  There are times when it is truly busy, but if I let it happen, “busy times” will be all the time.

I’m sure that I’ll get sucked into the black hole again, sometime, somewhere. But I do hope that by writing this,  I’m reinforcing the importance of all the other things in my life, and buying myself a little more time before I fall in the hole.

I hope that you’ll remember all the big deals in your life, and do your best to keep them all in balance.

If you’re reading this on Christmas, have a merry one.  If you’re not, then make it Christmas for those around you.

Sales, Spirituality, Time Management, Uncategorized

Cover of new Eminem book

My wife was nice enough to snag me a copy of the new Eminem autobiography, “The Way I Am”. From the size of the book, and the artistic cover, I thought that it would be a decent thing to look at while doing the jazz/coffee thang.
I was pleasantly surprised to find a somewhat short (=my attention span) story of hard work, creativity, perseverance, and insight.

I got more out of this read than I’ve gotten out of most of the “motivational” and “creative” how-to business books I’ve read this year.

I really appreciate that Mr. Matthers is honest about some of the mistakes he has made, and mentions that he still has some issues with anger management. The honesty added to the credibility of his story.

I used to do volunteer work with abused and neglected teens. With all the kids I worked with, Eminem’s lyrics struck a chord with them that I didn’t see with any other artist.  He had a similar upbringing to a lot of the kids that I work with, and he showed, by his example, a way to bust out of that life.

I’ll take motivation and inspiration from anywhere I can get it, and I certainly found it in this book.

I don’t know if I’d buy this if I wasn’t a fan of Mr. Matthers. The story is short, and you could probably finish it in a day or so. For the interested, non-fan, library’s probably a good choice on this one.

But if you leave this book around the house, it might become a way to sneak some positive values into a rebellious teen.

The politically correct and easily offended should stay away. This is not your book.

A good read, great artwork, a very nice gift for a fan.

Leadership, Management, Spirituality

Here’s some background for all those tuning in. Umar Hameed is a Master Practitioner in Neurolingistic Programming, or NLP. Umar is my best friend.
In October 2006, I wrote a yearly plan for 2007. My number one fear, the thing that I needed to overcome, was the fear of making cold calls. My mom died in 2007, and the resulting grief just made things worse. Umar gave me a session to work with me on the issues revolving around cold calling, and it worked beyond my wildest imagination, despite the fact that I was sceptical that these results could be achieved.

If you’re a salesperson who knows the job inside and out, and who has studied the profession, but for some reason is taking a dive, Umar could be the key to change things for you. Give him a call, at 410-949-7067, or send an email to Umar@productivitycubed.com.

Umar, This may sound corny, so if it is,  I apologize. I am sincere.  I’m up here working on my 2008 plan, and pulled up the 2006 plan. (no 2007 plan is why I’m here this year). In reviewing it, I found what my number one issue was that I wanted to address was in 2006. Instead of deleting it, I’m giving it to you as a trophy.

In 2006, I was paralyzed making calls. With my mom dying, it just got worse. Thanks to my session with you, my fear of making calls has not only disappeared; Making calls is the part of the job that I enjoy the most now, and I’ve enjoyed tremendous success because of it.

Thank you for being a friend and changing my life.

Paul

Here’s the “trophy” that I gave Umar. It’s a picture of the section of my mindmap that dealt with my fears, from 2006.

www.salespowwow.com/images/cc.png

Management, Sales, Spirituality

I’ve got just about 20 minutes before I go to church today. I’ve been working on a technical issue with the site (phplist to wordpress integration), and so far, it hasn’t worked, and it’s taken writing time away from me. So, forgive me if I cut and paste.

I started working on my 2008 Sales and Life Plan a couple of weeks ago. The first thing I usually do is ask myself, why am I in sales. Here’s the full question, with the answer. The question itself is from Tom Duncan’s “High Trust Selling”.

It’s important to know why you are in sales. What drives you internally to be in sales?

A sales career has given me the opportunity to use my drive, initiative, and intelligence to provide value to my customers and income to support my family. I enjoy the freedom and flexibility of my job, and I like the very direct link between my inputs and outputs. The more efficient I am, the harder I work, the greater income I receive.

I don’t have to compromise my ethical standards to be successful; to the contrary, doing so will cause my career to fail in the long term.

A sales career for me is a culmination of my talents, learned skills, and God given abilities. It’s more fun than work should be.

Why are you in your job? I’d welcome to hear your comments.

Sales, Spirituality

If you have some time, please take a look at the lecture below. It’s by an incredible man, Randy Pausch.

Spirituality

I’ve been doing some work on my old Smartchive site, developing a mash-up of an online class from University of California Berkeley, Introduction to Non-Violence, the Claroline open source learning management system, Wikipedia, and Youtube. You can check it out, if you’d like. It’s at http://www.smartchive.com/s.

Well, we all have times when we can take information from other disciplines, and apply them to our own. And this is one for me.

The lesson that I was working on discussed the work of Kenneth Boulding, who wrote a book called “The Three Faces of Power“. In his book, Kenneth writes of the three types of power:

• Destructive: Power based upon force. The fist
• Economic: Based upon the amount of resources a person/organization has. Using exchange to make others do things. The carrot.
• Integrative: The capacity to obtain what we need and want, in concert with others. The handshake.

Some examples

I’d argue that most airlines actually use destructive power as much as they do economic power. The penalties for changing flights or high pricing for last minute flying is more than economic power. They airlines are taking advantage of the power they hold in being the most efficient way to get you where you need to go.

It’s interesting to see that when Southwest comes into an airport, the ability of the other airlines to practice this type of power diminishes greatly. If force is used, the oppressed will revolt when an alternative becomes available.

Wal-Mart is the king of using economic power with their purchasing department. If you want to sell with Wal-Mart, you are going to have to succumb to their hard core negotiation strategy.

I’m going to focus on integrative power for the rest of this post, because I haven’t been exposed to this term before, yet it is evident to me that it is the most important type of power for long term sales success.

Integrative power involves both sides working together for a mutual goal. The best outcome for an integrated solution is for both sides to win, the second best outcome is for both sides to suffer equally. Integrated power involves persuasion versus coercion, and because of this, both sides feel as they are on the same page.

I think integrative power is the Nirvana of a sales relationship. Your customers realize that you are in this for their and your mutual benefit, and your customers realize that if they squeeze every bit of profit out of you, you’ll either not stay in business, or resent having their business.

It’s funny, and totally organic, but in the 15 years I’ve been in sales, I’ve found that I’ve pretty much drifted away from all of the customers who have either used force or economic power in negotiations. When I have engineers or managers come from out of town to meet my clients, they often comment on how nice my customers are. Part of that is a by product of my customer base, Federal Civilian Agencies, but also it has been a part of a natural selection process that has driven me to customers who work with me.

—

I’m working on another post right now, but I felt it was more appropriate to add this here. One of the things I’ve seen is that in the long term, relationships based solely on economic values almost always fail as well. I think this is largely to desperation from the standpoint of the seller, who negotiates at such a thin margin that it becomes difficult to satisfy the customer after the sale.

Negotiating, Sales, Spirituality

When I started writing on Intregrative Power and Selling in my last post, for some reason it reminded me of the process of buying a car. Before the Internet, it was pretty difficult to get information on how much the dealer was making, what the average true price was for a car, what average finance rates were for a given credit rating. The car dealers used this lack of information as a form of power, and took advantage of this information gap to achieve higher profits.
The end result was that the car dealer won, but the car buyer felt that they were ripped off.
So I started thinking about the relationship between information and power, and how it is used.  It was interesting to find that there is so little on this subject on the Internet.
Obviously, the preceeding was an example of information being used to maintain economic power. The elimination of the information gap, brought on by the Internet in this case, negated to a large extent the auto salesperson’s power. The customer now can look at multiple factors and make purchase decisions based upon costs and alternatives.
It’s pretty easy to see how information hoarding can be used in economic situations.  But it can often be used in situations that involve force. One could argue that Ronald Reagan kept our country out of war during his presidency by making it appear that he would use force when necessary, even though enemy states never knew for sure.  But I’d like to give an even subtler example, this from my own life.

When I was an engineer, I was working on an install at a customer site. In order to be successful, I needed some basic information from a senior engineer.  This engineer did not want me there, so he did not provide me with the information necessary, and as a result, the install failed. I believe that his withholding information to me was a use of force, because there was no economic motive on this engineer’s part to not provide me with this information.

By definition if a relationship is Integrative, information must be as equal as possible on both sides. Both sides must know what the other side’s pains are, and what they can offer to the process. Integration involves both parties feeling that they are on a level playing field, and having equal information is part of this.

Negotiating, Sales, Spirituality

It’s important, as a sales professional, you stop the exploitation of others who enter our career.

http://www.ipetitions.com/petition/Protect_Crews/

For over 30 years, traveling sales crews of young adults are recruited into magazine sales jobs with promises of making money, but essentially are held in an environment equivalent to that of an indentured servant or share cropper.

I met two young women at my house who told me this story. They are both salespeople recruited from the inner city to work on these sales crews. These women, 19 and 21, are both employed by a company called Chapel Sales.

These salespeople are required to work 80+ hour days, often doing door to door sales in dangerous urban areas. The company holds their earnings in an account for them, and if they leave, their earnings are in jeopardy. Their day starts at 8:30 AM, and they work until 9:00 PM. If they don’t meet quota, they have to go to another meeting at 11:00 PM.

One of the workers told me that she was denied money for food, because she didn’t sell, and had to watch others in her group eat. That same salesperson was also the victim of a robbery while selling in an inner-city apartment building.

I’ve done some research, and found that these kids are often the victims of crime, and many of them have been raped, robbed, murdered, or killed in automobile related fatalities.

In the past, if local authorities got wind of this activity, they would simply move these crews to another state. The salespeople are classified as independent contractors largely for the purpose of bypassing labor laws.

I spoke at length with Phil Ellenbacker, webmaster of www.travelingsalescrews.info  Phil’s daughter was one of 7 children killed in a van driven by one of these work crews. Phil told me that the driver was driving on a suspended license.

How can you help?

Research
The New York times did an expose’ of magazine sales crews, and their practices.
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/02/21/us/21magcrew.html?ex=1329714000&en=be91678aaac7038d&ei=5090&partner=rssuserland&emc=rss

Parent Watch is a clearinghouse for information on child and youth labor abuse in the traveling door-to-door sales crew industry. Traveling Sales Crew Info is another site.

www.parentwatch.org
www.travelingsalescrews.info

Sign the petition:
As members of a faith community, we have a unique ability to pressure the Magazine Publishers Association and the Federal Government to give the same basic working conditions for sales crews as we expect for ourselves and our families.  Please sign the petition at the link below.http://www.ipetitions.com/petition/Protect_Crews/

Spread the word
Pass this email onto your faith community, and the faith community of your friends. It’s only by spreading the word that we will get the number of people needed to generate enough attention to this issue. Be ready to act

Magazine publishers receive between 2 & 3 percent of their revenues from traveling sales crews. If our recommendations are not accepted, it may be necessary to place financial pressure on the industry to meet our demands. This may require a magazine subscription boycott.

Finally
If you are approached by a member of a traveling sales crew, do not support them by purchasing a subscription. The best thing that you can do is refer them to an organization like Parent Watch. Thank you in advance for your support.Paul Misner
pmisner@cucc-md.org

Sales, Spirituality