BluePrint Marketing

I am a big fan of history. I wish I could read non-fiction more frequently because there are tremendous nuggets in there that can help us do our jobs every day. Part of my job is to be a pattern matcher, for lack of a better term. So the more patterns I see, the better chance there is that I'll recognize it and know what to do. There are very few things that are really "new," and if you've been in the space for as long as I have - you've probably seen everything at least once.

It's remembering it that's the challenge. Thankfully my friend Scott Santucci of BluePrint Marketing remembers lots of stuff and understands how to use history to illuminate how we are failing at sales and marketing today.

In this post (here), he goes through some facts about General George Patton. He was a legend. Scott uses those facts to make the points about how difficult technology marketing is today where differentiation is nil and training cannot happen fast enough to keep pace with change, in a big company anyway.

So what's a marketer (especially a security marketer) to do? Basically you need to change the game. It's not about why your product is better, it's about what you enable the customer to do with your product. But Scott is much better at making the point than I am, so here's a little excerpt:

It is much more valuable to help buyers figure out:

1) What the world will look like once your products and services are installed;

2) How to build a reasonable and accurate business case (note, I did not say ROI) for the project;

3) How to scope and staff the project team;

4) How to help the customer move from where they currently are to a more desirable outcome.

Read the post and pay attention to history. We've all seen it before, you just need to remember.

DISCLOSURE: BluePrint Marketing is a Security Incite client and Scott and I are collaborating on a set of blueprints (templates) to apply his marketing approach to the security business.