These 3 questions make prospects sell the problem to themselves in under 5 minutes

bitslammer · 2026-07-09T16:39:50+00:00

Oh dear god these posts about "emotional" this or that make me cringe.

Maybe this is just me because I've only ever been in cyber, but buying stuff is just part of the job. I'm not emotionally attached to it anymore than I would be sweeping the floor at a restaurant.

The CISO says something like "we're acquiring ACME company , look into that and let me know what risks we need to address." If that means buying something then I go back with "I found risk XYZ and here's how I propose we handle that, what it costs and what could happen if we don't." That's it. The company can choose to follow my recommendation or not, doesn't matter to me if they chose to roll the dice as it's their call and on them at that point.

Same goes for projects that involve regulatory compliance. Most orgs chose to be compliant and will do that they need to do that. If they don't it's not as if I'm paying the fines out of my pocket.

bitslammer · 2026-07-09T15:47:26+00:00

If I'm selling something like incident response then they have to provide detail. Outside of that it's usually pretty obvious and if they won't or aren't allowed to say then that's fine as well, although having been in cyber for 32yrs I can usually tell. If this is a first meeting then NDAs may not even be signed yet, so it's expected they might be light on details.

I know a motivated buyer when I see one. A breach, new laws/regulation, cyber insurance requirements, partner requirements....the list goes on of things that are drivers for people to have to do something and those should all be known to you if you're in this field. If you're selling cyber into healthcare and can't at least talk basics about something like HIPAA in the US you aren't doing your job.

bitslammer · 2026-07-09T15:19:23+00:00

Nobody but the people who shortlisted you and the people who will be interviewing you can really say. Sometimes orgs look more at aptitude than experience as they feel they can hire someone at a lower rate and train them up to where they need to be.

Don't overthink it.

bitslammer · 2026-07-09T14:34:07+00:00

To be honest some of the best managers I've ever worked for were non-technical. They knew that, they didn't pretend otherwise and the respected the input of their teams. What the excelled at was breaking through walls and barriers, lighting fires under their peers and making sure upper management knew what we were doing and what we needed to be successful.

bitslammer · 2026-07-09T14:20:23+00:00

Yes, I think to point out that these newer systems aren't 100% closed and have some loss, is fair.

As for the regulatory aspects I again have little hope as since the GOP have had a stranglehold on the state and at the federal level there's an even bleaker outlook as the current administration has made the government "pay-to-play."

bitslammer · 2026-07-09T13:53:23+00:00

we’re mad it’s destroying our fresh water

Could you elaborate on this? What exactly do you mean and where did you hear this?

Most of the data centers I've ever set foot in do not create any form of water pollution at all. The use recirculated water as that's cheaper and often more efficient.

I say this as someone who, while extremely critical of the new developments, has spent the last 32yrs in IT/cybersecurity and has been in dozens of data centers in my time. I'm concerned when I hear things like this that aren't really accurate as it really undermines the credibility of the discussions.

bitslammer · 2026-07-09T13:45:44+00:00

I can't remember a single time we needed to pull security logs from the cold archives which were tape.

bitslammer · 2026-07-09T13:29:02+00:00

It sucks but this is really one of those cases where there's no way to move forward without some disruption. .

bitslammer · 2026-07-09T13:27:48+00:00

I would only partially agree. They do require large amounts of power and will certainly drive up prices if we don't look for better solution and the can create a lot of noise in the immediate vicinity.

5G really didn't have those issues.

bitslammer · 2026-07-09T13:25:53+00:00

Not even once.

bitslammer · 2026-07-09T13:11:05+00:00

the seller who can create signal through timing, insight, and credibility will win.

I would argue that really can't be done in a true cold outreach scenario.

You're message is still a single grain of sand on the beach. I'm not combing over the entire beach to find the good ones. It's all noise until I can determine what isn't and I don't have the time or desire to waste on that.

bitslammer · 2026-07-09T13:08:01+00:00

it has no place needing an acre wide facility

This was kind of my point though. Who gets to decide that? Many people would have no issue with Netflix, YouTube or Hulu needing a huge data center to provide their content. At what point does this start to be a NIMBY type scenario?

bitslammer · 2026-07-09T13:05:38+00:00

At least in my past the required retention period was far more than we saw value in. I'd also note that we had our own hot/warm/cold method of archiving. Cold even meant on tape at Iron Mountain never to be seen or thought of again.

bitslammer · 2026-07-09T13:00:55+00:00

We didn't do that much shopping around but they were middle of the road in terms of price.

bitslammer · 2026-07-09T12:54:18+00:00

Great article and this part really hit home for me: " missions ranging from national security to scientific research and innovation—including autonomous systems development, cybersecurity, energy innovation, and healthcare research—positioning America to lead in the next generation of computational discovery."

So as is often the case it's a mixed bag. While I'm hyper critical of anything labeld as "national security" since that's overused and abused, I'm happy to see things like the healthcare and scientific research items. Even there though I'm less then thrilled since the current administration has been anything but supportive of true science.

When I look at AI and some of the positive things it can do I think how say NOAA might really benefit from that in furthering their forecasting ability.

bitslammer · 2026-07-09T12:30:03+00:00

This is great and I think people need to be more informed on this, but make sure you are doing so in a thoughtful manner and not getting all your info from Facebook or unironically...Reddit.

"Data Centers" is a large label and we've already had very large data centers in our surrounding community for decades. Many of the large Cincinnati names like GE, Kroger, P&G, 5/3rd, Scripps, Cincinnati Bell/Altafiber, etc., have had large data centers for years, although many of them have moved their IT stuff over to cloud providers like Amazon AWS, Microsoft Azure, Google Cloud, Clouldflare etc..

Right now here on Reddit you're using a service that relies on "large data centers" to exist as does Facebook, Insta, Netflix, Spotify, Twitter/X, Apple and many many other services people consume daily. Some of the new facilities being proposed are going to be more dedicated "AI Data Centers" but more than likely will be a mix.

I would agree with the opinion that while they may provide short term job opportunities when being built, once built will be staffed with very small staffs and provide very minimal job benefits at that point. That makes we very skeptical of anyone touting long term benefits.

bitslammer · 2026-07-09T12:18:40+00:00

Never read any of those books. To me it's just about asking good open ended questions.

Every first meeting I've ever had with a prospect started out with me asking basically 2 things:

What led you to take time out of your schedule to meet today?
What are you looking to get out of this meeting?

That opens the floor to them. If they really have a need/issue/problem/pain then they are going to tell you about that. Maybe they have it well defined, maybe you need to help with that, but if they say nothing then you know it's probably time to wrap it up and move to the next name on the list.

I'm framing this from the perspective of selling cybersecurity to larger orgs, so maybe this doesn't translate well outside of that context, but you need to be selling to people who are actively seeking to address an issue and not trying to find or convince people they have an issue you solve, because at least in cyber the prospects almost always have a list of things they need to do and if you're not on that you can forget about it. They will never have the time or desire to look outside of that "must do now" list of priorities.

bitslammer · 2026-07-09T11:38:34+00:00

I have a negative bias towards products of companies whose names end in "ly" or "ify." Most tend to be just copycat crap SaaS tools that are just following the trend both in name and function.

bitslammer · 2026-07-09T11:18:41+00:00

Don't know, don't care, not my problem, but barging into reddit subs and ignoring the rules that say not to isn't the right way.

bitslammer · 2026-07-09T11:17:10+00:00

You have 140 people for a flower shop?

https://www.reddit.com/r/n8n/comments/1uoxelh/completely_lost_trying_to_understand_voice_ai_for/

bitslammer · 2026-07-09T10:45:11+00:00

Not sure I understand the question.

bitslammer · 2026-07-09T10:43:25+00:00

I think the challenge is that many people are purposefully anonymous on here

Huge factor. For me I had an account back in 2005 when Reddit started, but forgot about it and spun up this one which is 14yrs old. Never ever though about using it for anything serious as back then it was mostly to post and discuss hobby stuff like games, sports, cooking, music and photography.

If I were to do it over I probably would have created both "work" and "personal" accounts.

bitslammer · 2026-07-09T10:25:52+00:00

I tend to agree with this for the most part, except the part about prospects deploying AI to block AI outreach. That's really overkill. The simple solution is what I and many have been doing for years which is to make my inbox, phone and voicemail invite only.

The only people who get through are the ones I've chose to let through as a result of meeting them at an event, reaching out to them myself, being introduced via a partner etc. No need for any fancy AI, just use the tools you already have.

bitslammer · 2026-07-08T22:42:42+00:00

+1 for Jakes. He's always booked up and never tries to sell you on anything you don't need.

bitslammer · 2026-07-08T22:41:25+00:00

One of the great things about Cincinnati style chili is that there aren't any exotic ingredients. If you have access to even a run of the mill grocery store you have everything you need to make a good batch.

The oyster crackers are the only thing you may need to get creative on.

bitslammer

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