Comments for mike.trachta

Comment on SSIS: Returning NULL in a conditional statement by stevet

stevet — Tue, 19 Jan 2010 21:06:29 +0000

Stumbled upon this one myself. To expand on this anser, one can use the straight NULL(DT_STR,27,1252) by itself, but will have to prefix when in a conditional statement

Comment on Verisign Powers iPhone Two-Factor Authentication by mike.trachta » Facebook to Support OpenID

mike.trachta » Facebook to Support OpenID — Wed, 29 Apr 2009 12:09:09 +0000

[...] Now I’ll be able to log on to Facebook using my iPhone as a virtual token. [...]

Comment on Verisign Powers iPhone Two-Factor Authentication by Eric

Eric — Fri, 10 Apr 2009 18:39:03 +0000

What a great app. Who wants to carry extra key fobs around!? I hope we see more web sites participate in this. I remember reading an article about Blizzard (http://ow.ly/2yna) offering a token device to further secure the user’s account. Why haven’t our banking websites offered this?

Comment on A Good Technical Sales Person, Defined by Sales_Engineer

Sales_Engineer — Thu, 02 Apr 2009 18:39:15 +0000

The combination of abilities needed in a good technical salesperson is not easy to find. He or she must have sufficient technical knowledge of the product or service to be able to discuss complexities but they must also have the skills and motivation of a capable salesperson so that they fail to close available business. Such people do exist, but they aren't common. There is a comprehensive source of information about what makes a good technical sales person and how to go about hiring one at How to Hire a Good Technical Salesman

Comment on A Good Technical Sales Person, Defined by leo

leo — Thu, 26 Mar 2009 11:17:10 +0000

wat does a technical salesperson do usually?
can deliver d answer to my email?thx ya~

Comment on What Makes A Good Technical Sales Person? by mike

mike — Tue, 14 Oct 2008 14:15:26 +0000

I guess I never thought about it from a reporting/metrics perspective. I might have to add a comment about that to my response.

Comment on What Makes A Good Technical Sales Person? by Rod

Rod — Tue, 14 Oct 2008 13:53:33 +0000

My personal view for a tech sales person (TSP), is that they main job should be to control user expectation. Yes, you want the user to be excited about your product, and that’s the sales persons job; but you don’t to sell the customer an F-16 when you make Chevy’s.

I don’t want to say he is there to keep the sales person honest, but I would say that is their first job.

Second, I would say that their job should be to make POC’s as close to production settings as possible.

But, now that I think about sales and tech sales, the problems really come down to compensation and who they report to. Obviously, the sales person is on commission and reports to the VP of Sales, but who should the tech sales person report to? If they report to the same person, they will be judged by the same metrics of how many sales, but quality of sale needs to be accounted for as well.

A TSP should report to engineering and represent them. So, if the quality of customer is bad, they can show the POC’s to the engineers, and the they should know if the TSP is being honest or showing hacks.

This is where the problems come in, teaming a SP with a TSP, that have the same metric and managers, are more dangerous than SP alone. Now you have a SP with a partner that can tell him how to hack the system to make it do some cool fragile and complicated stuff.

Comment on Who Else Hates POCs? by The Most Magical Bullet « Identity Blogger

The Most Magical Bullet « Identity Blogger — Wed, 08 Oct 2008 17:06:43 +0000

[...] IdM POCs are “difficult”. Mike Trachta follows up with why the successful POCs cause headaches for the SIs that have to produce the wonderful scenarios shown in the POCs. Both of these posts are [...]

Comment on Who Else Hates POCs? by Rod

Rod — Tue, 07 Oct 2008 13:53:20 +0000

I hate POC’s. Being in the web world, I don’t get as many “functional” POC’s as much as I get wireframe mockup’s from graphic designers.

Yeah, they look pretty, but nonsensical links, missing functionality, and perfectly text limited user comments, drive me crazy.

They always forget the logout button and create expectation and functionality that the customer expects now.

Customer: “Where is that link? Its in the mock up”
Me: “What is that link supposed to do?”
Customer: “I don’t know, but the graphic designer made it and it looks pretty and I WANT MY LINK!”
Customer: Proceeds to lay on floor and throw a fit.
Me: Gets to create a link.

Comment on An Elevator Pitch for Identity Management, part 2 by Orhan Osmani

Orhan Osmani — Sun, 05 Oct 2008 08:36:45 +0000

Mike,

Before you do the pitch on IAM or any product/service. Do the study of the client/customer. I usually try to understand three things about customer when I try to sell IAM.

I always remember – I-S-B – If you understand the (I) issues they have – you can pitch the (S) solution and then you can clearly relate the (B) benefits they can draw out of it.

IAM pitch should different to every customer is you know the ISB of the person/organization you are talking to.

IAM definition/s and pitches do not address pains of those listening, you have to break it down into pieces and explain in layman language.

There is not and should not be defined iam pitch. Be practical and come up with pitches that make sense to the customer environments and needs they have.

Regards,
Orhan