How Do You Sell Really Expensive Security Software?

Ever wonder how to convince a company to spend hundreds of thousands on complex security software? Our guest today is an expert, and he's here to share how to do it without losing your soul. Welcome to the Security Cocktail Hour. I'm Joe Patti. I'm Adam Roth. Boys are called out Yeah, it's cold, whatever. So Adam, we have an extremely special guest, a really special guest today. Ryan Reynolds? Even better than Ryan Reynolds.

Better than Ryan Reynolds! It must be Trevor!

It is Trevor. It is Trevor Marcotte from TNK Tech. Trevor, how you doing?

Hello, gentlemen. Great to be here on this fine afternoon.

That's right. Afternoon. And Trevor is not only our good friend, but we're doing something new. Trevor is actually our sponsor for this episode. So you got to be nice to him.

Okay. Yeah. I mean, I can't believe seven figure sponsor. That was great. Thanks, Trevor.

Yeah, that's right. Hey, we're sending the limo for you. So why don't you tell us what you do? We know what you do, but the audience doesn't.

What do I do? Well, I am a small niche cybersecurity reseller. Basically, in a nutshell, I partner up with leading technologies in the security industry, and I go out and find people who may be interested, large, midsize, small enterprises, all the above. Um, and I'm the, uh, what do we want to call me? The necessary middleman, I guess you could say.

Yeah. Well, as I say, Trevor has been a trusted resource in the past with us when he was with other organizations. So we know, uh, Trevor will, uh, get, get it delivered.

He can deliver for you. And a hell of a nice guy too, as you'll see.

Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait. Don't put words in my mouth. I never said he was a nice guy. I said he was a trusted resource, Joe.

See, this is what I deal with. This is Trevor's first time audience.

He's a sponsor though, but let's be honest. I mean, he's a nice guy. He's good. He's good. I look, I only joke around with people I love, man. You know that, Trevor.

Absolutely. Absolutely. Nice guy. You can't be too nice a guy in this industry. You got to get things done. You can only be nice so much. At some point you got to get things accomplished.

Yeah, but you can be like a fundamental nice guy, like a fundamental good guy, but sometimes you got to take care of stuff and not be too cordial, you know, but you're still a good person underneath, you know.

Yeah, we can kind of delineate that, right? As long as you're ethical and you deliver on what you say you're going to deliver and you don't Cut corners. You can still be that good guy that's delivering but you can be a little bit Forceful when you really need to be because when you know, you're right, you're right That's kind of what it's all about.

And there's the key word ethical which Really? I mean, I know it sounds like a cliche, but that's something I try to live by, you know, nobody's perfect but you know, in this, in this large, ever-changing landscape that we're in, it doesn't always happen.

So true.

Yeah.

In the past, I've been asked to, uh, you know, evaluate, I'm not talking about you, Trevor, I'm talking about others. And then you have a certain product or a certain service and you're, you're evaluating it. And then you're like, what are you doing? Why are you doing this? Why are you doing that? And people like, like they'll, they'll, they'll double talk and tell you, Well, this is how it is. There's nothing wrong with the product or the service. And then you come to find out they're not really delivering on what they're doing. So unfortunately, you're right. There are vendors out there that can be doing it better. But I think Joe and I have come to terms that not every vendor really hits the mark, but sometimes you got to just deal with them because they're your vendor. And sometimes customers bring those vendors with them, too.

Absolutely. And a big piece of what I do is bring my clients together, talk to certain clients that are doing things one way. Hey, you know, you might want to look at this. You might want to do that. So building a network is really, really key in my opinion. And what we do, because it's not about today. It's about the long run. And if someone wants a quick hit today, it's surely not going to serve you in the long run. And as you guys know, this industry isn't that big. It seems bigger than it is. A lot of people know a lot.

No, I just, I just went to a conference. I'll tell you. I mean, I, I was pretty proud of myself, I guess, but it was a local conference. I'm like, I know half the people here. So yeah, you know, people, but yes. Yeah.

How did you get into that, Trevor? Like, I think that's what Joe's going to ask. I'm sorry. I just cut him off. I'm sorry about that.

How did I get into it? Well, you couldn't tell the story behind me, my background. That's not really my background, IT or cybersecurity. So I'm from Vermont. I went to University of Vermont and I went there to play baseball. And so I went to my advisor and I said, hey, you know, just in case baseball doesn't make it, what should I do? I want to make money. I like money. And they said, The business school well what the MIS MIS that's good technology's coming. So I said, okay I got my degree in MIS and then I went on to play 11 years of professional baseball all around the country Came through New Jersey on that journey met a woman story is in the oldest time now. I'm here in New Jersey Retired at 34. All right. Now, let's put this degree to use right? It's been a little while so I went out there and I got a couple jobs in the reseller world, couple of the bigger guys, couple of smaller guys. Roll back, I don't know, about seven, eight years ago, I'd lumped on one where I did really, really well and started to make a great little network and relationship with people. And roll back now, about two years ago, I got upset at the industry and I just threw my hands up in there and said, listen, I can do this better than all the big guys. And I turned the switch on, called a few of my clients, and TNK Tech was born. I'm 19 months in now. Very, very happy. Very, very excited about 2025. Doing a lot of good things.

And you are so living the American dream. I mean, you know, played ball, went off on your own. I tell you, Trevor's wife is really cool. You got it, old man. You're knocking it out, so great.

Yeah, I'm on the right path. I'm pretty happy about it. Listen, the sky's the limit. Again, it's just amazing if you continue to try to do the right thing, because no one's perfect, things always happen. But if you continue to try to do the right thing, your network grows in such a positive way, it's not even funny, and that's kind of the path I've chosen. It's not instant rewards, but it is instant gratification. You start doing the little things right, all of a sudden the big things start finding their way to you. It's been a great experience so far, and I'm excited to see what the next 12 months are going to bring.

Well, yeah, when Trevor said he was going to sponsor an episode for us, which we're always happy to have, if anyone else wants to let us know, he said one of the things, the topic he wanted to have covered was the relationship that you have between IT buyers and vendors and security people and all. And it's something that we've actually talked about before too. And on the show, I know we talked about a lot. And so we kind of said, well, Trevor, you just want to be the guest and come on. That makes things easy. Right. So not an infomercial, but we're going to talk about the philosophy of really how, um, how things really work. And, you know, I've said many times, you know, when we go out and you don't have to buy stuff for security, a lot of what we do is buying things and we don't buy it from Best Buy and we don't buy it from Amazon. You got to deal with a lot of people and some are easy to deal with and some are not so easy to deal with. So we're going to talk about that. But first, what are we drinking? What do we got here? I got a bottle of not very fancy wine. You got some Jim Beam there. And what is that, Trevor? That looks pretty fancy.

It's famous. I came across it at an event, of course, because we get to do fun things all the time. It became my favorite wine. And now I have a case of it at home. And it's my preferred go-to red wine. Wow. And what is that? It's a pourer here. It's a pourer.

I was going to say, what is that? rig you got on the top.

I haven't seen it.

Sorry.

My Italian wife has all these gimmicks. I just take advantage.

Look at that. That one, that one, I haven't seen. I'm doing it the old fashioned way.

So the old fashioned way, Joe, is you drink it right from the bottle.

It's not the first glass. All right. Cheers, gentlemen. Cheers.

So I want, I want to add this, add to this, like, you know, we talk about integrity. If somebody came to us tomorrow, not that our podcast has a million viewers and says, Hey, we want to sponsor your episode. Here's whatever a large sum of money. We wouldn't necessarily engage that person because we don't know them. We haven't vetted them. We haven't been in that relationship with them. And Trevor is somebody that we've been doing business for for years. And there are other competitors that we're also friendly with. But Trevor, we've had a good relationship with Trevor, and that's why he's on the episode, because we reached out to him as a guest originally. And then we kind of posed the question, would you be willing to sponsor an episode? Just want to make that kind of clear.

Yeah, absolutely. And happy to. I've known you guys a long time. You guys have been in the industry a long time. Growing our network, it's so vital and important because no one knows what tomorrow's going to bring. You know, our landscape changes every day, every week, every month, something else changes. And you know, how many new vendors are out there in the world? What was last I checked? Like 380 new security vendors popped up in the last, whatever. I don't know. Don't fact check that, but there's so many out there. How do you go through and figure out who and how and what you want to look at?

look, there's so many out there. And I mean, you know, we're talking to people all the time and there are so many startups coming out to more people, you know, create, create new ones that are going to going to be coming out. So it's endless. Totally.

So we had, we had a previous podcast host, a podcast guest. And what she said to us was when you start up a business, you're probably reaching out to people within your network are ready to sell them and that's an interesting part of what we're talking about right if you created a good relationship and a good network then hopefully that should translate to some sales with your already network. Yeah.

Yeah. And, and you used a word there that I don't like to use a lot is sell. I don't, I don't sell anything. Well, what we do, what I do is, is, is we solve problems. We, we find problems, uh, assess problems and then test problem solving things out. And if you keep projects and things moving forward, things organically sell or get purchased. Going in to try to sell something is not something I like to do. It doesn't fit. And I deal with it on the other side because there's two sides of the fence for me. So that one side is the customer, the client, the other side is the partner. So the partners are getting pressured big time by their big enterprise bosses that are looking at all these numbers and charts saying they got to hit these numbers so they can get a little pushy. Well, it's about solving a problem. What do you, you guys don't care about them hitting their numbers. You have a problem to solve and you need to make sure that problem gets solved. So, yeah.

And I, and I guess we have to explain that, you know, what you do is you're, I don't know if you call yourself a reseller, but we think of you as like a reseller where, where, where, you know, when you say your, your clients are the people buying stuff for, buy in security systems, software, services, whatever. They want to build something or buy something. And then the partners are the actual companies that make it or deliver it or whatever. And just so people know, unless you are a very large customer, they typically don't deal with the customers directly. I've done it where I've been with very big companies who do it, but very, very typically you need to, you know, go through, go through someone else like Trevor, who'll help you out, but, but also help you pick the right one and get the thing that suits you. Right.

I like to, I explain it very simply. I like to bridge the gap between the manufacturer and the client to, to really create that relationship because you as, as a client may have. 40 different manufacturers you're dealing with, why not funnel five or six of them down to a person or a company and kind of segment it that way? It'll make it much easier on yourself. You have work to do. You can't be answering phone calls and emails every, you know, emails, those cold phone calls.

Isn't it funny how sales, I'm not saying you're wrong, it's become a derogatory term. And, you know, it's funny, Joe and I were just having a conversation, like I said, with a previous podcast guest that we just recorded. And we're talking about how does someone how does someone start a business? And what she was saying was, well, what problem are you trying to solve? And she took it a step further. She said, you know, how are you going to change the world, change the world? And that's an interesting concept, because when you look at Listen, I'm not saying that you should buy into it. But if you look at the Facebook's of the world, you know, if you look at the Microsoft's, if you look at any of those companies, even Amazon, you might not like Amazon, you might like Amazon. But at the end of the day, they have changed the world. Kind of scary when you think about that, if you can start a company tomorrow and 10 years from now, you can be changing the world.

you can but you know at the same time they're the people want to change the world i think some may do it intend to do it some may do it i don't know accidentally it just happens but you know a lot of us out here too uh we're just trying to make a living you know one way or another and you don't have to change the world to make a living to do very well i mean you know mark zuckerberg or any of those people said i'm going to start a company change the world it is sometimes or jeff bezos i think it just ends up happening eventually for some people

Maybe Trevor will change the world. I can tell you exactly why.

I can tell you exactly why I started my company. I made a conscious life decision that I'd like the industry. I'm interested in the technology. I'm not technical, but I love how everything works. And you know, I know I say it all the time. I know a little about a lot of things, right? I don't know deep into one thing technically, but I know about a lot of different things. When I get up and go to work, I want to go work with my friends. I want to, I don't want to be like, I was on vacation. I was in the Dominican Republic. I was there Saturday to Saturday. I was on six customer calls and not a one of them was work to me. I was getting on with my friend, doing a demo, doing a quick little call. Like I get up every day right now and I'm excited about what I get to do. Like it's, it's really that simple. Like, and then. When you convince, so some of these clients, they become friends, right? You build a relationship. You guys know, we didn't start off as friends. It grows there. I'm not interested in just doing business. See you later. I want to create a relationship. The summer I had five of my clients over my house for a party. Like this is personal. When you talk about cybersecurity, your job is on the line, right? Your data is very important. Your job is on the line. If something goes wrong, who do you want to be able to call? Someone you don't know, who's going to get off the phone and go, whatever, whatever. They'll figure it out. Someone will figure it out. Or you want to yell at your friend and your friend's going to go, oh man, I got Joe and Adam's back. I got to really make sure I get something done. And that's kind of the whole philosophy that I have with this. Like my clients are my friends. That's, that's how I want it to be. Like, I'm excited to go to work. I'm excited to help solve challenges. So.

Yeah, I think that's really important, you know, in your job and you know, it's, it's so hard again, you know, people got to make money at times can be tough and all, but you know, especially I think when you get a little older later in your career, you realize like, yeah, you know, regardless of how much money you're making or whatever, I really don't want to spend eight hours a day with unpleasant people. I don't like, you know, I mean, that's like, so, and it seems so obvious.

Um, but money follows, money follows it not immediately, but with a little time that the money just follows it. I mean, this industry is, I mean, it's massive. We know that this, and it's not going anywhere and it's only going to get better, worse, however you want to describe it.

I can't tell you how many times in my life when I've been involved in something working for, um, for an organization where I said, you know what, I'm going to bring that person in because they've been successful in the past and we built a relationship. And that's what, that's what, you know, don't beat me up for the word, Trevor, but that's what sales is about. It's about building that relationship with an individual or an organization, knowing that you can trust the results to be pretty consistent every time. we know like anything else, man, you're, I know nothing about baseball, Trevor, right? But tell me if you're a bad in three 33, you're doing pretty good, right? Like, yeah. And it means you only successful one out of three times in baseball and baseball. So what I'm getting at is, you know, when somebody is successful consistently, that's a great job, a great deal. But we also know eventually that person, that trusted entity is going to fail. But the question is, when they do fail, when she fails, how do they compensate and fix that issue? Because they're going to fix it. And that's what it's all about. When you do fail, can you rely on that trusted advisor, that trusted organization to recover and fix the issue? Correct.

We're in an industry of breaking, we're in an industry of hacking, we're in an industry of problems. Like it's not if, it's when, right? You know, we hear that all the time. It's when. So surrounding yourself with trusted people that are going to have your back the best of their ability when something happens is really important. And it's something I talk about with all of my clients. Call me on a Sunday, see if I answer.

Yeah. Yeah, that's something people should should understand or listening, you know, this might sound a little philosophical stuff, but you know that the nuts and bolts of it are when you're buying, you know, these security things, the software, it's software systems, whatever, it's complicated. And it breaks. And sometimes it doesn't work right. And when you've got six or seven figure investments in something and it's not working the way it's going to, you can't just walk away from it. You need people who you know you can trust to get a fix, to get it working, to solve that. Because if you don't have that and have the relationship you are in, try explaining to your boss, I bought some incredibly expensive stuff that we're counting on, And we can't make it work. That's a problem.

And that's exactly it, right? You you know, when you have EDR or endpoint detection response and you install those agents on a machine, it's going to block something that you didn't want it to block. And the good news is that somebody who's done this over and over again will have a pretty good feel for it. But it's not a cookie cut situation. It's no different from also. Some people still use NAX or network access control. You're going to block something. Can that vendor fix what they broke? And the same thing with the SIM when it's when, oh, I didn't get those logs or we didn't set up those logs. Well, you got to fix it. Right. And people own up to making that mistake or maybe that information wasn't gathered. But at the end of the day, as long as that vendor can recover, you know, it's great. Some people, some other vendors will point their fingers or resellers and say it was him, it was her, it was she. But as long as that vendor knows To to continue on that's the way to go, right? Because that's exactly what you're saying. Trevor things break This is the industry we're in nobody cool. Nobody calls up and says hey You know, I might seem to do incident response, but oh i'm so glad you're here. How's everything? Oh my god, the world's on fire smoke coming out of my head, you know pull the wire Oh my god, we got to go to the attorneys. We got to go to put you know This is how it is. This is the hectic world that we're in.

And, and Adam, that's exactly an example I was talking about. There are a lot of organizations that are critical 24 seven organizations. I got a phone call on a Sunday and it wasn't a, Hey, how you doing? It, uh, it was, I need help. We've been breached and Monday morning. We had them there on say ready to go, but that's, that's my point. Like these people were my friends. There was an incident that had nothing to do with anything. They got breached and boom. They had someone that they trusted that answered a phone and, uh, were able to help them remediate the situation as much as possible.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Now, the other thing we should point out is that, you know, we're talking about security here and incident response, solving problems and stuff, you know, just the way things work. Now, Trevor, you're not a technical guy, though. You bring the people together. I know we're talking baseball, but you're kind of like the quarterback, right? You're the guy who kind of... It makes it all happen.

Yeah, no, that that's exactly it. And that goes right back to the network. So build an amazing network of people. You'll always have someone that you can trust that you can call. And listen, at least every month, my network grows by one. And that's what I try to continue to do. And I hope I can bring my network to other people as well. But that's the whole thing. If your network grows and you have amazing people, no matter what happens in the security space, I have people to call.

Very close people that I trust. And that's an interesting concept, right? People might be listening to the podcast saying you only grow by one. One is all you need. Isn't that a song? One is all you need. But one is all you need when it's a trusted, vetted resource. You don't want 50 people, you don't want 100 people a month, you don't want that significant one person or one individual, one entity, one corporation that can bring that value to the table. Correct.

Correct. I'm not trying to boil the universe. I'm trying to do right by my network that slowly grows. And it's a simple concept. And it's working very well right now. And I expect it to continue to work and grow. Cause if I, if you try to go too big, too fast, you're going to lose the core of what you are and who you are and then your whole model changes. And it's not about the money. Money follows. It's not about the money. I could say, screw it right now. Go hire 25 people and say, let's go get everyone. What, you know, that's the quality quantity conversation. I'm not interested in that. I want to go to work with people I like.

An interesting point to that also Trevor is right, is that unfortunately for you, but you want to stand that a lot of organizations, while they might have Trevor or TNK as the preferred organization, they realize sometimes they need at least a backup one or two vendors.

Oh yeah. Yeah.

Go ahead. Yeah.

Yeah, I mean, we know, I mean, you got to know too, just for practical reasons, you're a security manager and chief, as much as you may love, maybe your best friend, the best man at your wedding, who's one of your, you know, partners there were resellers. You're going to have a couple though, because you never know what's going to happen. You need a certain diversity of stuff and you know, you get that, right?

You think I don't have friends in the industry that that's what they do? So if they're looking for my direct competitors, I tell people all the time, I'm not looking to be your only reseller. I'm not looking to be your only go-to guy. I'm looking to be one of your three or four trusted, because it's dangerous. Just back up, right? Back up. If something happens, that's something I discuss with my clients. And if they ever need somebody, I can bring in two or three that I trust. Well, you know how it is. Everyone's got three or four. I'm trying to be one of the others.

Well, well, that's really tough, too, because I mean, you know, on it's funny, there's so much volume with everything. It's like, yeah, when you're the manager, when you're the customer, yeah, you need to have just one good relationship and when you need to cultivate a bunch. But doesn't that create like difficulty for you because to get to that level with someone to kind of break into their, I don't like to say to get on the preferred customer list, but to really have that relationship where someone says, you know what? you're going to be one of my trusted people." Because for a customer, for a client, it's actually a big deal when they start using it. They usually start off slow, but it is a big investment in time and taking some trust to do that.

Of course. And just what you said, it is a big deal and it does take time. And it's not like tomorrow morning, I won't get up, drive into New York City, walk into a CISO's office, knock on the door and say, hey, buy stuff for me. No, it takes a lot of it. Please give me a shot.

You know, I got 50 people want me to give him a shot every day, you know, and that's the other part to it, right, Trevor?

Like, and Joe, it's usually you don't usually do a cold call to somebody. One of your friends or one of your trusted people that you're already selling, sorry, providing solutions to or solving problems for, they're like, hey, do me a favor. You know, Joe Schmo down there at APC. He goes, I think you're looking for somebody. I let him know that you're going to give him a call. A lot of this business is referrals. It's not like you're selling retail and you're trying to sell a gadget. A lot of your network is based on personal referrals from other people. And that's how it is in this industry.

100%. Sometimes people forget. And let's just use a massive like bank of America. People forget that there's actually people there doing those jobs. It's not bank of America, some big computerized. No, there's actually people there that are doing it. So to somehow find a human connection there. I mean, that's what I do in various ways, but, but that's, that's the point of it. Like, I want to bring the human back to what we do, because. In my opinion, it got lost for years. And that's one of the reasons I opened my own business is the human piece of this got lost.

And the flip side to that, right, Joe, you know this with me. We've had these conversations where once that person's reputation, like, oh, they were supposed to deliver on something and we haven't heard from them in weeks. Once that reputation is tarnished, It's very hard to repair it. It takes a lot of work to keep a client, but it's very easy to lose a client.

Oh, that's so true. And especially when it's a situation where, you know, as a as a customer, as a manager, whatever, you get burned. If someone burns you, you're done with them because it's not even something personal. Even if you're pissed off at them, it doesn't even matter because the next time you go, and you've got to remember that when you're bringing someone in, buying a bunch of stuff from them, you know, it's you or your boss, whoever that's signing up, uh, signing up a big thing, you know, when the, when the shit hits the fan or whatever, you know, they, those people don't want to hear from you. Oh yeah. I guess he did this to me again. You know, that again is not good for your career.

And we just had that conversation. People don't buy a product. People buy the person. people buy, it could be a little bit of an inferior product with a better individual supporting it than a superior product with an inferior support for it. Does that make sense guys? Bottom line is there's a lot of

There's usually, usually multiple products that will fit and solve use cases. The one that typically wins is the one that has the better people and better support staff. That's how I like to analyze things because there's a lot of similar technologies out there.

Oh, it's very true. And it's especially true in security, because like you say, there are so many vendors and yeah, there is a lot of variety. Many of them are new and are relatively small and young companies. And I can't tell you, I mean, Adam, we've been through some of these things ourselves where you got a company, great technology, wonderful, even love the people. But the stuff is complicated. It doesn't run itself. And if they don't have the ability to, you know, service it, to give you the support you need to get things going, it's a problem. I mean, hell, I'm sure in your career, Trev, you've run into the ones where they've got such a shitty back office, they can't even get a bill out on time so you can pay them. I mean, listen, something...

Something I pride myself on and it's not 100% is on the back end. So the manufacturer relationship, I tend to hammer hard that backside. So I have a relationship with the rep, with his sales engineer, with the sales engineer's boss, with their VP, so I can go up the chain. So when something happens, I'm calling them and going, let's go guys. My client needs this now. You told me this. You told me that I need an engineer on the phone with them right now. Well, they could put in a ticket. Nope. This is not a ticket thing, but that's a talent on the backside, right? Having them like you enough where like, I'll do this guy a favor.

We've been in the position, and I'm not saying it was me specifically because it wasn't, but some products, I guess some, but we've been in a position where we've worked for an organization and we would ask for support for a product. And we got to the point where we end up becoming the support for the product for other people, other organizations. Like they're like, Hey guys, and even the, even the vendor themselves, Hey, I know that you guys created a use case for this, this and this. Can I get that from you? I have other customers that want it. We don't know how to figure it out. And I sit there and I laugh. One specific person in an organization, it wasn't me. Joe knows, I think Joe knows who I'm talking about. This person was able to do some sim use cases that they took from us and gave it to other organizations because it was such a good problem solver. And then We've also been in the position where we know the support was so horrible. We train, we took actual training to become support personnel for that product, but support ourselves. So in other words, like normally like a help desk person for a product, we'd get training and get a certification. We had our organization got certified in that product so we can support it ourselves. Mm-hmm.

If that was funny, I'm hearing, I'm hearing this all circle back to one thing, a network. So if that vendor, that partner, that manufacturer had a great relationship with their client who had a unique use case and became experts on the product, if they were all a part of that network, information sharing becomes easy. And, and now everyone's network grown, everyone's knowledge grow. Lots of other people's problems get solved. Like that's what I'm hearing.

The downside of it though, is this happens to them. It's kind of funny, but it's, it's a, it's a pain in the ass is when you have someone working for you who gets to know a product that gets to know something so well, he's better than the, you know, companies, engineers, and then they go and poach him and take him. And you're like, Oh, this is such a good opportunity for you. I'm so happy, but you screwed me so.

Yeah, yeah. Yeah, that's that's a part of it. But I mean, what are you going to do?

You don't do anything. It happens. And usually it is a move up for for people. It is an opportunity, but it's and that's actually another.

Yeah, Joe, right. And that's what a good point. That's another important part of our industry. It used to be that you work for an organization for 20, 30 years and you retired and you went there in cybersecurity. Unfortunately or fortunately, however you want to look at it, you grow a little bit, you move. You grow a little bit, you move. You grow a little bit, you move. So when that individual works for company A and they're using their product and they go to company B, they're usually going back to the vendor they used from company A because they were so happy with that product. So as we grow in our industry and we take that next step, And I'll kind of quote somebody. I'm not going to say who it is. If you're doing help desk for 10 years in the same organization, you probably got issues. And I'm not saying that's true or not true. I'm just saying part of cybersecurity, part of IT is a natural growth. If you're probably in a place for about five years, either they're treating you exceptionally well and giving you great money, and the corporate culture is amazing, Because sometimes people don't leave for money. People don't leave organizations for money. Usually they leave it because of the culture or the boss that they're working for. But money does help. So that's why it's always good, Trevor, to have a good reputation, because this is a constant moving ecosystem. People moved in other companies and they take their vendors with them.

Yep.

Agreed. That too. And okay, so something else we got to talk about is, especially since we may or may not be doing this at holiday time, there are a lot of events going on. There is a lot of dinners and meetings and even a little bit of drinking that goes on. No, never, never, never. And, you know, it almost sounds so old school to say, yeah, a bunch of old guys drinking for what, that's their business. those things actually are, they're networking events. A lot of these things that actually is, is important. I mean, you know, we typically don't need someone to buy us free beer. We can buy our own beers, not a big deal, but it's about meeting people, right?

Correct. And that's, um, that's a big part of the people. Typically when you go out to these events, um, that's where you meet people. That's listen, you get, 70 cold emails a day you get 50 cold calls a day you can't answer or talk to any of them but if you meet someone out at an event and you make a human connection with them and then you exchange your details when you send them an email or you make a phone call to them they answer you because You know, you've made that human connection and okay, I like this guy. All right, I'll keep this guy in my network. You know, the timing may not be right today, but you know what? In three weeks it might be, in three months it might be, in six months it might be. So these events are absolutely key for our industry. On your side of the fence as well, meeting other executives, future jobs, questions, referrals, again, just building that network by one or two.

I don't think anybody that I know of has ever gotten an unsolicited call or unsolicited email and said, you know what? Why don't you come in? Let's go hang out." Except for Joe, who someone said, um, I'm in your office. I dropped off a gift. And Joe's like, How the hell did you get past all that security and end up in my office?

That was creepy. I like practically had a stalker. Yeah, this woman, I think she was from like an HR firm or something. She goes, yeah, and I guess she was coming to see someone else or whatever, but she goes, yes, I like, you know, didn't you see the little bag of popcorn, some crap like that I left on your desk? And I'm like, that was you? Creepy. Tactics. Sales tactics. Yeah, I know. And then there was, it might've been the same one, the other one who said like, oh, I'd like to get together. Can we talk? I'm like, I guess we can meet at some point. She goes, how about now? I'm across the street on my phone. I think I'm looking at your window. I'm like, that's a bit much, you know?

No, I like the vendors that turn around and they take a picture of themselves and say, look, I'm a real person, not a bot. Answer my call. Yeah.

Yeah, it's listen, sales is a hard job and you get pressured from above and I get it and I get all the tactics and I get everything that's going on behind the scenes with them, but it's just an ancient practice in my opinion and it. There's so many other avenues nowadays.

I've done sales, and I understand. We're kind of joking around about the whole sales thing, but at the end of the day, there are people behind this that are trying to support their families, trying to pay off their mortgages, trying to pay their rent, trying to buy food, trying to feed their kids, and I get it. I get it. I really get it and some people you got to start somewhere. You don't walk in the door with a whole slew of clients. You might be 20 something years old or 30 something years old and you want to get into the business you got to build up your clients. So as much as we kind of poke a little bit at it I also understand that you know it doesn't start with nothing. You have to you have to build it up. So we should probably be cognizant of that as long as they don't doing things like show up in your office while you're on a call and get through security and start throwing gifts at you. It's not so bad, but you know. Right.

But I will say this. I do agree with everything you said. But how about being an intelligent human being? So now in my new position as the founder and CEO, now I get all these same emails that you guys are getting. So I see it from your perspective now. Oh, yeah. Like, yeah. How about you? How about Mr. Salesperson, you do a little due diligence on who I am and what my company does before you write me a cold email that doesn't even pertain to who I am or my business or what's going on. So as advice to people who are getting into sales, do some due diligence. Find out who you're emailing. Find out who you're talking to. Do a little homework before you just blindly send 700 emails. You'd be amazed that the person, they see these emails for the most part. And most of the time they're going, well, this guy doesn't even know what he's talking about. Why would I respond? So.

Yeah. Didn't even look at my LinkedIn page to see if I'm in this business. You know, it's like, you know, I'm in security, but I get sales calls or cold emails or whatever about, you know, storage. you know, cloud system, you know, all sorts of other stuff that I don't do. And it's like, you know, I know you're, they're just shotgunning everything out. You know, they just got a list, send it to everyone. It's like, you know, it cost them nothing to send it to 50 people and maybe one of them is going to work, but so what? We'll send it anyway. And that's just rude. I mean, you know.

It's almost the same as what's going on with AI with recruiters, right? I will get 50 emails about things about being a physician's assistant, which I don't have. I'm an EMT. But if they have a couple of keywords in there, AI automatically assumes I'm a valid candidate for certain things. Like, we're looking for this, this, and this. I'm like, I don't even do that for a living. Why are you messaging me? The other side to it is if they see certain keywords of certifications I've had, even though I have nothing to do with what they want, they try to make a leap into there. So the point I'm getting at is a lot of these people that are doing these sales, they're getting like the LinkedIn sales edition and they're running these queries and they're throwing everything at it and they're hoping that they stick. So they're going for more about quantity and not quality. They're not vetting their prospects. They're hoping that Put a big net, catch everybody, and then hopefully the smaller fish. that are swimming around in there become their clients.

So, Trevor, have you ever done cold calling? I mean, I guess way back, way, way back.

Have you done that? Well, not so far way back. So my first reseller job when I came out, I was 34 years old. I guess you could say I was a seasoned human being. I wasn't seasoned in the industry. I had to learn the channel, learn how the business operated. I was very, uh, comfortable speaking with other human beings, uh, per my career, but I needed to learn how the business worked. Right. Um, so yeah, I got stuck cold calling. I went and had to pick, pick this group of accounts that nobody wanted. So they'd already been funneled through and put in the, the not so good list.

And then I got the drags already. Yeah. Oh gosh.

Old call. all That was early on. I happened early on. It'll never happen again in my life. Um, and it never did after that, but I, you know, I tried to be someone I wasn't, you know, and an expert. Well, very quickly.

Yeah. You might've also gotten someone on. the wrong day or something, because I mean, mostly when I get cold calls, you know, I'll be like, can't talk to you, hang up, whatever. I stopped doing it. But sometimes if you manage to catch me five minutes after I've been fighting with my insurance company or the cable company or something, I'm going to toy with you like that. And I feel bad about it afterwards. I really shouldn't, but you know. Oh, it was great shit happens.

You know, I appreciate after the fact, I truly appreciated it because it helped me learn as a human being in this industry. Honestly, I have to try. I was like, oh, he killed me.

Yeah, got me. I've done sales. I've done everything from like Macy's small electronics to selling networks, but I also sold lubricant oils, which is like for motor oils. Hey, relax. Motor oils, hydraulic oils. and I walked into an organization that uses motor oils and hydraulic oils you can imagine what type of organization they are they usually have big machinery and they go what the are you doing here we never want your organization to get the out I go hold on man what's the issue get the out of here I'm like I don't want to fight. I just want to understand. So I could write in my paper. What am I? Why not to come back? You know, your company did this, this and this, but I didn't do it. I ended up selling them cases and cases of oil and a couple of drums. And then when I call my company back, I said, Hey, I got an order for it. It goes, no, you don't. I go, yeah, I do. I go, they told us never come back. They basically threatened us. I said, I got it. They're like, can we get you a car? Can we get you this? Can we get you that? I won't go into why I didn't want to work there. It was more personal. But, um, the point I'm making is if you take it into your head that you're not supposed to be somewhere, then you're not going to go there. Sometimes you got to take that leap that you got to take that chance when you're doing those sales, even though it's probably rough. Sometimes those are the more rewarding sales.

Yeah. Well, Trevor, do you go, I mean, you build relationships, you do all these things. I mean, at this point, I mean, do you or do you even have to go after some of those really tough nuts? Something where, you know, there's not much chance. Do you bother? Yes, I absolutely do.

But I do it I want to say I do it with intelligence. So, um, I have a vast network. My network has a vast network. Their network has a vast network. Somebody knows somebody who knows somebody. So I'll do a lot of due diligence and I still send cold emails. I'll also make a cold phone call here and there. Um, but with purpose and precise, um, and that, that, that's kind of it, you know, basically. I don't, I don't just cold call and I like these three companies. No, no, I do some research first and I'll put together, you know, someone, a high level executive, I'll do something on LinkedIn in terms of AI. So everyone right now's. Do I let them use AI or do I shut them off? Well, I'd like to let them use AI, but AI is not safe. How do I regulate the AI, the unit and enable them to use it? So that's a huge topic. So maybe I see that. So I'll construct a strategic email based on that topic. And I've, I'm about 50, 50 of getting responses from C-levels.

Wow. You're pretty good though. I mean, 50-50, that's like awesome, if I'm not mistaken.

Listen, I don't send thousands of them out. I send tens of them out.

That's what I was telling Joe. I'm not saying you have to do cold, cold, cold, but it's a numbers game. You realize vetted contacts sending out a certain amount is going to return a certain amount. statistically and historically but so you're not doing like to whom it may concern insert name here see so and leave it like that you're doing hey mr uh john smith uh you and i have a common acquaintance some more and i know that you have a problem that you need to be solved i've been doing this for this company in that company you can check them out can we have a phone call maybe i'm the right fit for you type of thing

Loved your articles on X, Y, and Z. I'm a local white glove cybersecurity reseller. I got two new partners that may interest you. In lieu of your AI article that I read, which was great by the way, again. Let me know if you'd like to set up an intro call. Hey, Trevor, really appreciate it. Um, I'm going to get back to you on that. So I mean, just to get a response. So now there's a cadence, like humanize things, humanize things. Everything is robotic, humanize them.

So let me flip this though. Every get a call from somebody and then you're keeping your composure. And then when you hang up, you go, Oh my god, I didn't even call this person. I just got a whale. Oh, no.

Nobody gets that lucky. No, like, no. Um... No.

I'm thinking, I'm thinking, no. Like, like, like, they get that call and like... Like the sun is opening up, money's falling from the sky, I'm kidding.

I've gotten, I've gotten my way into a couple of very large companies and I was very, um, surprised, not surprised. Isn't the word very grateful and happy that they went with a human element versus the Walmart element. Let's just leave it at that. Yeah. Cause a lot of, a lot of people go with, sorry, go ahead, Joe.

I was going to say, you know, I've said we can't buy the things we buy at Best Buy, that there are some more impersonal, almost Amazon-like places you can get stuff. There are such things, but I try to avoid them myself.

There's a lot of companies out there that are more like paper pushers, and what they do is they're did a multi-million almost billions of them billion dollar companies that will come to you and say we want to sell you this but what they're really doing is pushing the paper because they have a contract with an organization and they're giving you another contract or consulting company that moves through them and they're getting let's call it the vig the percentage off that sale so we'll push this paper we're a big enough company to give you a five million dollar sale they're going to deliver on it, we're going to take our piece.

They'll often give you, why you would go to some of these places, the same reason you go to Walmart, you get a cheap price, but you don't get service and you don't get it backed with these relationships, which when you're buying really complex stuff, like, you know, I hate to sound obnoxious or anything, but, you know, you don't buy a Ferrari in a vending machine, you know? I mean, it just doesn't work that way.

Don't they have that with the car company? They have the venue with the machine.

Yeah, that's right And listen, if you know how to play the game, you're not getting the cheapest price either Listen, these billion-dollar companies are billion-dollar companies because they're making money, right? They're not losing money So it's just if you know how to play the game, none of that's true that they try to dehumanize it and use that There's there's a place for them but When it's going to be more personal, that's usually not it. Sometimes it is because, hey, there's a lot of great people out there and relationships can vary.

So the reason why they're the billion dollar company is they have sometimes the insurance needed to do a certain job and they have the they have the relationship with that either GSA, the contract, or whatever organization requires a certain contract or a certain certification or a certain align uh they have a certain align uh they'll align with a certain vendor or manufacturer i've seen that so many times but at the end of the day when you go to the boutique consulting services they're the ones that are saying hey i'm gonna come right over right now i'm gonna do this for you i know you're having an issue they're the ones that wake up three o'clock in the morning not the other ones

Yeah, most of the time. Absolutely. I agree with that. It's more, you matter. It's just, the difference is, is you matter no matter what size you are.

And you appreciate the business. Let's put it on the table, right? At the end of the day, you losing a $5 million company or a client is very different from those companies losing 5 million. That's like pocket change for you. You realize how significant this client is and you're not, kissing their ass, but you really appreciate their business. Correct.

It matters. It matters. You know, there's no, listen, like every company they get too big, not too big. The bigger a company gets, the more corporate they become. And what happens in corporations? Someone at the top is looking down from the clouds at their spreadsheets, not at the people, not at the human beings. They're looking at their spreadsheets going, all right, I need X, Y, and Z, B and C and whatever, and decisions are made based on that, not based on the human aspect. And, and that happens with every company in every industry, pretty much. Um, and it's cyclical. Uh, and I'm, I don't want to be that way. That's, that's why I'm doing what I'm doing. And, and listen, that works for some people in some companies. Those aren't my targets. My targets are the ones who want that something else.

You haven't watched Ted Lasso? It's about soccer. It's about soccer. It's on Apple TV. I just started watching it. My kid isn't into soccer. He doesn't watch it. But one of the things in the latest episode I saw when I was watching it was this organization said, no, no, we don't want more clients. We want the clients that we have now. We don't we we have a use case and that's to do a certain thing and once we get to a certain level We're no longer Providing that level of service because now it's just about quantity and not about the quality of what we have I was like, wow How many people actually really do that? I know it's a tv show. I know it's it's not it's not real life but there's so many of us say I don't want an extra 500 clients because i'm already I'm not going to be able to provide the level of quality that I'm providing now to my current clients. That's a cool thing.

Yeah, I agree. Listen, I have this conversation all the time. I know what my goals are and that's it. My goals aren't to be that billion dollar, aren't to be one of the big guys. That's not my goal. You know?

Right. I think I know what your goal is, though. And that kind of brings us to the last call that I know I wanted to mention to you. You're wearing your TNK Tech shirt. And what is your logo? What is that graphic there we're seeing?

It is the GOAT. The GOAT. Greatest of all time. So, Mr. Siso, when you go to your procurement department and they go, T and K go, who are they? And you tell them it's the greatest of all time, they are not going to be able to tell you no.

It's fantastic. Yeah. You know, that's like when somebody says, um, uh, I, who do I write the check to? Well, the name of my company is, um, certified application software housing, but you can make it the cash. Yeah. Cash. Yeah. Right at the cash. That's my, that's my company name shortened out.

Well, one of my clients from Boston, one of my first clients, when I turned the switch on, I sent him an email and he goes, Dude, is that goat in your email? I go, yeah, man, I just, I own the name. He goes, that's awesome. And when he said, that's awesome, I said, that's it. I'm branding it and I'm just going to go with it. So, right. Yeah.

Well, you're definitely not the, not the big corporation because no big corporation would do that. That's awesome. Yeah. Trevor, thanks so much for joining us. This has been a lot of fun as, as it always is when we're hanging out.

Appreciate it guys. Uh, really appreciate being here. Thank you for letting me come on. And, um, yeah.

Yeah, absolutely. This has been a great time. I, uh, you know, uh, we're not allowed to talk about what season we're in, but I'm heading to the beach after. I love it. Yeah.

Right. Okay. All right. Thanks, everyone. Thanks, Trevor. Thanks, Adam. And thanks to all of you for listening. Take care.