Being A Client Advocate
Hello and welcome to the ICM Cyber Blog. I wanted to share with you a recent interaction I had with a potential client to highlight how being collaborative builds mutual success.
I feel we have steadily moved away from meaningful business interactions over the years, certainly accelerated by the pandemic and the need for social distancing and online meetings. Very frankly, I have seen many of these meetings lack personal engagement and become tasks to be completed as a checklist as we trudge through a day. I’ll admit it. I hope you will as well. I have multi-tasked during an online meeting. My focus can be elsewhere.
My Client Advocacy Experience follows below:
I entered the online meeting to wait for the CISO. We have an 11AM appointment. The CISO arrives at 11:10AM and is harried and apologetic. I don’t mind, we have all had similar moments.
After the usual pleasantries, the CISO says to me “so what are you here to sell me?”.
I respond with “I am here to help you, I have no specific plans to sell you anything”
This made him look up from his phone and say “I meant what are you here to tell me about”
I responded with “I am really here to learn about your challenges and needs. Very frankly, if I can solve a problem effectively, I know you will pay me to do so, and I will make a profit. So, I don’t need to sell you anything. I am here to listen and learn. So where are you challenged?”
I like to think that in that moment the understanding of the relationship between us changed. Our dialog now centered on the CISO’s goals for the year. Where was there success and what needed improvement. I offered up my thoughts around ways I have seen ICM Cyber’s client achieve and maintain success. We talked about new approaches, and joint thoughts around the next generation of cyber defense toolsets and approaches.
By the end of the meeting we agreed that there were a couple of areas where we could focus our mutual efforts. This ultimately led to more collaborative sessions - and over time we found solutions to the client’s challenges in those focus areas.
At ICM Cyber we approach our client interactions to foster collaboration and prove that our job is to advocate for you, our client. We earn trust by helping our clients build successful and sustainable cyber defense programs. Yes, we make a few dollars along the way.
Military strategists used “mutually assured destruction” to ensure the Cold War stayed cold. ICM Cyber uses “mutually assured success” to ensure our clients and ICM Cyber remain optimized and effective organizations.
So, if you are an organization that has cyber defense challenges and needs, and you want to have a collaborative and meaningful dialog – give use a call.
We are, first and foremost, here to help.
Mark Mahovlich Vice President of Strategy & Execution
