Michael D. Moberly   January 26, 2016   ‘A business blog  where attention span really matters’!

I have been consistently engaged on the peripheries of developing, marketing, and selling various security products, systems, and services for 25+ years. I find it somewhat remarkable that so many well intentioned and variously successful practitioners employed in this sector do not appear to have developed or legitimately integrated in their ‘pitch’ narratives exploitable IA (intangible asset) derivatives produced by their security products, systems, and services

After all, it is a universal economic fact that 80+% of most clients and prospective client companies’ value, sources of revenue, competitiveness, profitability, growth, and sustainability lie in – evolve directly from IA’s, a percentage of which derive – are attributable to security products, services, and/or systems deployed in their environments.

It’s worth noting intangible assets are…

• …unique knowhow a company (its employees) possess, and the special value that comes from understanding how, when, and under what circumstances to apply it best. (McKinsey & Company)
• …the economic and competitive advantages and benefits embedded in companies’ IC (intellectual capital), i.e., knowhow, experience, etc., and its SC (structural capital), i.e., processes, procedures, and practices that set the products and/or services it produces and delivers apart from its competitors. (Michael D. Moberly)
• … distinctive and/or unique blends of business activities, processes, know how, and customer/client relationships that companies can exploit to differentiate themselves and create value. (Michael Porter, Harvard Business School)

One, of several consistent observations of 25+ years of conversing with many hundreds of personnel at all levels in the marketing and sales of security related products is a noticeable absence of recognizing the persuasive influence of weaving and leveraging lucrative IA-rooted benefits and competitive advantages that routinely emerge from the deployment of security.

To be sure, the oft used tactic/technique of peppering pitches with FUD factors, i.e., fear, uncertainty, and doubt, to convey the immediacy of a risk/threat or exploit – extrapolate a recent adverse event to a prospective clients’ circumstance, while relevant in some instances, should, in my view, no longer be the dominant feature to any pitch.

Instead, it’s obligatory now that security products with respect to how they are marketed and ‘pitched’ reflect the irreversible and paradigm shifting economic fact that 80+% of most organizations value, sources of revenue, competitiveness, profitability, growth, and sustainability lie 0 evolve directly from IA’s. This means management teams particularly, achieve operational familiarity with their IA’s to recognize when, where, how, what, and why security products geared toward safeguarding and/or mitigating risks to its IA’s is so essential and ignoring – dismissing same is all but assured to become a substantial vulnerability with debilitating consequences.

Again, the rationale for incorporating security product marketing-sales language that specifically emphasize safeguarding prospective client’s IA’s represents forward thinking – looking attributes language very relevant to today’s global business environments which are increasingly intangible asset intensive and dependant.

Mr. Moberly is an intangible asset strategist and risk specialist and author of ‘Safeguarding Intangible Assets’ published by Elsevier in 2014, [email protected] View Mr. Moberly’s videos on YouTube at ‘safeguarding intangible assets’ or his CNN and CNBC videos at his webpage https://kpstrat.com