Evgeniy Kharam: Architecting Success With Soft Skills

Evgeniy Kharam is the founder of a cybersecurity consulting company and an industry veteran with extensive expertise in cybersecurity. He advises clients on navigating the complexities of the cybersecurity landscape and co-hosts two popular podcasts focused on cybersecurity architecture and business insights. Evgeniy is also a board advisor for the Canadian Cybersecurity Network, the largest technology group in Canada. Outside of his professional life, he is an active family man with four children, including twins, and enjoys organizing snowboarding events for networking in the cybersecurity community.

Evgeniy joined the Kitecast podcast to discuss his new book, Architecting Success: The Art of Soft Skills in Technical Sales. It is a reflection on the evolution of sales engineering, especially in the cybersecurity field. Evgeniy draws from his personal experiences to address the increasingly complex nature of technical sales and the gap between technical knowledge and the ability to communicate it effectively in business terms. The book also serves as a personal challenge for Evgeniy, as he admits that writing is outside his comfort zone, and he believes that improving soft skills is often about doing what you dislike most.

During the podcast interview, one of the key topics Evgeniy discusses is the importance of soft skills in cybersecurity sales. He emphasizes the need for adaptability, listening, and the ability to connect with clients. He points out that successful cybersecurity sales professionals must adjust their approach based on the client’s mood, energy, and current situation, moving from transactional interactions to building genuine relationships.

Evgeniy also explores the dynamics between sales professionals and sales engineers. He suggests that the sales engineer’s role is not just to support the sales team but to engage in a more collaborative manner, asking the right questions to help the sales team qualify deals effectively. This dynamic allows for a smoother sales process, where both parties respect each other's expertise and play to their strengths, without crossing into each other's responsibilities.

Another major point of discussion is the impact of virtual sales in a post-COVID world. Evgeniy stresses the importance of maintaining professionalism in virtual environments, from investing in proper equipment like cameras and microphones to ensuring a polished appearance. He also highlights the growing reliance on voice communication and the need to train one's voice for better delivery, as remote work has made verbal communication a primary tool for client interactions.

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ekharam/

Architecting Success: https://www.softskillstech.ca/ 

Check out video versions of Kitecast episodes at https://www.kiteworks.com/kitecast or on YouTube at https://www.youtube.com/c/KiteworksCGCP.

Transcript

Patrick Spencer (00:01.656)
Hey everyone, welcome back to another Kitecast episode. We have a real treat today. We have a return guest. think Evgeny has been on the podcast with us three times now, third time's a charm perhaps. I think so, right? He is the founder of his own cyber media consulting services company where he leverages his extensive industry expertise to guide clients through the complexities of cybersecurity. He has four kids. I don't know how many times to do.

Evgeniy Kharam (00:12.647)
Yeah, maybe something like that.

Patrick Spencer (00:30.171)
Anything else with four kids at Virginia has two twins on top of that, right?

Evgeniy Kharam (00:33.396)
Wait it until you make it.

Patrick Spencer (00:38.222)
And he is a co -founder, in addition to being a co -founder.

of two popular podcasts, one of which is focused on cybersecurity architecture and others focused on cyber insights for business leaders. He's also a board advisor for the Canadian Cybersecurity Network, which is the largest technology group in Canada. He co -founded, which is really interesting, this snowboarding event that takes place every winter. Now, I think you've done two of them now, if I remember correctly. I think you're doing something in the summer even, which is a great network.

Evgeniy Kharam (01:13.556)
Did it in the summer of 30 weeks ago. Bikes and high, so was really, nice. And I was talking planning for the next winter one.

Patrick Spencer (01:14.534)
opportunity.

Patrick Spencer (01:21.122)
So everyone gets your snowboards out, your skis in a year. Exactly. Exactly. So we're going to talk today about your brand new book, which some of our audience may have checked out. If you haven't, you can go to Amazon and you can purchase a copy after we get done talking about it. Yeah, there you go. Architecting success, the art of soft skills in technical cells.


Patrick Spencer (05:16.238)
So, Evgeny, what gave rise to the book in the first place in the selection of the actual topic?

Evgeniy Kharam (05:22.534)
very strange.

Evgeniy Kharam (05:37.97)
Thank you. a very good question. And as we say, cybersecurity, and I think it's a combination of stuff. I talk a lot about building blocks and in this case, it very, very similar. I was thinking quite a lot about the difference and the changes that happened to the sales engineering on the vendor side, how they evolve and change, become more complex. In the same time, I really saw a problem even in my own consulting in a company when I was working for that, it's not easy to outcome what you have in your mind.

and your ideas in a very simple and business language as well. In the same time, happened and we just lost this physical space. We just lost this ability to see the room, to connect with people, understanding and reading the room. All this was a combination to write a book or write something. And then the next part was a challenge because I'm not a writer. I'm a much better speaker than I'm writer. And

It was almost a challenge to myself because I always tell people if you want to improve soft skills, for example, one of the things you need to figure out what to improve or can figure out what to improve is to do the stuff you don't like to do. So I don't like to write a lot and I decided it's going to be a very good way to summarize and to reflect on my ideas.

Patrick Spencer (06:58.637)
Yep.

Well, soft skills is good. brought that up as one of questions I have for you. Chapter three, there's a bunch of stuff on soft skills in particular than in some other sections. Well, in fact, there's an appendix. We'll talk about that in a minute that has, you know, a 30 day, 60 day, 90 day, 120 day plan around building your soft skills. But I have this quote from chapter three, soft skills like communication, trust building and adaptability are essential in sales, allowing cybersecurity professionals to translate

technical knowledge into solutions that resonate with clients. With that as in the background, what are some of the specific soft skills that you believe are most critical for success in cybersecurity sales?

Evgeniy Kharam (07:46.642)
think it's majority of sales, not just cybersecurity, SAS, NIT, but because our domain is still cyber. So there's definitely a couple of them. Is this ability in the first ways to connect. And this connect part requires quite a lot. It requires you to, in the beginning, even a bit later to listen, to adapt, to read the room, to do the research, to understand from where to start. But the adaptability part, I think it's very, very important.

You join a meeting and you have agenda in your mind and you want to point, you want to cover any way when how you want to start the meeting. But you may start the meeting and the other person just realized is there on vacation or is there a need to see or there somewhere else or they're on the phone. So you can change and adapt to what you see right now. And basically start talking to what's happening right now to create a conversation that's relevant to what's happening right now.

to find the hooks or create a reverse hook to do this. So this is number one. And then it's become like a metric inside metrics because you connect first, you establish some minimum report. The other person right now want to talk to you. They may be like your energy, they like your enthusiasm. They understand that you're very passionate about what you do. And then you're going deeper. You need to make sure you're providing the information they need. You need to make sure you're teaching them or you're providing

what they need and in the ways they want. If they want to read a PowerPoint, look at the PowerPoint, if they want to look at a demo, you want to talk about it. You want to understand what ways they learn and what ways they consume the information. Later on, you definitely want to start guiding them and also want to be guided by them to understand what is the best way to do business to them. will be in the way and they not just understand, but will be the most beneficial

for the company. They maybe have a lot of legal problems or a lot of legal documentations you need to do. If you're not asked this in advance, not going anywhere, you maybe need to understand if they need help with business plan or some other things. So now we're opening up to vulnerability and guidance. So we are guiding and we're looking for guidance as well. And why vulnerability? Because now we need to open up and ask for guidance. What if they say, no, we don't need any guidance? What if we open up later on and ask to understand?

Patrick Spencer (09:55.692)
you

Evgeniy Kharam (10:10.866)
Just to be on the same page, is this a budgeted initiative? Are you guys planning to buy this year, next year? It's all part of our ability, but also important part of Vega Salesforce.

Patrick Spencer (10:22.434)
Yeah, those are some great recommendations. We've both been on sales calls before where the salesperson had not done their homework and they're trying to put a square peg in a round hole or vice versa and it's never going to fit and it's just an irritating process and a waste of time for both the vendor as well as the customer they're trying to sell to.

Evgeniy Kharam (10:43.076)
like just do a POC like wait a second what POC what you just wasting more time for everyone you know

Patrick Spencer (10:50.513)
Exactly. He did a POC for no reason, proving something out that no one cared about. just loop back to this plan that you have at the back of the book around building out your soft skills. Can you kind of walk through that? What do you need to do in 30 days if you're working to develop? And what do you focus on for 60 days, 90 days, and then 120? And why 120? Was it just an arbitrary number you picked out or you wanted like a four cycle process?

Evgeniy Kharam (10:55.784)
Yes.

Patrick Spencer (11:19.501)
that you needed to break the activities that you're

Evgeniy Kharam (11:20.19)
I had enough stuff to do, so this is I picked four. And the idea came, know, when the CISO starts, what do you do for the 60, 90 days or some other executive start. So one kind of follow this idea as well. And as many new things you're doing, it just takes time. And we still, have kids, we have daily life, we have work. So if I could just pack you to learn everything in two weeks, it's not gonna happen. And many of the things, the soft skills,

just takes time to adapt and become part of our life. And if I tell you go and present on a big conference, you may only be able to do it in two, three months, or maybe even a year. You don't really know. So this is why it takes time. While the current plan, called SSDP, Software Skills Development Plan, you are welcome to go on the website or you find it in the book as well.

Patrick Spencer (11:52.163)
Yeah.

Patrick Spencer (12:08.463)
You're in Cybersphere, you gotta have an acronym that goes with it,

Evgeniy Kharam (12:11.358)
Of course, of course, of course. It's right now almost like zero and one. So it's basically only one way to do it. But I got some requests and ideas to do an adaptive one. So you come in, you're a quiz, ask you 15 to 20 questions and create a plan for you that more dedicated to the type of person you are and already on the skills you have right now. And really stuff there's active listening, engaging conversation, understanding feedback.

understanding how to improve your voice, understanding how to improve your video surrounding, have a better mic, issues with recording like you have right now, fixing on a fly, use of teleprompter, how to ask questions, how not to ask questions, when to use open -ended questions, closed -ended questions, all the good stuff are in the book.

Patrick Spencer (13:02.252)
Yeah, those are some good insights that every sales professional in cybersecurity or just business B2B space will benefit from to your point. You know, we've both been in technology for a long time now and you have that dynamic between whatever company it's where I've been the sales or the account manager and the sales or the system engineer. You have a chapter on that in the book that's quite interesting. Can you talk a bit about that dynamic and how, you know, someone in sales

can exploit their SE to ensure that they're successful. How do you use that resource?

Evgeniy Kharam (13:36.67)
I don't think it's exploiting the C. I think it's, I like more the idea of ping pong and asking the questions. In many cases, the salesperson is the bad guys. The guys want to sell us everything. And the engineers, the more the trusted advisor and they're very, very direct and just basically asking the questions and what's in it, what's in it. So there is a way for the sales engineer to engage in the conversation that will help the salesperson to understand and qualify the deals.

is, Mr. customer, we'd like to understand, we want to make sure our PS team is ready. So there's a PS team or there's a deployment team. Is this something you want to do next month, Q2, Q1, or we are a feature have coming that I know you ask, is there going to be an update to this? So there is a way to play with technology to understand what's happening and vice versa. There is just different ways to do stuff, very elegant in a very, very elegant way, not to take away from the other profession.

We don't want the sales engineer provide quotes and give numbers. We don't want the salesperson now to start asking answer questions about APIs and integration with log management systems.

Patrick Spencer (14:47.436)
Yep, yep, very, true. It needs to happen behind the scenes or in a collaborative manner during those interactions with the client as you ferret out the requirements, deal with their objections and so forth. On the topic of client objections, have...

some discussion in the book on that topic. know, Chapter 7, you have a quote here, managing objections requires an active listening and empathy. It's just not about selling a product, but helping the customer find the best solution for their needs. Part of the sales process is you're going to have objections. You're going to run up against the wall. They're not going to have money. You're too costly. You're lacking functionality. You're lacking integration. You've heard it all before. How do you know what are your what are the recommendations?

that you have in the book in how someone should deal with those.

Evgeniy Kharam (15:39.55)
It's a human skills and human communication to understand what's real and what's my French love. Because many customers also reading many books, we have a very, very educated customers. And in some cases, they will try to downplay the solution because they want to have a better discount or because they want to basically get something for users. And it seems totally fine. I'm not saying the customers have to agree for referencing, but they also need to understand what's happening.

If it's a real problem or it's a kind of inflated problem because you want something, think asking the customers, what is the objective of this? Are we trying to understand how to buy it better or we're just trying to understand what if happened if you're trying to do that? And many customers will tell you what's happening. You the same as like a power dealership. You're going to call dealership, if I lower it by $2 ,000, would you buy it today? You know, just stuff like that.

Patrick Spencer (16:31.374)
you

Evgeniy Kharam (16:37.404)
I'm not saying you have to do that, but you want to understand what's the intent and definitely don't run. Again, I'm not a sales professional. I'm not teaching you how to sell. I'm teaching you how to connect. So let's be very, very kind of on the same level here. And we are talking here about the human connection. If you created a human connection, the person on the side will probably not to be. That's called an asshole. Excuse my French. And just trying to cut everything you did for them.

If you didn't create the connection, then yes, maybe they're not going to feel bad to do what they want to do for you because of what they want to do. If you believe in your solution, if you believe that what you're doing is right, if you believe that your solution is the best thing after sliced bread, then just stay ground. Tell what you think and what you need. And if there is a way to help the customer, then it's always a negotiation. Mr. customer, understand you want a discount. If we give you two years, three years, we're happy to extend the discount.

Patrick Spencer (17:22.05)
Yeah.

Evgeniy Kharam (17:35.314)
then you win, we win, everybody's happy. Again, there is a lot of sales tactic on this part that I think there is many, many more people that can teach better than me. But what I'm discussing is the communication part. By you creating this connection, but you moving from a transaction to communication, to relationship, you moving to a different level.

Because you eventually going to live to a different company. The customer eventually going to live to a different company probably. You probably going to meet them again. They may become your reference customer and many, many other things.

Patrick Spencer (18:11.554)
Yeah, yeah, those are some good points. Now, earlier, when we first started talking, you talked a bit about how the dynamics change with COVID. A lot more sales activity in post -COVID is now done virtually. You have some discussion in the book around how to be effective in those virtual environments. What are, you know, three or four key recommendations you have on that front?

Evgeniy Kharam (18:36.44)
One thing about working very remotely is the same you're working in the office. What I mean by this, you need to spend money and you need to spend time and effort on how you look. Don't put a baseball hat because you don't want to do a haircut. For example, if you want to use a baseball hat because you represent a brand better, different story. But if it's just because you're lazy, it's a different story. Don't be without video because again, you don't want to people that see your background. So, tighten up your background.

Patrick Spencer (18:48.238)
you

Evgeniy Kharam (19:06.53)
or put a virtual screen. I'll show you a trick. Use a green screen. Use a green screen if you need to, because this way you're to have a much better way and outcome. Put some money in the camera, put some money in the microphone. I use teleprompter right now. So you have a way that I'm talking right to you because I'm looking right at the camera. If I need to present and look something, it's still going to be here. So all this stuff are important. This is one part.

Think about the office at home with what you can do. Sometimes we have other problems, issues, multiple people, kids, but there are still, if you spend some time and money to figure out, you will figure out what's the best way to attack this. Second part, even in the office, but mainly right now from home, because we're less meeting customers face to face, we use our voice much more. It's mean we are talking much more.

and every other muscle, if we're not training it well, if you're not spending time, we may not sound so good as we can sound. People can go and work on the pullback or broken tooth, but not many people will record themselves or go to a voice professional to actually help them to become a better speaker, a better communicator.

Patrick Spencer (20:28.534)
Yeah, that's quite true. Another point you brought up already, maybe we can dive in a little more detail around it, was preparation.

for client meetings. So you go into those meetings having a very clear understanding of what the requirements are, what their objections might look like, what's gonna resonate, what isn't. You're gonna waste their time. They have no interest in your product to begin with, or are you pitching it from the wrong direction? How do you do all that research ahead of time so that those meetings are as effective as possible?

Evgeniy Kharam (21:03.518)
Several things. If you're working with DeVar, the first thing you want to do is talk to DeVar. Ask them. I was very, very unhappy, honestly pissed when I was working in Horigiri group. And we will have a call with the customer and I'll tell the vendor, let's have a pre -call. I'll tell you what I know. I'll prep you for the meeting and I'll tell you what not to ask.

And they're like, hey, don't worry about that. We jumped on a call and they're just asking the same questions that you could ask me that you didn't ask from the deviratorism. Why? We're spending valuable time, we're wasting their time, they're unhappy because they know there's a var. So there is a way for you to talk to the var, to the MSSP, to the consulting people that potentially work with this customer. In many cases, unfortunately, people are lazy to go to their own CRM.

because maybe somebody worked with this customer before and you're not brand new and there's notes in the CRM. And if you call the customer, customer's like, but we already spoke with you six months ago, but I have a new rep. He's like, so? You don't know how to log into CRM to check. One of the things was driving nuts all the time is people will even say, hi, I'm the from company XYZ. You just visit our website. We just came to our conference. We will be happy to work with you. Lady, gentlemen.

Patrick Spencer (22:12.077)
Yeah.

Evgeniy Kharam (22:29.406)
We've been partners for the last 15 years. I know more about the products that you know. Do you really couldn't check what's my company does and maybe who I am? And this is simple thing that irritate people quite lot. But let's assume you're mature, you understand you're doing all these things. You can go on LinkedIn. You can check on LinkedIn what this particular person does. And it doesn't mean that every engineer, architect, manager, director, VP, SVP, CISO will be on LinkedIn.

Patrick Spencer (22:32.002)
You

Patrick Spencer (22:42.862)
Yeah, very true.

Evgeniy Kharam (22:58.79)
It's also an indication about what they do. If they're very active on LinkedIn, they probably have a lot of opinions. Even in many cases, you understand what you're dealing. If they don't act if they're LinkedIn, it's also an opinion because you now understand you have somebody that much more close will be more reserved. But you can look on the links. They can look on the comments. You can look on what they're posting. The simple thing is which university you went to, where you worked before. Do you speak

any other languages, maybe you speak the same language as you, as a second language, there are small different things as a hooks that you can do to able to connect this human connection. And I don't think it's false. I don't think it's bad. But let's think about that. When we used to go, we were still going for a date. Don't you try to impress the other person? Don't you try to understand if he or she likes movies or particular shows or wine?

Patrick Spencer (23:46.907)
Thank

Evgeniy Kharam (23:55.036)
Yes, is this bad? No, this means we care.

Patrick Spencer (23:58.85)
Yeah, yeah, very true. All right, the elephant in the room. We can't have a call about anything nowadays without talking about, you guessed it, intelligence. You have a bonus chapter in the book on AI.

I pulled out a quote here, which I thought was interesting. Emerging technologies such as generative AI are reshaping workforce demands and employees and employers are placing greater emphasis on soft skills. These skills enable professionals to respond to changes in technology and client needs. So when you're selling, you need to use AI and you need to probably

make it visibly apparent to the person you're selling to that you actually understand what's happening in the AI universe at the same time. I know I've interviewed folks over the past year and I've asked them how they're using AI personally or in their professional lives and they're not using it. Then I usually my recommendation is put on that particular candidate to the hiring manager. Same thing from the perspective of the vendor who's approaching me. What lessons learned have you seen on the AI front and what do you talk about in this?

bonus chapter per se.

Evgeniy Kharam (25:13.342)
So this bonus chapter is talking about evolution and a future that the way I see it, it was actually interviews, a friend of mine, Micrograph, that we kind of brainstormed together. His idea was to start this, about what's going to happen with AI and sales process. We're not talking about right now about how you use UI in a security company, a vendor, or how you help AI to reshape your document or your resume. We're talking about particular sales and buyer process.

And we already seeing some of these phases. So one is can you use AI to do research? As easy as it is, you can go to ChartsGPT, put Kite and understand what Kite works, do tell me about this company, tell me about what they do, any problems, successes, competitors, very, very easy. But this is just like a drop in the bucket. We're going to have the purchasing bots or researching bots that will be

much more detailed and oriented to understand what you do. And slowly, slowly, slowly, these bots may be going to go and ask for more information from the vendor to the point that the vendors will reshape and change their website to provide APIs for the bots to get this information as well. And these bots will eventually be able to create use cases, enrich use cases. Even right now, I'm working on a document and I need to think about testing for XYZ.

I'll write all my tasks and then I'll go to charge GPT and say, here's the task for this technology. Am I missing anything? Nine times out of the 10, I'm going to miss a case on idea. I didn't think about that. It's a great idea. So we're going to have this more and more. Until to the point, we probably want to have AI bots actually doing some of the testing as well. Why I cannot have a virtual machine, whereas there's a bot and he can launch scripts.

and large libraries to check against my success criteria. I hope you have one when you're doing a POC to do that. This is some of the evolution thing, the thing that happened. It's going to be a bit scary if you're going to get to the point where AI bots are going to buy from AI bots, but it's majority going to be on the transactional stuff. You we're not going to see it for a very long time for more complicated deals. I need five lessons of that.

Patrick Spencer (27:24.329)
Yeah.

Evgeniy Kharam (27:35.218)
five lessons of here, need to expand my database and stuff like that.

Patrick Spencer (27:39.948)
AI is a fundamental underpinning of doing research, I think, for most everybody nowadays, or should be, if it isn't, it should be. But getting, maybe it's like step three or four in the process, and most organizations aren't there. But do you foresee that we'll be using AI to understand...

You're talking to me, Patrick's personality profile. So you know what resonates with me, what doesn't resonate with me. So you don't go to the ladder, you go to the former, right? You're going to talk about stuff that is going to connect with me and you're going to use engagement channels that would connect with me, which might work perfectly well for someone else who has a different personality profile. In a past life, I did some experimentation with this. We developed some technology too early to market at the time. Do you think that's going to become

increasingly prevalent.

Evgeniy Kharam (28:34.258)
Well, yeah, we're going to have some people trying to duplicate themselves and trying to kind of doing stuff. They're like, okay, I need a clone that can do XYZ. Or maybe partially. We already have chatbots. So can I have a Patrick chatbot that will kind of respond as Patrick? And then you're going to correct it. Yes, if it scares me. Yes, it out scares me. If it intrigues me. Yes, it does intrigue me as well.

Patrick Spencer (28:49.976)
Yeah.

Patrick Spencer (29:01.358)
I think it should become prevalent. think my business partner and I were 10 years too early to market with that solution. Here's one more topic I pulled out. I forgot what chapter it's covered in. Burnout. Burnout for salespeople is a real thing. Thank goodness, not in sales because it would wear me out hearing no 10 times, 30 times a day. How do you deal with burnout if you're in sales to ensure that that doesn't become

something that's disillusioning and affects your productivity or your effectiveness at the end of the day.

Evgeniy Kharam (29:36.69)
Born out is definitely quite interesting because the idea came from like how do you connect born out to soft skills? And the idea came that I want to be present. If I'm an amazingly human being, very smart, I can sell, connect, demo everything you want me to do, but I just cannot not hear. My head is in pain. I didn't sleep well.

tired all the time, I'm moody all the time, I'm angry all the time, I'm afraid, scared, whatever it is. So everything else is normal or irrelevant from a variety of reasons. And burnout, I make an analogy of the car. If we're doing maintenance to a car all the time, then we have a much better kind of statistics that the car will run better. We're not waiting until everything will break down. And the same is human body. want it to feed itself, give it good food.

exercise the body, brain, maybe not take 25 calls a day, maybe take 16 calls a day, understand the productivity, quantity over quality, in some cases, what are the methods we're trying to achieve to actually do many, many of the things. I call there about something we call mini snacks or exercise snacks is like, you have two minutes, go do some pushups, go do some sit ups, just kind of move your body. There's ways to incorporate health and incorporate

Patrick Spencer (30:59.351)
Mm.

Evgeniy Kharam (31:04.21)
holistic view for us that we can be present, we can be happy and we can do our work.

Patrick Spencer (31:10.914)
Yeah, those are good recommendations. I guess I need to be doing more pushups and setups between meetings, perhaps. The book talks a bit about what we should be thinking about as we look ahead into the future in terms of trends, preferences, learning styles. What do you talk about in the book around

What's that future look like from a sales standpoint? Because today's environment for sales in B2B, in the B2B space is much different than it was even during COVID, certainly before COVID. Where are we gonna be in a couple years from today?

Evgeniy Kharam (31:50.162)
I don't have a crystal ball. I don't know where we're going to be. I hope we're going to have a combination between the virtual and physical. We're definitely going to stay with virtual. I think we're going to have more automated demos. don't think people are to go and do demo all the time. I think the customer can go and get the information in the ways they want to get information. We spoke about this today. And this potentially could be getting a demo, look at what they need, pushing the information, and when they're ready.

Zen talking to the sales team and the engineer team to understand more what's happening.

Patrick Spencer (32:22.03)
Yeah, it's certainly true. The 70 % of most deals don't engage in actual sales rep until the very final stage of the sales or the buying cycle, right? Today, that was certainly not true four or five years ago. It was headed in that direction, but it's increasingly prevalent. It'll be even more so.

Evgeniy Kharam (32:42.866)
You know what my wish, my Christmas wish will be?

the legal and compliance will be easier.

Patrick Spencer (32:51.116)
Hmm. Hmm. Yeah. Yeah.

Evgeniy Kharam (32:53.864)
hope so, you there's so much time wasted on this part. There is legal compliance or party management. You can potentially have the customer be in love with your solution in a few weeks and then you can spend months on making sure all the lowers are happy with something.

Patrick Spencer (33:12.366)
Yeah, that's quite true. You're spot on there. So, Virginia, anything else in the book? I mean, there's a lot. It's 150 pages of great suggestions, recommendations and so forth. Anything that I may have missed that you think would be relevant to our audience?

Evgeniy Kharam (33:28.508)
Yes, definitely. There's two things I can recommend. One is voice. Work on your voice, record yourself, learn how you can become better presenter. We touched a bit about this. And the second part, we actually don't have fear training or how to overcome fear training in the industry and in general as well. So coming back to your amazing human being, blah, blah, blah, you can do everything.

What if you need to present to a very, very big meeting with a lot of stakes involved and like, hey, this is very important. have all the C level people. We need to make sure we nail this out of the park because we want to close the deal. And then everything you know and learn you forgot because now there's a lot of pressure on you. How do you work with yourself? How do you overcome the fear? How do you slow down? How do you focus? How do you forget and actually understand exactly what you need to do?

what to deliver, how to connect, how to use your voice, how to use your slides. It's a technique. We are trainable human being, you know, we can do that. There is stuff and tools that can help.

Patrick Spencer (34:39.408)
Those are good suggestions, certainly. Thanks for calling those out. So we hopefully have the audience interested in getting a copy of your book. They can pick one up, I assume on Amazon is probably the easiest way.

Evgeniy Kharam (34:47.23)
Thank you.

Evgeniy Kharam (34:51.196)
Amazon is the easiest way. And fortunately enough, my name is quite unique. So just put your organic or connect me on LinkedIn, get the book, feel free to ping me. We just released the e -version as well. No audio version for now. We'll see. We're still debating if we're doing the audio version or not.

Patrick Spencer (35:08.982)
And you mentioned there's a way to take an online assessment. Is that done off of your website work and our audience?

Evgeniy Kharam (35:13.584)
I'm working on this right now. you go to www .softskiltag .ca .com, softskiltag .ca .com, you can register it. I'm working on the best way to do it. It's a software challenge, not a soft skill challenge. So we're working through this.

Patrick Spencer (35:29.005)
Ha

Patrick Spencer (35:32.596)
funny and if someone wants to engage with you directly they can do so on LinkedIn.

Evgeniy Kharam (35:35.642)
LinkedIn, EVGENAYKHARAM, I'm like Mary, connect to me LinkedIn, I usually connect to people, like to talk and help people if I can. Please don't try to sell certificates or anything else that I need to pass because of something.

Patrick Spencer (35:52.61)
No, no, definitely. Well, it's always great to talk to you folks go out and buy a copy of his book, Architecting Success. We appreciate our audience. As always, you can find other Kitecast episodes at kiteworks .com slash Kitecast. Thanks a bunch. Have a great day.

Evgeniy Kharam (36:09.31)
Thank you very much.