Cracking the Code

About the Book

Cracking the Code: A Professional Salesperson's Guide to Penetrating the Intelligence Community was written with two goals in mind:

1) to demystify the often confusing and always secretive intelligence community from a sales person’s perspective, and

2) to provide a first-level road map to penetrating this multibillion dollar market with a product or service.

This book will give you no-nonsense answers to the following questions:

• Who comprises the intelligence community?
• Who is really in charge when it comes to making buying decisions?
• Exactly where and how should you begin your sales efforts?  
• Without a security clearance, shall I even bother?
• How are IC agencies similar yet different than other federal agencies?
• What tactical steps can a sales person take to “break into" the IC?
• Where does the sales opportunity really exist?
• How should a person prepare for sales meetings?
• Do I really need to worry about things like a GSA Schedule, a secure vault, and a polygraph?
• Who can help me in my effort to penetrate the intelligence community?
• What is the best source of information to learn about my target clients?

These and many other questions will be answered in this informative book.  This is the first resource that helps the reader make money by persuasive selling, targeting intelligence community individuals who have one of the most complex jobs in our nation’s history—protecting the American citizen against state sponsored crimes and the intricacies of the modern global war on terror (GWOT).   

Learn from someone who has been in the trenches of federal sales, yet views his role as helping our nation “be all it can be”.  This  book will guide you on the 'road to revenue' in a candid view of person-to-person selling into the most secretive market in the world!

About the Author

Dan Callahan has spent over twenty years selling to the federal government and the associated contractor community.  He has seen the dynamics of product firms as well as the unique value of pure service providers, in both large and small companies.  His perspective has been forged over many sales experiences associated with the US Navy, Army, and other military organizations, as well as a long list of civilian agencies that span our Federal Government.  Additionally, he has spent years in and around the core intelligence agencies, including the CIA, NSA, NGA, NRO, the military intell community and others.  He has sold many technologies and services, including complex telecommunications and networking, enterprise class management software, net-native collaboration and manufacturing design tools, software development design methodologies, information assurance solutions and high performance computing.

Callahan has worked with senior leadership as well as the rank-and-file technical team members, in a career-long effort to professionally sell these technologies.  As a highly communicative business developer and sales practitioner, Callahan operates a consultancy in Northern Virginia (www.venonaconsulting.com) that is dedicated to helping emerging technology firms efficiently penetrate the intelligence community (IC).  Breaking into this labyrinth of agencies is no easy task, but it can be mastered if one is properly guided with the facts and a description of how the game is really played.