How Computer Hardware Industry Is Evolving & How to Make Long Cycle Sales with NGD Systems Scott Shadley

Scott Shadley, the Vice-President of Marketing at NGD Systems, takes us through the key developments in the computer hardware industry with explosion of data generation, capture and analysis in the last decade. We take a look at why the industry is moving towards diskless storage components, namely Solid State Drives (SSDs), and Scott describes how NGD is speeding up the process of data search and recovery for the biggest tech companies in the world. Scott also gives us an inside look in the marketing and sales process in the IT industry. He explains the need to dive deeper beyond the technical specifications if you want to build lasting client relationships. If you want to learn more about computational storage with Scott - https://silvertonconsulting.com/gbos2/2018/09/25/72-greybeards-talk-computational-storage-with-scott-shadley-vp-marketing-ngd-systems/ Scott’s Twitter Handle - @smshadley Topics Discussed: Introduction to Scott’s career and background – 0:55 The evolution of Solid State Drives (SSDs) – 2:34 The shift away from disk-based storage in response to the data explosion of the last decade -  4:47 What are preprocessing and prescreening? How are they helping improve search engine performance and other picture-based algorithms? – 06:18 How new computational storage process can take over a year to implement for large companies – 13:13 Why is the sales cycle so much longer in the computer hardware industry? – 14:39 How does Scott get in front of new clients in this mature industry? – 17:30 How Scott leverages social media to meet new potential clients – 18:10 How pitching to a room full of travel and leisure journalists forced Scott to learn how to make computer hardware relevant to the average layperson – 21:48 The rise of “influencer marketing” in the IT sector – 26:40 Tools, concepts and books that have helped Scott during his career – 29:42 How Scott had to perform a literal elevator pitch for a client in NYC – 33:12 Scott’s contact details – 35:09