• How to break down the prospects' defense walls and develop instant trust and credibility
• The four crucial steps for effective pre-call planning
• The questioning methodology that will motivate your buyer to take action
• To talk money and uncover budget objections early
• To find the hidden decision makers and have your buyer stick to a timeline
• Effective phone and voice mail strategies to get through to prospects and have them return your call
• To get people to make decisions without being a pushy or stereotypical salesperson

Recent events have dramatically changed the landscape for designing critical control systems. The Stuxnet worm has shown the world how control systems can be hacked. Now international criminals, government agencies and hackers are on the offensive. As a result, governments and standards organizations are changing the rules and making new demands. February's Executive Order by President Obama is just one example. Standard bodies like ISA and IEC are also setting standards for cyber security in industrial systems.

This talk will discuss these changes and how cyber security impacts the responsibilities of the systems integrator. At the same time, it also provides a revenue opportunity as clients look to their system integrators for solutions.

Eric Byres is recognized as one of the world's leading experts in the field of SCADA and control systems security. Eric's background as a process controls engineer allows him to bring a unique combination of deep technical knowledge plus practical field experience to his role as chief technology officer and vice president of engineering at Tofino Security, a Belden brand. Eric has provided security guidance to government agencies, major oil companies and power utilities on security protection for critical infrastructures. He has researched and written extensively about Stuxnet and is chair of ISA99 Task Group 2, conducting an analysis of ANSI/ISA-99 standards with respect to Stuxnet.  

Mark your calendar for Thursday, April 4, for a free webinar about our KPICs program. Our program administrator, iLumen, has been working on some changes that will make data entry easier to use and more beneficial for the participants. Plus, we will discuss some of the ways that the information in KPICs can help you improve your businesses.

We are looking to duplicate the successes of last year's efforts on the Salary Survey to our KPICs participants. We are working on an outreach program to ask all our participants to discuss their satisfaction and to listen to for feedback. Our goal is to make this program as widely appreciated as the Salary Survey!

Where can I find a personnel safety program that works for my CSI company? Safety training is a necessity, but finding relevant programs at a reasonable price can be a challenge. How much do my peers invest in safety training? Confusion reigns!

CSIA heard the groaning, so the Member Relations Committee and safety experts among out members created a survey to enable members to share their plans and experiences. Integrators, please have the person in your company who manages your safety program complete the survey.

Where your company is located on the globe doesn't matter. The survey won't take long to complete, and the results will provide valuable information for you and all members.

Complete the safety survey online by Friday, March 8.

Have you seen CSIA certification as a requirement in a Request for Proposal? Are you aware of a company that will use only CSIA Certified integrators? If so, we need to hear from you! 

Please contact Bob Lowe or Ann Nelson.

We've been told that we are making headway in our efforts to have CSIA Certification required by end users (clients), but specific examples will enable us to better make the case in our marketing initiatives. Thanks.

Since we started the program at the conference last May, we had just under 70 companies submit salary. The submissions were tailored to the employee roles we defined specifically for our industries as system integrators, such as control engineer level 1/2/3, branch manager and service technician -- all roles that most salary surveys don't include specifically. We had so many entries that we were able to present the results by region, making the statistical parameters even more pertinent to the participants.

The 2013 survey is now open. After a mid-year start in 2012, we are now on an annual schedule. Companies that have not already entered results can enter their salary information for 2012 and receive the 2012 report. These companies have until the end of the first quarter -- March 31 -- to enter their results. All other companies can enter their results after they know their 2013 salary adjustments. The next report will appear in January 2014 and will contain a comparison of 2012 to 2103 

results.

Remember that this program is administered by CSIA and the data are managed by iLumen in a secure and confidential repository. Company data are entered into the iLumen database in January on an annual basis. Entry typically takes less than 20 minutes.

Salary is one of the biggest expenses for most CSIA members. This program was designed to provide our members with information aligned with our industry so that companies can make appropriate compensation decisions, all for a mere $150 per year.

Meet Remco Kappert

by Joe Martin, Ambassadors Committee Chair

If you're a new member or just want to find out how you can get more benefit from your CSIA membership, please feel free to email Remco.

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Looking for a member mentor? In the Connected Community go to Directory > Find a Member. Check Mentor search box, then Find Members.

by Sam Hoff, Partner Committee Chair

Members can expect to see a greater variety of information presented in the Application Showcase on the Connected Community in the future. The Partner Committee revised the process for Partners to share news about their products and services. In addition to the template, Partners now can upload white papers, video and other types of files to the library.

Partners traditionally roll out new offerings at the expo during the Executive Conference. The Application Showcase gives all members immediate access to new product information. Thank you, Partners, for helping members stay on the cutting edge of SI technology.

by Bob Lowe, CSIA Executive Director

John Kuenzler, Bob Lowe and Craig Resnick

There are three CSIA blogs about the forum so visit CSIA Connected Community. But before you go there keep reading this article! My objective in attending the ARC Forum was to meet as many end-users as possible to educate them on why CSIA certification will lower their project risks. I got the attention of some key people with Procter & Gamble, Cargill, Chevron, Pfizer, Exxon Mobil, Ashland Chemical, Arcelor Mittal and Dow Chemical. I'm excited about the potential and will be busy with follow-up. Having CSIA certification accepted in the marketplace is an initiative of CSIA and I have no doubt that certification will be an industry standard. 

CSIA is grateful for the support of ARC and we look forward to ARC's Craig Resnick's presentation, Megatrends of Industrial Automation, at our conference.

While you are visiting our Connected Community for the blogs, be sure to visit the ARC Automation Index library where you'll find the September and November reports on issues impacting manufacturing and enterprise. The March issue will arrive soon. These reports are a component of our agreement with ARC and a benefit for CSIA members, so take advantage of the reports. 

Getting back to CSIA certification, currently there are 95 member locations around the globe that are CSIA Certified and the requirement for certification is increasingly being included in project specifications. Some exciting news is that we just certified Electro Controles del Noroeste (ECN) in Mexico -- our first in that country. Congratulations ECN!

by Ted Garnett, Executive Conference speaker

One thing I love about sports teams is they always know the score. That's important, because you do different things with your resources if it's late in the game and you are behind as opposed to if it's late in the game and you are way ahead. You spend your energy, time, talent, and other resources based on the situation. But, you need to know the situation. 

Players and coaches in sports can look at a scoreboard at any time to get vital information. They also go to great lengths to keep their own score on things like teamwork, skills, and how the "game within the game" is going at the individual one-on-one and micro-team level. They know the score, therefore they know what to take responsibility for and how to break that down into decisions and action.

When I walk into organizations I am known for asking a simple question, "Are you winning?" I ask that of line level staff, of managers, of senior executive teams. The most common response comes without thinking, just a polite "you bet!" But then I dig, and say, "Oh yeah?  How do you know?" And they pause, and think, and say things like, "Well, guess honestly I don't know." Or, "Well, I guess I have not gotten yelled at yet today so that's a win." Or, "Ted, I can see if I am winning, Me, MY stuff, My area, but are WE winning as a team or group?...I don't know that I can see that." I get all kinds of answers that are mostly bad. They tell me they don't know the score at multiple levels and therefore don't know how to make efficient real-time decisions and the outcomes are thus suffering.

We break the formula for SPEED in organizations down to five things...and then further into 33 culture metrics that give people the score and ability to act to drive their culture to higher performance. The SPEED metrics are things that every organization needs to be doing well in order to get world class results. Structure, Productivity, Engagement, Execution, and Due Diligence.

Towers Watson did a study recently and found that companies that drive higher results in their culture hit 27.4% margins compared to those with low culture hitting around 9.9%. That's almost three times the low culture performance. If your people have the right scoreboards they can dramatically improve their decision making and self-initiate a positive culture of accountability and performance. Without that visibility, managers don't know what to manage or lead and people are left without much ability to self-initiate anything. They are blind, they have no consensus, they cannot see clearly enough to do much of anything so they default to whatever they can guess at implementing and hope it's right.

Into action: Simply ask five people at various levels "Are we winning?" Listen to them. See if they respond with how they are individually winning (remember you asked them are we winning!), or if they can tell you the team's score or if they just wander around.

Ted Garnett is an organizational development consultant and the author of the book AccountaCution: Accountability into Execution and the producer of the video No Excuses. His SPEED Metrics presentation is the final, plenary session at the CSIA 2013 Executive Conference.