XChange Events

XChange Events, the events division of UBM Tech Channel, has announced improvements to its annual Best of Breed channel thought-leadership conference. In response to the needs of attendees, sponsors and the event’s board of advisors, XChange Events will unite the Solution Provider 500 Conferen…

Well here you go—that key lever can be marketing. Can marketing really make a material difference in your growth? As you grapple with the myriad of challenges facing you and your business in 2013 and beyond, with changing delivery models and service models, a whole new group of stake holders t…

As my client base considers moving into cloud applications either in Microsoft CRM or with the Business Productivity Online Suite (BPOS), questions regarding changing business planning, impact on marketing considerations and differing sales strategies and compensation plans always come up. First, c…

Many organizations need to change their sales approaches, and by default their sales people, into something more consulting focused. The big question is: How do they actually accomplish this transformation? Is it an art? Is it scientific? Or, is the whole notion of turning a salesperson into a consu…

Let go of everything you know about cloud computing. Forget SaaS, IaaS, PaaS and any other acronym you might think of to describe the common concepts associated with cloud. Now imagine a large enterprise that spans continents and employs hundreds of thousands of people. It is an ecosystem of moving …

It's a truism in our industry that if solution providers are going to position themselves for the future, they need to get away from simple transactional business and engage with the strategic goals of their clients. The old "break-fix" and "box pushing" approaches are going the way of the Dodo bird…

The industry is quickly moving beyond the traditional approach to managed service pricing, fueled by cloud solutions. However, many MSPs remain focused on a legacy pricing and client value model that is not well aligned to the new client consumption requirements. Maintaining reasonable mar…

 Building your business requires both leadership and management, and the first step in that journey is understanding the difference between the two. Leadership is the ability to make things happen by encouraging and channeling others' contributions, addressing important issues and acting as a c…

You know you need to spend money to make money. The most successful businesses in our industry have embraced marketing and have learned how to articulate their value in order to boost sales. As an owner, you might find it even more difficult to justify spending more on marketing when it's diffi…

We recently surveyed a variety of partners who are focused on developing a cloud practice. The results essentially confirmed what I've found with my consulting clients: Most partners are simply struggling to find their way and are partly cloudy on the approach to leading their sales teams. There has…