One of the big lessons I took from HTG Summit in Dallas, TX this week was that we, as IT providers, need to be stepping up our Sales and Marketing activities – more so given the current economic climate. Therefore I’ll be attending the following Microsoft Partner event when it comes to Birmingham.

Are you a Microsoft Partner? Is there a danger you have your nose too much into your current workload to be looking to the future (as I so very very often see) or are you actively taking advantage of these training opportunities through your biggest supplier partner in Microsoft?

If you’re attending the Birmingham event, drop me a note and I’ll see you there!

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Free regional events focussing on how to make the most of every sale

Rev up your Revenue on the Road

Dear Partner,
Are you looking to maximise every deal that you work on?
Do you know how to increase your sales pipeline and close sales opportunities more quickly?

Microsoft invites you to a new sales opportunity training day for resellers that focuses on exactly these issues. The sales training will take you through the process of targeting the right prospects, opening up conversations with customers by matching customer pain points to your value, creating more opportunity from every deal, closing the deal more quickly and effectively and how to action this when back in the office with your sales people.

We appreciate that business opportunities don't just land on your plate. That's why we've developed this session specifically to help you get the most from every deal – providing you with the information you need to recommend or add to sales; speed up your ability to bring deals into your business; and ensure you always sell the right solutions to meet your customers' individual pain points.

Sales Directors and Sales Managers of resellers.

We have also launched our brand-new online sales training. This modular training delivery is designed to provide easy-to-consume sales training for your telesales and field sales teams – ensuring your entire business is ideally placed to capitalise fully on every opportunity.
Register today

Click on the following location and use your invitation code to secure your place:

Edinburgh: 14^th May                             Invitation Code: B94DA2

Phone Number: 0870 166 6680 ref: 3227

Birmingham: 19^th May                          Invitation Code: D962D2

Phone Number: 0870 166 6670 ref: 3639

London Victoria: 4^th June                      Invitation Code: 973ABF

Phone Number: 0870 166 6680 ref: 3226

Leeds: 16^th June  Invitation Code: 2B900A

Phone Number: 0870 166 6670 ref: 3683

9:15am
Registration and coffee

9:45am
Welcome

9:55am
Who survives an economic downturn?

10:15am
How to identify and attract your best customers, followed by coffee

11:20am
Accelerating your way off the grid

12:00pm
How does it stack up?

12:45pm
Q&A, followed by lunch

1:30pm
Driving your sales forward

1:55pm
Turning the budget conversation around

2:30pm
Tools to help you close deals, followed by coffee

3.30pm
Practical ways to deliver revenue growth

4:15pm
The next logical step

4:30pm – 5.00pm
Q&A, summary and close

So this is going to be my laziest blog post ever.

I’m currently in Dallas, TX for the latest Heartlands Technology Group (HTG) meeting – Netlink IT are a part of HTG11, the UK and Ireland group, and our group is meeting here along with all the other HTG Worldwide groups.

Since becoming a HTG member last year, HTG has a massive positive influence on both my business and me as an individual. Because of this, I mention HTG a lot during conversations with peers, suppliers and friends, and so I get asked “What is HTG?” and “What happens at HTG meetings?” a lot.

This blog post was going to explain what we do at a HTG meeting, but then my fellow HTG member, Karl Palachuk, went and wrote about exactly the same subject. Frankly, I couldn’t explain things any better than Karl – so if you want to know what HTG is or what happens at HTG Group meetings… go read Karl’s blog post.

There you go, laziest blog post I’ve ever written! :-)

At the start of last week, on my way to Houston, TX for some important business (ahem), I took the opportunity to stop off at and visit Washington, DC for a couple of days with the idea of visiting some folks I speak to frequently during the course of a regular business week – fellow HTG member and facilitator of HTG11, Dave Sobel of Evolvetech, and Naseem Saab, owner of Results Software. Both Dave and Naseem took time out of their busy schedules to show me around the sites of Washington, DC and introduce me to their teams, and I had a great time whilst in town. Thanks guys!

I also had opportunity to speak at length with the guys at Results Software about how Netlink IT and Results Software can create more opportunities within UK around the Results CRM product, which we’re a big fan of and have been reselling within the UK for the past 12 months or more. If you’ve not taken the opportunity to look at Results CRM, you’re missing out – feel free to drop me a line and I can give you a heads-up on how we’ve generated business using Results CRM, and how it might be a good fit for other markets too.

Now a while back Dave Sobel put me in touch with Jeremy Epstein, a former Microsoft employee who now runs “Never Stop Marketing”, helping clients utilise Community driven marketing. Jeremy writes a great blog that I’ve been following for a few weeks now. Dave mentioned that his wife, Sharon, was attending an event that Jeremy was putting on an event in DC on the Tuesday night I was in town, and so I dropped Jeremy an e-mail to see if a Brit would be welcome at his WOM Slam II event (WOM = Word of Mouth). Jeremy encouraged me to come along, and I in turn mentioned this to Naseem at Results Software, and he and his colleague Kevin also attended. An instant vindication of the power of Word of Mouth marketing that Jeremy mentioned to the folks who attended during the night!

WOM Slam II was held at Mie N Yu, a beautiful restaurant in Georgetown, and whilst I was initially stymied by the insane Washington, DC traffic (trust me, this place makes London look positively free-flowing) once I’d arrived I was made to feel really welcome by everyone else in attendance and had a great time!

The evening was based around the challenge of promoting JackBe, an Enterprise level Mash-up tool, using Word of Mouth marketing strategies. We were divided into six teams of four or five people, and over a lovely complimentary dinner we were given time to come up with a proposal that we had to pitch later on with the best idea, as decided by the guys at JackBe, being declared winner.

I was given the opportunity to deliver our teams pitch (as I told my fellow attendees at the time, at least if I made an arse of myself, they wouldn’t see me again!) and in my best Queens English suggested that people buy products or services based on specific pain they are experiencing. Based on that fact, JackBe should create a series of half a dozen or so mini Case-Studies showing how JackBe has solved some pains specific to certain targeted industry segments. These Case-Studies should be accessible via an easy to read URL that could be passed along via Twitter, Facebook, e-mail and indeed, Word of Mouth! What’s more, the JackBe team should have business cards personalised with this specific industry info that they could use at Trade Shows and the like.

I’m pleased to say that our teams pitch won first prize, a $50 credit at Mie N Yu and the book “Word of Mouth Marketing: How Smart Companies Get People Talking” for each member of our team!

Now, attending Business Networking events is what I consider a necessary chore when you run a business. I’ll openly admit I don’t relish attending such events in the UK, and I find them a bit of a grind. However, the WOM Slam II event was something I thoroughly enjoyed, with some really great people who were warm, friendly and interesting. I wish I could attend more of the same! I think there’s an element of my opinion that  that Americans are generally warm people in my experience that contributed to my enjoyment of the event, plus the fact that the attendees of WOM Slam were just a great bunch of people. Perhaps I should move Netlink IT to the US to enjoy more of these events! :-)

If you’re a business within the Washington, DC area then I’d strongly encourage you to contact Jeremy and become a part of the next WOM Slam event. If, like me, you’re outside that region, then keep an eye on Jeremy’s blog and Twitter feed for some great info that is useful wherever you are in the world!