Recent Articles
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Healthcare Dollars to Be Had For Solution Providers
Sarah Palin is weighing in on healthcare today, so I figure the topic is fair game – at least from an IT industry perspective. Bottom line, vertical expertise in markets such as healthcare is in demand today and a valuable asset for the channel to have. Solution providers who hone specific industry skills and speak…
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Tech Support and Customer Service: High-Touch or Phone Tree?
Calling into a lot of tech support lines these days is at best a chore and at worst a headache-inducing and time-consuming exercise in futility and frustration. Maybe you have an easy problem that can get solved right away by the level-one engineer who answers the phone. But more likely you will go through a…
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Vendor Incentives: What Have You Found You Can Live Without?
Vendor-based incentives have long been an integral part of the channel business model. The recession, however, has caused many vendors to rethink how they reward and incent partners, resulting in reductions in front-end discounts and rebates to more stringent requirements for the use of such resources as marketing development funds. These actions are a cost-cutting…
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Serving Customers What They Need (and Like to Eat)
Smart solution providers don’t sit on their heels waiting for customers to tell them what they need, because oftentimes customers don’t know or can’t know. As the trusted advisor, it’s your job to understand your customer’s business so that you can make the right recommendations. Education and outreach are key too, especially when major new…
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Dell’s Services Ambitions Makes VARs Nervous
Is Dell shooting itself in the channel foot with its services ambitions? A growing number of solution providers seem to think so. After years of rejecting the channel and services, Dell is embracing both models in hopes of jumpstarting sales and reviving its market leadership position. The acquisitions of Everdream, Silverback and Equal Logic, as…
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IBM Aims Virtualization Ads at 30-Something Mass Market
Back when I was living in Silicon Valley for 12 years, it wasn’t unfamiliar to see every single billboard on 101 emblazoned with a message about some kind of obscure technology that most people in the country wouldn’t understand but that would sometimes leave the techies driving along the freeway nodding in agreement or even…