As we dive into Partner Summit in Boston next week, we’ll be offering you plenty of news and key information, as well as ways to keep track of all of it via Cisco Channels social media. But the social conversation around Partner Summit certainly isn’t just about us—it’s also about you, our partners.
We launched the Cisco Partner Ambassador program last year, to provide a range of partners with the opportunity to share their thoughts and impressions from Partner Summit. This year, we’re excited to announce that the program not only will continue, but also has been expanded, with a fuller representation of the global Cisco channel community confirmed to participate, including partners who will be joining us primarily through Virtual Partner Summit.
Each of our Partner Ambassadors will be blogging, tweeting, and sharing content via Facebook and LinkedIn, before, during, and after Partner Summit. We’re excited to hear the perspectives they have, and look forward to sharing their content with all of you, too. Follow along throughout the event – don’t forget #ciscops13 for Tweets — and feel free to offer your feedback. For reference, we have created a Twitter list of all of our Ambassadors’ Twitter handles.
Let’s meet our 10 Ambassadors for Partner Summit 2013. I asked each to share a little about their specialties and where they focus in the Cisco ecosystem, so what follows is each partner’s description and where to find their social content throughout the event. Read More »
This post is part of a new series featuring Brian Higgins, Principal Healthcare Consultant at Comstor US. Comstor is a recognized global leader in Cisco product distribution and an established provider of networking and advanced technology solutions. Brian is a sales and business development executive with 35 years of experience in the global healthcare information technologies industry. He has a proven and successful track record of establishing and executing go-to-market strategies for both start-ups and well-established companies in the healthcare space. He is also a trusted sales and business development advisor to information and medical technology companies selling into all segments of the healthcare industry.
I recently hosted a webinar on the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA)and the Health Information Technology for Economic and Clinical Health (HITECH) for a community of technology resellers.
HIPPA and HITECH are the US version of “privacy and security” laws that are getting so much attention in our industry. I thought I had a reasonably good grasp on the subject, but my intuition was that the subject was complex enough to warrant an expert. We brought in a nationally recognized expert by name of Bob Chaput, Founder and CEO of Clearwater Compliance LLC, and (luckily for me) he did an outstanding job of explaining a very complicated set of rules and regulations in a simple and easy to understand way.
While it was interesting to learn more about specifically who is covered by these laws and what their specific obligations are, the more enlightening discussion related to how far behind most industry stakeholders are in their compliance and the resulting economic ramifications.
For those of us in the channel that recognize the enormous opportunity of delivering technology to the healthcare sector, this is an important subject about which to have a first level of understanding. It not only gives us the credibility that our healthcare end users are looking for in a vendor, it also represents an opportunity to deliver valuable advice and services. Finally, it’s a law that we might fall under if we are in the business of maintaining healthcare communications or information technology (HCIT) platforms, or delivering cloud services.
Similar privacy and security laws exist around the world, requiring partners to play close attention to what is occurring in their regions relative to this topic. Read More »
This post is part of a new series we’ll be featuring from David McNicholas, Director of Strategic Business Development at Comstor US. Comstor is a recognized global leader in Cisco product distribution and an established provider of networking and advanced technology solutions. David is a recognized keynote speaker in the field of the financial impact of technology and executive strategic selling—and the creator of Executive Relevance Selling (ERS), a Cisco endorsed program (more on that below). David has trained and consulted data center, contact center, customer service operations professionals and specialists, as well as Fortune 1000 Executives all over the world on this methodology and discipline.
In my previous blog, I discussed the demise of solution selling due to the New World Sales Era of an investment-centric market. I put a stake in the ground that selling efforts must be driven to and at the executive level. To achieve this, you must be able to “improve business processes that drive the executive agenda defined by hard cash flows.”
But how do you know you’re experiencing the New World Sales Era? Have you heard any of these statements from customers? “We’ll make do with what we have.” “It’s not in the budget.” “Times are tough; we are not spending any money.” “I’m not the only decision maker anymore.” If so, you’re clearly selling in this new era.
Today, the business side of organizations is driving more and more IT decisions, while almost all IT decisions must be approved by top management to get funding. As a result, you must be able to get to the heart of the matter, which is (again):
“Improving business processes that drive the executive agenda defined by hard cash flows.”
To fully understand this definition and what it means to drive the sale at the executive level, we must first have a foundational understanding of corporate top management. The foundational executive attribute you need to very clearly understand to get started on selling to executives is fiduciary duty. Read More »
This post is the first in a series we’ll be featuring from David McNicholas, Director of Strategic Business Development at Comstor US. Comstor is a recognized global leader in Cisco product distribution and an established provider of networking and advanced technology solutions. David is a recognized keynote speaker in the field of the financial impact of technology, executive strategic selling and the creator of ERS (Executive Relevance Selling) – a Cisco endorsed program (more on that below). David has trained and consulted data center, contact center, customer service operations professionals and specialists, as well as Fortune 1,000 Executives all over the world on this methodology and discipline.
The world has forever changed and how technology must be sold has, too. Solution selling is dead because the major foundational assumption of solution selling is that a budget exists. Now the VAR must create the budget. The two market forces that killed solution selling are the same forces that require budget to be created by the VAR.
So, what are the two market forces that killed solution selling? Read More »
Summer’s coming to a close and Cisco partners have been doing much more than just hanging by the pool. They’ve been busy working on some very cool projects!
In this episode of Partner Update, we find out why Cisco partner Force 3 has been spending time with competitive eating champion Joey Chestnut and learn about a new blog series from Logicalis called Hype or Ripe.
But there’s a lot more in this action-packed newscast, so watch this week’s Partner Update to get a math lesson from Cisco Channels Chief Edison Peres, find out how architecture-based solutions can maximize ROI for customers and help ensure partner profitability, learn how Westcon Group is removing obstacles to global distribution, get the latest details from Forrester Consulting on ways that customers can benefit from Borderless Networks solutions, out with HP and in with Xerox print solutions, our VMworld update, and much more that you don’t want to miss.
Watch it all right here:
Keep reading for a list of links and a written transcript of our newscast. Read More »
