Once again, the industry braved a cold and wet Sydney night (we just seem to pick rainy nights) to attend the Channel Dynamics End-of-Year party!

This wonderful networking event provided Vendors, Distributors, Resellers and Press the opportunity to mingle in a casual, friendly atmosphere, while sampling a delicious selection of wines and canapés. And this year's cover meant that attendees could venture out a bit and enjoy the magnificent views from the Andrew (Boy) Charlton Pool. This might become a regular feature given our luck with the weather.

We hope you enjoy some of the photos from this fabulous night:
 

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The 2011 ARN IT Industry Awards have been announced and presented at a glittering event at the Hilton Hotel in Sydney. Attended by 630 IT industry leaders, the Awards recognised the very best in the channel for 2011.

We hope you enjoy this selection of photos from this fabulous event.  Read More

Author: Moheb Moses
Look up the definition of “customer” in pretty much any dictionary and you’ll get a definition that goes something like “a person or organisation that buys goods or services from you”. But smart resellers understand that their customers include another definition, namely, “a person or organisation that SELLS goods or services TO you”.

I’m talking about Vendors.

Look at most successful resellers and you’ll see that, amongst other attributes, they have very strong vendor (and often, distributor) relationships.  Read More

An interesting article from Sales Machine blogger - Geoffrey James - on the 8 Most Crucial Sales Skills.

Although it's based on a consolidation of inputs from various sources, the key skills identified here absolutely resonate with everything we teach in our Dynamic Solution Selling workshop.

Do you agree? Are there any others missing?

http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-505183_162-28556664-10391735/the-8-most-crucial-sales-skills  Read More

Author: Moheb Moses
It is a constant source of surprise to me how often Channel Managers (and I'm talking about intelligent, professional, and experienced individuals) inflict product presentations on their partners that they would never want to sit through themselves.

Ask someone what they hate about PowerPoint, and you nearly always get the same answers (too many slides, too much text, hard to read, slides too busy) and yet Vendors still continue to present 40-slide decks with 12 point fonts and convoluted animations.

However, the purpose of this article is not so much about the format of the presentation (we’ll leave that for another time) but rather about the content. Because the other surprising thing about Vendor presentations is that the message is not always tailored for partners. Again, these are intelligent individuals who know what partners want. If I ask them a question like “Why do partners buy product?” they answer correctly:  Read More