A couple weeks ago, I had the opportunity to attend the 2015 Business Marketing Association national conference in Chicago. Over the course of three days and 39 content sessions, I walked away with an energized view about where today’s innovative B2B marketing is trending. While the sheer amount of transformative ideas was, at times, overwhelming and daunting, I was able to capture seven of the most prominent trends from some of the brightest minds in today’s workforce:

In IT today, anything even loosely characterized as software-defined is bound to generate attention, buzz and interest. Hype aside, there are very real reasons why there is such strong interest in the software-defined model, particularly as IT infrastructures accelerate down the path of virtualization and cloud computing.

You can’t dabble in the marketplace, it’s too reactionary –And being reactionary in the marketplace doesn’t build you a sustainable go to market or business strategy within the public sector. You have to treat it as if it is an economy within itself. 

A GSA Schedule contract, a master contract negotiated with, and administered by, the General Services Administration (“GSA”) transcends all of this.

As sales professionals, we understand the importance of a strategy; yet, we sometimes have a tendency to over-complicate the actual sale.  Below are 6 basic selling strategies to help you simplify your sales and business approach and win customers.

Resiliency, partnership, transformation, innovation, connection, collaboration and authenticity. These are some of the words that come to my mind after attending last month’s CRN Women of the Channel Winter workshop, which centered on the importance of A New Style of Leadership in the evolution and transformation of the channel.

This blog was originally featured on the ChannelBuzz.ca Blog, and contributed by Avnet's Vice President, Worldwide Education Solutions, Avnet, Matt Fox. 

Over the years, I’ve held different positions in the technology industry, and I’ve seen pretty much every side of software sales throughout my time in the channel.

IT solutions and services, and the channel as a whole, are constantly evolving. On top of this, demand, usage and functionality of technology are always fluctuating as well.  With that in mind, end users are faced with not only ensuring that their IT capacity will meet their current needs, but they are faced with predicting future business requirements over a 2 to 5 year period in an ever-changing environment, and doing so as cost-effectively as possible. With constrained IT budgets that can lead to long procurement cycles, end users could be buying too much capacity up front or they may not be buying enough.

This blog is designed to act as a high-level resource for your CASL compliance essentials, but does not constitute legal advice. For any questions or concerns, we encourage you to meet with your legal team or contact an attorney who is familiar with this legislation.

In the channel, it’s no secret that the key to success for solution providers lies within the appropriate financing for their solutions. So what’s the secret to successful financing solutions? Keeping offerings creative and flexible for partners.

Question:  How do you know when your Finance Department is becoming more risk tolerant?