The Partner Event 2010 - Day 3 Recap

As the conference wrapped up today it was great to see many partners making the annual trip to Fargo to connect with each other, and reinforce their long term channel relationships.

Overall, the event had a very strong group of ISV's in attendance as was apparent by the presenters, Mark Rockwell and Jesse Byam, who hosted my first session of the day focused on how to build better relationships between VAR’s and ISV’s. Mark shared his tips from an ISV perspective, while Jesse represented VAR’s. A lot of similar best practices were discussed among the attendees, including the fact that these relationships require a lot of nurturing.

With lunch sandwiched in between, I attended a two-part session presented by Joe Rotella (great speaker, I always learn something new!) as he explained the five levers to control and grow your business – how 5 x 10% growth = 61% increase in profit. You may ask, how does that math figure out?! I don’t want to explain all of Joe’s tips, but by monitoring and increasing key metrics across marketing, sales, account management, project management, and accounting, you can achieve awesome increases in profit.

Finally, The Partner Event wrapped up with some inspiration as three partners explained how they were able to adjust their lifestyles to break out of the norm either by re-locating to a remote topical location, or by volunteering to give something back to less fortunate individuals in a time of crisis or need.

If you missed the conference perhaps we’ll see ya next year!

One of these days I'll find a way to clone myself, so I can make it to all of the additional sessions I miss out on. :-)

--Kevin