May 6, 2009
Top 10 Tips to Improve Your Managed Services Sales Process
MSPmentor
Joe Panettieri offers some advice from Justin Crotty, vice-president of services at Ingram Micro about how partners can improve their managed services sales process.
“Build your brand: Crotty says Ingram believes individual VARs have the most valuable brands in the channel. His key points: Don’t rely on vendors to market for you. Vendor brands are important, but not as important as your brand. Stress value-added services vs. SaaS: Talk about your value, don’t talk about SaaS, utility, cloud and HaaS because end-customers don’t care about or understand those terms.”
RIM CEO confirms a new Storm is brewing
Engadget
Nilay Patel writes that according to Jim Balsillie, CEO of RIM, the company is now working on a successor to the BlackBerry Storm.
“ According to Balsillie, the consumer market is ‘large and untapped,’ and the current Storm is a ‘huge success in terms of sales and adoption.’”
Seagate to ‘shut US plants’
The Register
Chris Mellor writes that a U.S. financial analyst is expecting that Seagate will close one or two of its U.S. plants by the end of this month.
“ The target at Seagate is to drive its quarterly operating expenses below $300m, according to Stifel Nikolaus analyst Aaron Rakers. This will be achieved, he thinks, by shutting down one or two US plants, which will achieve a faster operating expense reduction than closing overseas facilities. There could be up a thousand employees laid off as a result.”
