ARTICLES BY ABBY SORENSEN

• 3 Steps You Can’t Skip When Offering Cloud Migration Services

  Michelle Hyde is a one-woman wrecking ball when it comes to knocking down barriers to cloud migration, and her model can teach solutions providers how to get their clients up to speed.

• How AIDC VAR Redline Won Produce

  This AIDC reseller has always been a step ahead of channel trends like developing proprietary software, building recurring revenue, and capitalizing on regulatory opportunities within a niche vertical.

• What VARs & MSPs Can Learn From The Trump Campaign’s IT Provider

  The Wall Street Journal’s homepage on January 17 featured a headline that included the words “IT Firm.” VARs and MSPs take note: a fellow solutions provider is caught up in a nasty, politically-charged debate being litigated on a national scale. Obviously, your clients are not paying you in large sums of cash handed over in plastic Wal-Mart bags. This story is preposterous in so many ways, and it’s far outside the realm of what’s normal for how VARs and MSPs operate. As absurd as the entire situation might be, this story does raise a few legitimate questions about IT service provider business models that are worth rehashing.

• VARs: What Is Your Plan B?

  Getting to Plan B: Breaking Through to a Better Business Model is a must-read for leaders in the channel who come from a tech background and not from a business background. Here are some of the top takeaways for VARs.

• Retail Resellers: Build Your Business Around Hardware, Not On It

  Instead of lamenting over shrinking hardware margins, Technology Recovery Group (TRG) continues to diversify with unique offerings that keep its tier-one retail clients coming back for more.

• Retail Resellers: Build Your Business Around Hardware, Not On It

  Instead of lamenting over shrinking hardware margins, Technology Recovery Group (TRG) continues to diversify with unique offerings that keep its tier-one retail clients coming back for more.

• How VARs Can Make Customers Raving Fans

  We dedicate a good amount of editorial to encouraging VARs to innovate, to add to their line cards, and to transition their business models. We should spend more time reminding VARs the importance of keeping existing customers happy by ensuring your customer support operation is up to par.

• Why A VAR Was Unexpectedly Forced To Become An MSP

  Back when Channel Executive was named Business Solutions and VARinsights.com was BSMinfo.com, those publications used to host Channel Transitions conferences. The name of those events was quite literal – they were designed to help VARs in the IT channel transition to a managed services business model. Our brand names have changed, but we are still providing content to help break/fix VARs transition to the wonderful world of recurring revenue. I distinctly remember several panelists at Channel Transitions conferences advising audience members to tackle the VAR-to-MSP transition gradually: start with a small handful of customers, and only add more when your cash flow allows it.

• MSP M&A: People First, Technology Second

  In February 2017 California-based MSPs CIO Solutions and TekTegrity were each at a crossroads. Eric Egolf, president and CEO of CIO Solutions, had just seen 40 percent of the company’s revenue walk out the door with the loss of a single client. Russ Levanway, CEO of TekTegrity, was trying to regain the steady growth the company had earned in past years and was facing an imminent need to build a more mature cloud platform to compete in a changing landscape.

• Why Every POS VAR Should Read “Built To Last”

  The technologies VARs sell and the services VARs provide change drastically in short periods of time, and it takes persistence to evolve your business to keep up. That’s why Built To Last is a must-read for VARs.

• Let’s Talk About The Channel’s Lack Of Diversity

  The lack of women and minorities in the channel is such a complex problem. We can’t keep forgetting about diversifying the channel – it has to be an ongoing conversation about how our industry can find better ways to recruit talented women and minorities and help them advance to leadership positions.

• New Podcast For POS VARs: The Challenger Sale

  My addiction to podcasts is why I jumped at the opportunity to join a POS industry-specific podcast venture with industry veterans Jim Roddy of Worldpay, Sean Buckley of Vend,  and Jeremy Julianof CBS NorthStar  We plan to read a book and discuss its applications to POS resellers and software companies on a regular basis. Our first episode is a discussion about The Challenger Sale: Taking Control of the Customer Conversation by Matthew Dixon and Brent Adamson.

• How Firing Clients Spurs Growth

  Mythos Technology is still projecting double-digit growth in 2018 despite its initiative to trim off the lowest-performing part of its customer base.

• VARs & MSPs: Just Say ‘No’ To Bad Customers

  When James Laszko founded Mythos Technology in 2010 he likely didn’t expect he’d be able to afford to fire the lowest performing 20 percent of his customers in 2018. But that’s exactly what he has set out to do this year. You can read more about his customer rightsizing initiative in the May 2018 issue of Channel Executive magazine. In the meantime, there is another side to the Mythos story: how to find the customers who are the right fit so they won’t end up on the chopping block a few years down the road.

• The Fresh Face Of The POS Channel

  How a POS solutions provider and software developer backed by cofounders in their early 30s is thriving with triple-digit growth thanks to a recurring revenue obsession and a smartly diversified business portfolio.