Like most things in life, concepts are easy but doing is the hard part. It is the same with being a “Trusted Advisor” to your clients if you are a traditionally trained technology sales or marketing person. (more…)

Right about now, you may be feeling like you’ve woken up in the movie Glengary, Glengary Ross, questioning your abilities and future. Dumbstruck by what was working before no longer working now. (more…)

Some interesting “tech” news in the Mac world. I hope this gets you laughing and starts your week out right!

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Here are a few funny 7-Up commercials to start your week off with a smile… Enjoy!

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There are a couple of articles that I found on CRN that are worth looking at if product sales place a part in your revenue mix which I think for most who are reading this is a big yes.

They are both from Joseph F. Kovar, a great writer to track and read. You can find them on ChannelWeb, they are: 

“ Storage Hardware Sales Drop: Report” Mar. 06, 2009
“Storage Software Sales Grow, Barely: Report” Mar. 10, 2009

Here are some of the more interesting parts:

• “Improving efficiency is an important way to get ahead in a bad economy…”
• “There is a general move away from spending on hardware toward controlling costs”
• “People are trying to trade capital expenses for operating expenses,” he said. “So instead of buying more things with an on/off switch, they will spend more on software.”
• “Certain parts of the storage software market did better than others, according to IDC.
• Sales of storage device management software rose 11.0 percent during the quarter, while sales of archiving software rose 10.7 percent, file system software 8.6 percent and data protection and recovery software 6.1 percent…”
• “Customers are looking for quick-hit products for quick turnarounds,” he said. “But when you take on a new management paradigm, that’s a big project. People want to better manage their storage. But storage management is a magnitude kind of ‘biggie,’ and you don’t want to take on a ‘biggie’ in an economic downturn. It’s nice to have. But today you have to justify yourself not only to the IT committee but to the ‘why-am-I-buying-anything’ committee.”

So the question is what are you going to do with this information? Or what are you doing? I’d like to hear from you.

Let me know what you think. Send me an email at RVela@StreetSmartVAR.com.

You can also get more specific info by subscribing to our online marketing course go to www.StreetSmartVAR.com or if you are reading this on our Blog site see the right hand side of the page for a web form.