The Pragmatist & the Practitioner
Looking at companies in our channel that have enjoyed great success, you’ll find there’s a pattern to how they got started. It’s a pattern we can all learn from.
The regularly recurring newsletter of Senior Resultant Howard M. Cohen, 40+ year tech channel veteran and creator of compelling content for and about IT and the techChannel.
Welcome back to techChannel Results!
In this issue we’ll talk about how the most successful channel companies get started, and by whom. This includes ISVs, publications, consultancies, and all IT service providers (ITSP), including managed service providers (MSP), cloud service providers (CSP), internet service providers (ISP), and others. To keep things simple we’ll be using ITSP to refer to all service providers.
We’ll also take a look at the progress the National Society of IT Service Providers (NSITSP) is making in its mission to elevate the professional posture of the IT industry. They continue to actively seek those who wish to contribute to the growth of the channel to volunteer on any of their highly active committees.
Let’s get started!
Two articles have been posted recently to techChannel Marketing.
Focusing on Value is the core topic of the first one, because value is at the core of all effective marketing, promotion, and sales. Customers invest to enjoy value. Click on ttechChannel Marketing in the menu at the top of this page.
We then ask who cares. Who cares about you? Who cares to hear about you unless you give them a reason to care.
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The National Society of IT Service Providers (NSITSP.org) having recently surpassed 1,000 members in two short years, recently began assembling its Professional Development Committee whose charge is to develop standards, award marketable badges, and establish consistency of ethics and practices among IT service providers. Their series of webinars continues throughout the summer!
For more information and to join, visit https://nsitsp.org.
Looking at companies in our channel that have enjoyed great success, you’ll find there’s a pattern to how they got started. It’s a pattern we can all learn from.
The Pragmatist & the Practitioner
Many of our colleagues got launched when a technology team decided they could do a better job than the management of the company they were working at, broke off and started their own company. That’s not unusual. Others came from the brainchild of one individual who recruited others to help them build a new company.
My observation is that the most successful companies have been those formed by having the right people with the right skills combine their talents to build the new entity. Former Citrix CEO and current WorkSpot Chairman Mark Templeton often talks about this as “getting the right people on the bus” being the first thing you need to do.
Two of the key talents required are the practitioner and the pragmatist.
The practitioner is the outward face of the organization, the personality who goes out and promotes the company’s offerings to their waiting audience. Some refer to these as the evangelists for their organization.
The pragmatist is the organizer behind the operations. It would be better to say that pragmatists are the organizers, because it will likely take at least two. One will be the financial wizard who keeps the books, supports the raising of capital, and reports aggressively on results to keep everyone on their toes. The other is the operations expert who keeps all the workflows flowing. Another possible player is the service manager, an expert logistician who makes sure the right people and the right materials get to the right places at the right time doing the right things.
One Shining Example
ChannelE2E is one of the most highly valued publications in our industry. Many years ago, its founder Joe Panettieri explained to me that he couldn’t have gotten this business or its predecessors off the ground without Amy Katz who ran all the operations and finance from the beginning while he went out to gather and report the news. She was clearly the pragmatist who partnered with him as the practitioner.
My Own Experience
Way back when dirt was new, in 1985 at The Computer Factory (TCF), then VP of Sales & Marketing Russell Madris moved me from sales management to head up the national services organization. In retrospect, I realize he saw the need for a practitioner to preach the gospel of great service both to staff and to customers, and he chose me.
It didn’t take me long to realize how valuable some of our pragmatists were. In particular, Angel Pineiro was director of field services. He would visit TCF locations to inspect their service departments, parts inventory, record keeping, and more. His “SPEF”, the service performance evaluation form, was legendary and widely feared. It also helped us increase the company service revenue dramatically.
In the following years, Russell Madris launched and successfully grew MoreDirect, and Angel spent a quarter century as EVP Services. During that time he actually added practitioner to his pragmatist skills and is today the most well-rounded complete services professional I know.
Please feel free to start spewing your advice right now. Help us make this a thriving workshop. Send your “spews” to me at hmc@howardmcohen.com right now for early inclusion!
As always, its been a busy month. Here are some highlights
:This month’s Evolving MSP examines how channel partners will be “Coping with Copilot.” As with all previous Microsoft “big bets,” Microsoft is betting big and is all-in to making it’s AI/ML offering THE AI/ML offering.
Most recently in The Citizen Developer we ask whether or not companies who are placing job ads seeking citizen developers are missing the point. After all, isn’t the ideal citizen developer someone who comes from within that knows operations and workflows best?
Freshly posted on the Idenxt blog is “Assuring Reliability & Optimal Performance for Mission-Critical Systems & Workloads” suggesting a highly reliable way to provide peace of mind to your clients who are running applications and workloads on Azure.
After 35 years as a channel executive I have spent the past 15 years writing for and about many channel companies including ITSPs, MSPs, CSPs, ISVs, Distributors, Manufacturers and others. To explore having me create compelling content to promote your business, take a look at my many content offerings, tour my portfolio, and contact me at hmc@howardmcohen.com!
