Introducing techChannel Results
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 to the techChannel Results newsletter.
Since 1981 I’ve been involved in providing superior technology solutions to a wide variety of clients. For the past 15 years I’ve been writing and presenting for and about the IT channel that has always been my nurturing home.
Throughout my career the best managers I’ve been fortunate enough to work with have impressed upon me that results are the important things. Results that bring value to clients, and results you can deposit in your bank account! They have trained and conditioned me to focus only on results achieved by delivering real business value, and that’s what I’ve written about for all my clients and publishers.
HMC Public Content
You may be familiar with my writing in various industry publications including Channel Insider, Channel Futures, Information Week, MSP Mentor, Network World, eWeek, and my regular columns, The Evolving MSP (formerly The Changing Channel) in Redmond Channel Partner and The Citizen Developer in Application Development Trends.
Coverage Keeps Changing
As the IT and media industries have changed, it has become harder to find advertisers and sponsors with the result that many of the publications that served IT have vanished and others have focused far more on stories that will please potential advertisers. I’m not so much a journalist as I am all about providing thought-leadership, sharing what I’ve learned and what I see going on around us. My goal is to help my tech colleagues improve their own businesses as many transition to a far greater focus on selling their own services.
Writing for YOU
The impact of these changes on writers like me is that we find ourselves writing more for our publishers’ advertisers and sponsors than we do for our readers.
That’s why I’ve chosen to bring this publication to Substack. Here, there are no advertisers or sponsors. Here, I get to write for you and only for you. Everything you’ll read here is written to benefit and bring real business value to you so you can produce better and better results.
Regular Features in techChannel Results
There will be several recurring features here in the techChannel Results newsletter, many of which I hope you’ll participate in, respond to, and become part of.
Your world has changed, your business has changed to adapt, and your marketing needs to change, too.
Now that you’re running a professional practice you’re not peddling products anymore. Products are enablers, the things you deploy, manage, and support for your clients. What you want most to promote are your practices, selling what you do more than things.
Take a look at how other professionals go-to-market. How do lawyers market themselves, or accountants, doctors, architects, or any other professional practice?
It’s time for you to be marketing the way other professionals like you do. That’s the guidance, advice, and insight you’ll find in techChannel Marketing.
techChannel Marketing is the one feature of techChannel that requires a paid subscription. When you subscribe, you’ll have access to the entire archive of past articles as well as all the new ones that get posted regularly. Subscriptions are only $5 a month, and you can cancel at any time if you don’t find yourself gaining enough value! Annual subscriptions, at $50, will save you $10 on the year. You may also choose to sponsor techChannel Marketing with a Founder’s Subscription of $150.
This feature will be part of the regular free newsletter, highlighting recent new posts in techChannel Marketing.
Community.
The techChannel is a growing community of professional IT service providers (ITSP) who build and manage extraordinary technology solutions for business, government, and other organizations and individuals.
Serving the techChannel community are hundreds of associations, societies, and other affinity groups each of which brings focus to specific needs. Some are focused on specific technologies. Some are focused on ITSPs serving a specific market segment, such as small & medium business (SMB) or enterprise corporations. Some are dedicated to improving the role and opportunities for women in technology.
This feature of the techChannel.results newsletter will regularly report on the events, activities, accomplishments, and mission of these communities. We’ll bring you community news as well as key community announcements.
Given that I’m a lifelong student of the professionals I’ve had the great good fortune to work with over the years, this will likely be my favorite techChannel Results feature.
The vision is to foster a conversation, a discussion amongst professional peers in which we all get to share our observations, contribute best practices, ask questions and get them answered. Ultimately, it will be an ongoing dialogue in which any and every member of the IT community can participate.
Please feel free to start spewing your advice right now. Send it to me at hmc@howardmcohen.com right now for early inclusion!
For more than 30 years I managed sales and marketing of technology solutions. In my soul, I’m a sales guy. I sell. The only “personality inventory” I ever took as part of a job application reported that, “This man’s need to persuade is intense.”
This shows up constantly in my writing. Literally everything I’ve written for clients has been written with the goal of moving the reader to the next step in the sales motion. Over the past 15 years the hundreds of MSPs, Solution Providers, manufacturers, software developers, cloud providers, distributors, and others I have written for have appreciated the compelling quality of what I create for them.
Compelling Content Creator
That’s why I call myself a compelling content creator. “Nice” writing with hyperbolic gushes and fancy phrasing just doesn’t impress anyone who wants to engage real professionals.
I bring technical acumen, business experience, selling skill, knowledge of the industry and the customer, and intensely persuasive writing to the creation of compelling content, content that will result in sales.
In this feature, I’ll highlight what I’ve been writing recently (except for the ghostwriting I do for industry executives and experts who would rather I remain nameless…) You’ll find links to published articles, blogposts on various blogs, non-gated white papers and case studies, press releases, and much more.
