IAMCP UK Chapter SharePoint Site

The meeting was well attended and proved to be one of the most informative and interesting meetings to date. All the speakers received (once again) exceptionally high ratings, and the feedback from the attendees I spoke to was extremely positive. The audience for this meeting included a large contingent of new members and this was their first time in attending a meeting. All of those new members I spoke to stated that the meeting was really valuable and definitely provided them with new information, strategies and actions to help develop their business.

The mix of topics at these meetings seems to be working well now and so we plan to keep the 50/50 split of product related information vs. business development topics.

The presentation from Steve Tassell on Exchange 2010 and SharePoint 2010 provided some great insights into these new products and I certainly learnt some new tips/info that I was not aware of previously. Steve discussed the various options and illustrated some excellent ways in which partners could sell migration to 2010 (given that 80% of the Exchange user base are still on 2003!).

Severine Egerton talked about the new Pinpoint marketing tool from Microsoft, designed to replace the current Solution Profiler. Severine was able to show us how the tool is evolving and just how much it has changed (to the Partners advantage) since it launched.

After the Break we had a great talk from Nigel Dunand from Sandler Sales Institute about the psychology of the buying/selling process and what partners could do to make themselves "stand out " from the usual selling process.

Steve Mills from Max Marketing provided an enthusiastic and compelling presentation focused on how partners could double their turnover in the next 12 months. This was a fascinating approach and Steve gave some very useful tips and tricks that will help partners achieve significant added value in their business over the next year.

I covered the new initiatives that are in development with IAMCP including Facebook and Twitter accounts and also announced the new EMEA IAMCP Summit Conference in March 2010 in Brussels. This conference is being generously sponsored by Microsoft and is free to IAMCP Members - including accommodation - members have nothing to pay for except their travel to the event !! The level of sponsorship by Microsoft is a clear indication of how they value the IAMCP as a vital resource for best of breed Partners and it will be the perfect opportunity for Partners to interact and network with both Microsoft staff and other partners to explore and establish new business opportunities in other countries. Plus there will be some great opportunities to understand more about how EU Commission decisions directly influence how partners operate and perform in their local economy.

All in All today’s event was one of the best meetings yet in terms of content and value for partners. It reinforces once again that IAMCP are delivering significant value to their members.



Thanks are due to all the speakers for their input and to everyone involved in the event that made this such a successful event !!

Kelvin Kirby
IAMCP UK Chairman