Two notable shifts at GTIA since its split from CompTIA 1+ years ago and the arrival of Dan Wensley as CEO were: (1) Attract more MSPs and Channel Partners into its membership and attract younger entrants into the SMB channel. It’s a work in progress but I witnessed both motions in play at the recent ChannelCon event in San Diego. I submit Exhibit A as evidence Amelia Chen, Vendor Therapist, Senteon. It was the first trade show for this Silicon Valley smartie and her strategy was to work the floor meeting MSPs when not performing her booth duties.
The easy analogy is that we’re not having enough babies in the SMB MSP channel lol. Or that Episcopalian churches in Vermont are ¾ empty and populated by blue hairs and grey hairs. GTIA is leading the charge to attract youngins to this niche that is >90% male and average age is mid-50s+
Enter Amelia Chen to the rescue as she’s a quick study, using old school introductory behaviors and having watched her in the ChannelCon playground, it’s working. She has multiple skill sets including technical acumen and in the first two minutes of the podcast traumatized me with a conversation about Windows Server Group Policy Objects (GPOs). I left the interview feeling I needed a therapist lol.
Back to Amelia’s biz dev tactics. Beside Hallway 101 meet-and greets, And beyond her business and technical skill sets, she used a tactic of organizing a card game gathering of attendees playing “Race for the Galaxy” to facilitate introductions and good business. Yeah – ask your kids what this is.
Another shoutout to Malachi Harrison, a recent graduate who was a college football player who was representing Channel Collab and TopLeft, a Kanban project management solution for MSPs.
