Another New HTG Group

This week we started another chapter in the HTG playbook as we began a new peer group in cooperation with Ingram Micro. As a part of their focus on the SMB Alliance program they offer their VAR's, Ingram is starting to roll out the HTG peer group experience to their membership. They are helping drive the recruitment and making investment in the members that join through their program. This is a happy day for HTG and particularly the channel.

Success for all of us is dependent on VAR's and disty/vendors partnering for success. Part of the key to that success is helping us grow as solution providers in our business skills and giving us tools for success. Ingram is stepping up to help begin that investment in the channel. A majority of us began life in either a sales or technical role. We were good at what we did, got some customers and then decided we wanted to be our own boss. So we started a company and began to have success. Pretty soon we were hiring a person or two and then we had a small group we were responsible for. About that point panic sets in. We have not capitalized our business properly, we just had a few bucks and started doing business. We have no formal business education, particularly around HR and finance. So the value of being part of a peer group to help get answers to questions and realize we are not facing a bunch of unique problems is huge.

We were fortunate to have a couple Ingram folks in the room as resources for our two days. They were able to answer questions, email out documentation on different programs and services, do email intro's to people in different parts of Ingram's huge resource team and just make things happen as we walked through our agenda. A special thanks to John, Janice and Erin for helping partners leverage the resources Ingram has available. So many things are built for us as partners by disty and vendors that we fail to use - primarily because we are too busy to find out they exist. The interaction with people on the street as part of the peer meeting was huge in that the information was timely and enabled us to put it to work immediately. So a big thanks to Ingram for seeing the value and making the investment. I look forward to many great things in the days ahead as we partner together to grow the channel.