Roundtables with Computer Resellers
Prior to becoming a founding member of the Direct Access
team, Scott had spent three years in Microsoft's small business marketing
group. One of her previous areas of responsibility included trying to
market directly to small businesses through trade associations.
However, it didn't take long before Scott realized that it
was businesses like, as she describes, "Vivian's House of
Computers" in Pine Bluff, Arkansas that was the IT department for
small businesses.
Microsoft learned that small businesses did not have
full-time IT staff. Rather small businesses looked to computer resellers
as their virtual IT departments.
Early Struggles to Get Traction with Computer Resellers
By spring 1998, there weren't huge success stories around
SBS.
Microsoft knew that it was time to get their act together
with computer resellers and get it together fast.
The Roundtables were anything but "lip service"
to consultants and computer resellers .
The computer resellers who participated in the Roundtables
have since impacted several high-level efforts in Redmond regarding major
SBS improvments, including the decision to make the SBS 4.5 version
upgrade available free of charge to SBS 4.0 end users.
Conceived during April 1998 and implemented just a few
weeks later, the Roundtable attracted about 300 applications.
Unprecedented in theme and scope, the first two Roundtable conferences
took place on June 24th/25th and October 29th/30th 1998.
Microsoft invited 40 computer resellers , representing the
"average Joes" of the technology provider world, to come out to
Redmond to help Microsoft reshape the Direct Access program and SBS.
For More Free Small Business Server Consulting Tips
Just click on the banner below and sign up for our
sponsor's free training audio recording.
|
