April 2010
Business Solutions Magazine

Nearly 500 HTG peer members attended that peer networking group's second annual conference in Dallas the past week. The message they heard from HTG Founder Arlin Sorensen was clear, and he shared that with me during a quick call. "We announced our 1-4-250-10,000-1,000,000 strategy (Read the details here) this week," explains Sorensen. That strategy, which lays out goals for HTG member companies, includes several growth goals for HTG member companies. "This strategy is part of our growth cycle, but the reality is we see major changes coming in our industry, and we want to make sure our member companies are ready for it."

Among those challenges is the continued impact of cloud solutions. "We think this transformation that includes the cloud will happen fast, and we're worried companies that wait to react won't make it," explains Sorensen. "We want to make sure we've invested in our member companies and helped them be as ready for change as we can."

That change — Sorensen and I completely agree on this point — will mean a quickening of the sales cycle that will put enormous pressure on IT organizations and force them to ramp up delivery of leads into their sales pipeline. Because the time to sell cloud solutions is expected to be shorter due to high customer awareness of this technology solution, that means sales cycles will shrink. Plus, since deployment of cloud solutions will be markedly shorter than building an on-premise solution, the time from sales call to invoice will be shortened as well. All that means the development of potential sales in the pipeline will need to evolve much more rapidly. "The sales cycle is going to minutes or hours, not days, and that means revamping the way we do business," says Sorensen. "Plus, margins are impacted by the cloud, so the volume goals will need to evolve, and evolve quickly. Today, we can sell some deals and know the pipeline is full for days or weeks. With cloud that becomes much short timeline."

To help its members adapt, HTG is offering education around marketing and sales team hiring and management, plus it is laying out goals for growth to help drive members to the next level (thus, Sorensen's announcement). "Many members have built great technical processes, but are a bit lax in building the sales processes, so we are going to provide content and try to ramp up their thought process around that," says Sorensen. In fact, those efforts to go more deeply with member companies are behind the HTG decision to pause expansion of its peer groups and concentrate on the 250 member companies it now works with.

Overall, Sorensen was pleased with the conference, which drew in nearly 100% of HTG's member companies despite competition from HP and Cisco, who hosted channel events this past week as well. "It has been an amazing week here," says Sorensen. "The thing that has made me smile all week is the number of times members have come out of their peer group meetings saying it was the best meeting yet. We really work hard to continuously improve on those groups. And I am happy that so many people are getting the message that if they invest in one another and tackle problems together, great things can happen."

Source: http://bsminfo.com/article.mvc/HTG-Challenges-Members-To-New-Set-Of-Goals-0001