Wow, it seems like there has been a lot of discussion lately in the SBSC PAL community worldwide. As most of you know, we have 2 PALs in Canada – Elisabeth Vanderveldt in Eastern Canada and myself, Brad Kowerchuk, in Western Canada. Our role as PALs is to be a “sounding board” and take your feedback and funnel that back to Microsoft.

Worldwide Partner Conference 2009

The Worldwide Partner Conference (WPC) will dedicate one day (Wednesday) for SBSC partner topics. What would you like to see there? Here are some ideas that have been suggested so far:

• Transformation to S+S: Expand your business by selling hosting services with your brand
• Smart investments for business model expansion: Become a VAR and grow your business
• Help increase your revenue by selling to small and midsize education/academic organizations
• Proactive Community Membership: What's in it for me? Getting the most ROI from the Small Business Specialist Community
• Peer Groups. How to leverage the power of community.
• Finding revenue opportunities in the public sector
• Goal setting for business success
• Talent Mining: finding the best and training the rest
• Selling solutions creates greater revenue and closes deals faster
• Marketing ideas that work: Plan, execute & report for marketing success
• Real world KPI's and business intelligence to run your company
• Identifying cross-sell and up-sell opportunities within your existing customer base

Public Sector Opportunities

Microsoft is considering having SBSC members market to Public Sector. What do you think of the Public Sector Market? Is this the place for SBSC partners?

SBSC Toolkit in the Action Pack

We all get the extra “goodies” beyond the regular Action Pack. What extra SBSC “goodies” would you like to see in the Action Pack?

Microsoft Retail Stores

How do you think the Microsoft Store might affect your business? Is this going to work to spread the word about Microsoft technologies for small businesses? If so, will that compete with you, or drive business to you?

Local Engagement Teams

In the US Northwest, Microsoft is connecting Partners (SBSCs and larger) with other local regional partners that are not in the IT field. As an example, if my Company, a Bank (or Credit Union), a Local Real Estate Co and possibly an Accounting or Legal firm pooled our resources and tapped into each other’s clients, we could very easily bring great benefit to a small business by putting on a seminar or some sort of trade show that gives the complete small business solution and not just an IT centric solution.

See http://www.mslocalbiz.com. What do you think? Is this something that would work in your area?

So, let’s have it ... both barrels and fire away! Elisabeth and I will be happy to pass along your comments (and kudos and flames and, and, and...).

Use the blog comments form or email cdnsbsc@microsoft.com!