LEARNING - Storage Sales Academy Program Q109

Announcing the Q109 Storage Sales Academy (SSA) program:

"Selling Storage Solutions in Uncertain Economic Times."

Registration is now open for our next series of SSA classes.

We enter 2009 facing some of the most uncertain economic times that our customers have ever seen, and they’ll be watching their IT budgets more closely than ever before. Our success will depend largely on our ability to deliver value that matters to our customers – value that will have to make sense from a pure financial perspective. IBM has many exciting technologies, tools, and solutions to offer, but we’ll need to be very clear on the specific business challenges they can address. Most importantly, how we can help take cost out of their data center, improve the efficiency of their information infrastructure, or streamline operations to help minimize overall expense, and enable them do more with less.

The Q109 Storage Sales Academy (SSA) agenda will focus on helping to overcome the tough economic issues by leveraging some of our latest technologies and strategic solutions to address our customers’ storage-related challenges. We’ll look at a variety of areas, but first we’ll talk about the overall environment– and focus in on the midmarket, in more depth. We’ll try to help you set the stage for a great 2009 via effective planning techniques, so you are well-aligned with your customers’ specific priorities for the year, and you can drive the right solutions for each one.

We’ll feature financial selling guidance via IBM Global Finance (IGF), because it has never been more important to present a strong financial case if we want new storage projects to be approved. We’ll introduce a great Storage Assessment program to help customers identify new opportunities to upgrade infrastructures from competitors to IBM via our Regional Systems Integrator (RSI) partners. We’ll offer separate modules that address how to successfully sell hardware, software, and services solutions to midmarket customers, in particular, including: tape virtualization/de-duplication (via Diligent), encryption solutions (via Tivoli Security TKLM), data protection (via Fastback), virtualization (via SVC Entry Edition), and archival solutions, as well. We also plan to look at Solid State Technologies in 2009, so you are properly prepared to offer clear guidance.

The Q109 SSA will be available at six regional locations, in conjunction with the Tivoli Sales Enablement team, as part of a series of joint three-day, education roadshow events. The SSA program will be delivered for the first 1.5 days of each event, but all of our IBM and partner sellers are welcome to participate in everything that will be offered on the overall agenda:

Feb 25-27 Toronto

The registration website is available now for enrollments at the following:

LINK

If the link does not work copy and paste the following URL:

https://www-03.ibm.com/servers/eserver/zseries/education/topgun/enrollment/esfldedu.nsf/LUWebClasses/Selected_Storage_Programs%7C%7CStorage_Sales_Academy:_Selling_Storage_Solutions_in_Uncertain_Economic_Times?OpenDocument

Thanks again for your continued support of the SSA education program across North America. Please don't hesitate to contact me with any questions. We had another great year in 2008, and we expect a significant amount of interest in this new topic from both the IBM and Business Partner sales teams to help get our 2009 storage sales off to a solid start, so immediate awareness is a real critical success factor !

Tom Roder
System Storage Sales Skills & Education
IBM Systems & Technology Group
609-681-5088
troder@us.ibm.com

Online Education
IBM: http://lt.be.ibm.com/smartzone/
BP: http://www.ibm.com/services/weblectures/dlv/smartzone/