TechServe Events for IT Services Companies

Session Descriptions

Educational Tracks

Four tracks (over 20 breakout sessions to choose from)
ALL Included in the Annual Conference Registration Package

All conference participants are invited to attend breakout sessions that focus on strategies, trends and challenges pertaining to their specific interests.

Four Education Tracks:

Executive I & Executive II
Designed for C-level attendees, these simultaneous tracks offer executives a variety of sessions to attend, ranging from vision and strategy to operational efficiency to business innovation.
Sales
At these sessions, sales professionals, owners and executives will learn a variety of innovative and proven ways to build business and further penetrate the marketplace.
Recruiting
These informative and interactive sessions feature strategies, techniques and information designed to enhance a firm’s recruiting engine.

Session Descriptions By Education Track

Executive Education Tracks

The Pied Piper Principle: Lead and They Will Follow
Trudy Evans, President, The Raven Group
Do you believe your success is predicated on the success of your fellow team members? During her workshop, Trudy Evans will share how growing revenue and expanding business lines happen faster when business owners utilize the talents and help cultivate the triumphs of others. Attendees will explore the importance that Four Essential Power Groups have on every business: customers, employees, vendors and people outside of the work environment. In this session, you will learn a new approach to dealing with others that is sure to stick with you and highly impact the way you do business in the future.

Managing a Virtual Desk: The Challenges and Opportunities
Scott Grausnick, President & Founder, Harbinger Partners, Inc.
Could your business be more profitable with a virtual business model? How do you go from a traditional office setting to a virtual environment? Scott Grausnick, President and Founder of Harbinger Partners, offers a unique perspective on the benefits of running a virtual office, which include NO managers, NO overhead and NO location constraints on the high-quality consultants you hire. Learn if a virtual model is right for your company, tricks to overcoming virtual challenges and the steps to helping your business soar above and beyond the cubicle walls.

Getting Back to the Good Old Days
Al Bates, President & CEO, Profit Planning Group
Learn how to improve your financial results as you walk through every financial aspect of your business, including sales, gross profit, expenses and accounts receivable. Financial expert Dr. Al Bates will provide specific targets and a road map for reaching those targets. The program emphasizes two essential concepts. The first is "Planning Profits First," focusing on treating profit as the first element of a plan that should be developed each year. The second is "Setting Profit Priorities," discussing how to focus your company’s efforts where there is the greatest potential pay-off. You will leave this session not only with an understanding of what drives profitability in the IT services industry, but also with a plan to improve your own profitability.

Straight from the Source: Suggestions for Improvement from IT Candidates
Eric Gilpin, Director, National Accounts, CareerBuilder
In CareerBuilder and The Inavero Institute’s second annual study on candidate and client perceptions of the staffing industry, IT candidates had candid feedback on their experiences with staffing firms. This session will explore IT candidate behavior, their positive and negative experiences with IT staffing firms and give suggestions for improvement based on thousands of IT-specific responses. You will leave this session with a better understanding of how the experiences of candidates can impact your brand and ways to improve these interactions to drive more candidate loyalty and positive word of mouth.

The Continual Sales Challenge
Al Bates, President & CEO, Profit Planning Group
Measuring success and progress is critical to improving productivity and achieving business goals. Dr. Al Bates will share the key industry metrics by which IT services firms should measure their sales forces and recruiters in order to increase profitability. Topics to be discussed include:

Compensation schemes employed by other firms for salespeople and recruiters
The relationship between incentive compensation and the performance of salespeople and recruiters
Performance metrics of top salespeople and recruiters
The relationship between tenure and performance

Diversifying Your Business: Is it Right for your Company?
Panel Discussion Moderated by Gary Zander, Project One, Inc.
During the most recent downturn, many owners and executives discovered they were vulnerable to geographic or client concentration. As the market continues to improve, should greater diversification of your business be part of your go-forward strategy? Diversification can take many forms with the upshot being: don’t have all your eggs in one basket. Member firms have diversified through new offices in other areas (geographic diversification), expanding their client base (client diversification), or moving into project work (diversification of line of business). While no one strategy is right for every company, reflecting on how you can correct vulnerabilities (or pursue new opportunities) now will stand you in good stead in the future. During this panel discussion, business owners and executive who have gone the diversification route will share what worked (or didn’t work) for their companies.

The Globalization of Talent and Services 2.0: What are the Implications?
Panel Discussion Moderated by Bob Miano, Harvey Nash.
If anyone had any doubt about that the world economies and labor markets are inextricably linked, the most recent economic downdraft confirmed it. To understand the future of the U.S. IT services industry, one must factor in the influence of globalization as well as the protectionist reaction being heard from many quarters. This panel will explore globalization of the IT Services industry from a multi-disciplinary perspective. What can we learn from the state of the IT services market in other parts of the world? What are the implications for restrictive immigration policies on the domestic supply of IT talent? Will such policies and other factors accelerate “offshoring” of IT work? In this panel session, we will explore this major paradigm shift that will continue to revolutionize the IT Services industry in the years to come.

How to Position Your Company for Sustainable Growth and Higher Profits

Tom Nunn, Tom Nunn Consulting, LLC
When positioning your company to breakout to the next level of capabilities, selling and recruiting are obviously important to your success. But there are other attributes of “great” companies that you must consider if you want to grow your firm in terms of size, depth, sustainability or profitability. In this session Tom Nunn will share 10 best practices important in building a great company—each of which helped take a regional staffing company from $25M to $100M and top quartile profitability over the last seven years.

At Your Own Peril: A Panel Discussion on the Key Legal Issues Confronting the IT Services Industry
Panel Discussion Moderated by Mark Roberts, CEO, TechServe Alliance
Any owner or executive in an IT services firm must be keenly aware of the key legal issues and trends affecting the industry. As new developments and legislation continue to affect employment law and employer liability, today's businesses must stay informed of issues such as the reclassification of independent contractors, overtime and immigration. Is your company exposed to liability? Are you taking the appropriate steps to minimize your risk? During this session, you will hear from a panel of leading attorneys representing the IT staffing and solutions industry. They will discuss today's most pressing legal issues and offer practical strategies for mitigating risk.

The Future is Your Decision
Alan Beaulieu, Principal, EcoTrends Institute
What is in store for the U.S. and global economies in 2010 and beyond? How can you anticipate changes and capitalize on them before your competitors do? Alan Beaulieu has a remarkable track record of providing economic forecasts with 96% accuracy. Hear his thoughts on the economic outlook with particular attention paid to the information technology sector. His talk will cover the topics:

Short-term and long-term economic forecasts and how they affect TechServe Alliance companies
How the U.S. is affected by corporate production facilities being moved overseas
Whether the stock market gives a true reading of the economy
Leading economic indicators to watch for
What should businesses do to prepare for the next few years?

VMS & VMO: Navigating Through the Uncertainties
Diya Obeid, CEO, JobDiva
While the VMS paradigm evolves and gains a larger portion of the client spend, staffing companies are facing a quandary on how to deal with the VMS. Clients have moved from the evaluation stage to the VMS deployment stage, while many staffing suppliers don’t have a clear plan on how to deal with this new way of working. Attend this session to hear from a staffing industry leader who has been on board traveling the VMS journey since its inception—JobDiva CEO Diya Obeid. With over 30 years of experience in IT consulting services and a longstanding commitment to technology and process improvement, Obeid is an iconoclastic force in the recruitment industry. He will address specific VMS and VMO uncertainties, question perceived facts and explore critical questions including:

While certain VMS brand names are challenging the established ones, how do their offerings compare?
In which way do the VMOs differ?
How do their multiplicities impact your company’s values and processes?
Where do the priorities of the VMO lie?
How do you get on their vendor lists and stay there?
What issues are lurking that may surface in the future?

Proven Strategies for Responding to the Industry's Most Vexing Issues (double session)
Panel Discussion Moderated by Jim Jungbauer, Hollstadt & Associates, Inc.

While many owners and executives are primarily focused on immediate issues surrounding the economic cycle, it is also critically important to devote attention to long-term industry trends that have significant implications for IT Services companies. From the continued growth of VMS, consolidation of vendor lists, offshore to managed mark-ups, each of these trends requires purposeful thought on how to respond. What is your strategy? During this session, fellow owners and executives who have successfully implemented strategies in response to these trends will share their experiences and lead an interactive discussion on the industry’s most vexing issues.

So You’re Thinking About Selling Your Business?
Moderator: Ken Halford, Chief Investment Officer and Director of M&A, Cook Systems Internationalcott
Whether it’s today, tomorrow or well into the future, at some point, you will want to
sell your company. Hear from M&A experts discussing:
• What steps can you take today
to maximize the value of your company
on sale?
• What do different buyers look for
when buying a company?
• What characteristics in firms command
a premium on sale?
• What characteristics warrant a
discount?
You will walk away with useful information on how to maximize the value of your company and strategies to prepare for a sale.

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Sales Education Track

Differentiate and Dominate: Outshine Your Competition with Client-Centric Marketing & Selling
Margaret Graziano, President & Founder, Keenhire.com and KeenTalent.com
Now’s the time to make sure companies have you at the top of their list when they need staffing solutions. But how can you uniquely position yourself in a crowded market so you can always attract perfect clients, increase referrals, and gain control of your income by controlling your sales results? You’ll learn all that and more in this presentation.

Position your organization at the forefront of the competition with a provocative USB (Unique Selling Proposition).
Implement an innovative sales approach that blows traditional order taking out of the water.
Save money, time and effort by accurately pre-qualifying your prospects.
Leverage your overhead as well as your closing ratios with efficient systems, structures, and processes.

But that’s not all. Margaret Graziano of KeenHire will also share her secrets for selecting “A-list” players for your clients so they love your services and keep coming back for more.

More Leads, More Sales, More Success — The Importance of Synching Sales & Marketing for Greater Selling Results
Leslie Vickrey, Founder & President, ClearEdge Marketing
Like love and marriage, sales and marketing should go together like a horse and carriage. Regrettably for the sales pipeline, it’s rarely the case. The challenges of driving in strong leads and closing tough sales are many and often put these two critical and closely connected business teams at odds. However, sales and marketing teams that do work in harmony are immensely effective at filling the sales pipeline with a steady and rich stream of qualified leads.

Joined by a panel of IT services business leaders, Leslie Vickrey, the president and founder of ClearEdge Marketing, will host a roundtable discussion on proven techniques for creating a powerful sales generation machine simply by improving the relationships and processes between sales and marketing teams. From measuring marketing programs to formalizing reporting processes, you will learn concrete steps you can take to improve the sales-marketing relationship and dramatically expand and upgrade your sales pipeline.

The Art and Science of Cold Calling

Chris Cosmos, Co-founder, BCOZ Solutions
How many cold calls do you make each day? Each week? Each month? Believe it or not, when it comes to cold calling, less is more! During this session, we’ll examine both the art and science behind the cold call that will result in a process which promises to be successful, easy to measure and rewarding. You’ll learn hunting and farming techniques that will immediately improve your rate of call success, as well as how to develop a tight front-end sales process. You’ll walk away with critical communication scripts to help you take the thinking out of your initial cold calls—and give you more time and freedom to better cultivate your ever-evolving relationships with your prospects and customers.

Prospecting for Gold — Sales’ Future is Now!
Al Dubuc, Founder & Trainer, Oz Consulting and Training
More than ever, the joy of opening new accounts requires technique, talent, confidence and moxie. Join Al Dubuc’s highly interactive exploration of specific habits that consistently lead top producers to new successes. Learn the latest step-by-step approach to engaging customers in a challenging marketplace. Go beyond mere technical specs and discover new innovative sources for business leads and specific ways to expand within existing clients. While you’re at it, find out seven reasons why the client should use you exclusively!

Selling & Winning Together: How to Teach Your Entire Team to Sell
Panel of TechServe Alliance Members, Moderated by Jamie Delsing, Managing Partner, Consultis
Do your clients think of you as a vendor or a trusted advisor? This interactive session will feature insightful panel discussions surrounding the best ways to both challenge and teach your team — from senior-level decision makers to entry-level support staff — to directly and indirectly get your brand out there while underscoring your company’s substance, dependability and value.

The 7 Secrets to Hiring a Top-Performance Salesperson… Every Time.
Margaret Graziano, President & Founder, Keenhire.com and KeenTalent.com
In today’s economy, you simply can’t afford to hire a salesperson who doesn’t consistently contribute to your bottom line. But how can you be sure you’re hiring the best candidate for your sales position? How can you cut through the flashy personality and fancy resume to accurately evaluate whether this person is going to contribute significantly to the prosperity of your company and hold steady when the going gets tough?

In this presentation, you will learn the secrets to attracting, evaluating, and hiring top-performance salespeople. You will walk away with:

An internal hiring process that allows you to hire right the first time.
Fail-safe procedures for evaluating a candidate’s eligibility before the interview.
An interview process that saves you time and money while preventing mishires.

If you want to hire right the first time and build a sales team that thrives in any economy, join Margaret Graziano of KeenHire as she shares proven hiring tools, tips and systems you can put into place immediately.

The Recovery is Coming, the Recovery is Coming — Top 10 Skills Needed Now!
Panel of TechServe Alliance Members

We have all been down this road before. Eventually, this economic downswing will pass and our clients will need us more than ever. With a doubled expected rate of growth (from 2006 – 2016) in all IT & computer-related occupations, what can you do today to prepare? Moderated by TechServe Alliance National President, John Dreyer, this will be a very interactive session. This panel offers views from three of your peers who will share their experiences about what key skills they are focusing on to equip their teams for success in 2010.

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Recruiter Education Track

Superheroes Stand Up: How to be a Recruiting Hero Through Thick and Thin
Al Dubuc, Founder & Trainer, Oz Consulting and Training
Up market, down market—the pressure is on! In this highly engaging and entertaining program led by Al Dubuc, we’ll explore specific phrases that generate leads for sales, and methods that use current market conditions to connect with new talent. Explore which social networks work best to build those relationships. Learn important candidate retention techniques, and how to use your more-than-ever vital role as counselor and advisor to strengthen a personal, proactive pipeline! The session will explore new questions including: Have min-max negotiation rules changed? “Can I text you?” What are the 16 levels of depth for the “in-depth phone interview?” How do I test candidates to see if they are “weakness collectors, or weakness correctors?” Attendees will also learn the new recruiter “6-point pipeline call,” explore new methods for qualifying candidates, and experience the renewed importance of injecting passion, patience and preparedness for today’s ever-challenging business cycle.

One Year Later, 10 Year’s Wiser: Social Networking and Recruiting
Bill Mallek, Director, Major Accounts, CareerBuilder
The integration of social and professional networking into the recruiting world has been the buzz for over a year. There are best practices developing in this still relatively new medium that you can use to engage your audience. This session is focused on sharing these tips by reviewing integrated campaigns launched in the past year from companies of all sizes and with different goals. You will walk away with strategies and tactics to start incorporating social media tools into your branding and recruitment strategy.

Building a Recruiting Culture: A Case Study in the Real World
Rick Ritzler, Director of Recruiting, Information Control Corporation
In this session, Rick Ritzler, the Director of Recruiting at ICC, will present a detailed, real-world case study of his efforts to build and grow a recruiting culture within an IT consulting company—a strategy described by Dr. John Sullivan in his article “Building a Recruiting Culture—the Ultimate Strategy.” Ritzler will break down the processes, programs, messages and metrics implemented over the past three years that have made the most impact, and produced results. From referral programs to on-boarding, employer branding to alumni outreach, you’ll hear a variety of ideas on how to develop a recruiting culture within your own organization.

Understanding Job Seeker Tendencies to Source Effectively
Lisa Watson, Staff Client Training, Monster.com
Knowledge is power. The more we know about the job seekers, the better we can adjust our sourcing techniques to get the best people and ultimately place them. Discover information from the world’s leading resource of job seeker and employer data. In this session you’ll learn the tendencies of job seekers and how to think about these when putting together search criteria to catch ALL of the most relevant candidates. We’ll pair this information with some advanced Boolean techniques that will get you to the right candidates and the right candidates fast. You will walk away armed with the knowledge (and ultimately the power) to find and win over the best people and make the placement!

A View from the Trenches
Panel of Recruiters
This insightful panel discussion will explore current recruiting best practices, challenges recruiters face today, and tips for overcoming them.

The Next Generation of Interview Trends — How to Take Advantage of Web 2.0
Panel of TechServe Alliance Members and Vendors

Additional Recruiter Sessions to be added soon!

Are we missing a topic you would like to learn more about or discuss with your peers? Let us know and we can add it to our Roundtable lunch agenda! Topics for Roundtables should be sent to susan@techservealliance.org

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