Cisco Partner Summit

I recently arrived in my old hometown of Boston to attend Cisco's Partner Summit.  Today is a day of 1:1 meetings and the main sessions begin tomorrow.  The first session of Partner Summit is a global general session including John Chambers.  Interested to hear what's new with Cisco in general and learn more about where Cisco is going as we at Varrow continue to expand and deepen our relationship with the networking behemoth.  Here is the abstract of the general session:

Abstract:		Hear from our leaders about the unprecedented opportunities we see ahead for Cisco and our partners. We are once again at the center of a significant market transition: the Internet of Everything. It’s a massive opportunity, the biggest in the next decade with a $14.4 trillion value-at-stake. With our partners, we have the ability to build, manage, and secure end-to-end IP-based platforms to connect people, process, data, and things to capture our share of this phenomenal market transition. With an unwavering commitment to our partners’ success, we are driving channel innovation around the most important priorities to you. We will continue to be the most partner-centric organization in the IT industry, focused on building and enabling a robust partner ecosystem. We will share how we will help you accelerate profitable growth, and make it easier for you to do business with Cisco. Specifically, you will hear about new areas of investment and about our firm commitment to help you transform your business to meet the changing demands of customers to capture the enormous market opportunities in front of us.
Speaker:		Bruce Klein Senior Vice President, Worldwide Partner Organization Cisco Edison Peres Senior Vice President, Worldwide Channels Cisco John Chambers Chairman and Chief Executive Officer Cisco

10 Reasons NOT to attend Varrow Madness

Brandon Watson at Varrow was scratching his head wondering why an IT person wouldn't come to Varrow Madness and he came up with 10 good reasons not to attend.  Got any more?

Varrow Madness agenda: http://madness.varrow.com/#

10 Reasons NOT to Attend Varrow Madness:

1) Technology and fun should not be mixed.

2) This Cloud thing won’t catch on.

3) What could I possibly learn from 8 VCPs, 5 vExperts, a VCDX, storage and network specialists, 3 Industry CEOs, and 500 of my peers?

4) Mainframes Rule!

5) Why do I need labs when I can just try new things in my production environment?

6) Free education is overrated.

7) I am worried that my IBM rep will find out.

8) My arm is caught in the server rack (Please Help!)

9) I’ll just look for the highlights on YouTube.

10) I heard the Varrow CEO raps.

Not all EMC Signature Partners are Created Equal

One of my Acct Managers was at a customer site this week and an interesting discussion came up that is pertinent to all of our customers and prospective customers.  The customer reached out to him because they are evaluating all their vendor relationships and they are making sure they have the right partners aligned to the right solutions.  Very healthy exercise.  We saw this as a great opportunity to demonstrate how we can help in other areas where we are not working with them today.

When we went through how his discussion went, he mentioned that he told the IT Director that we were the only EMC Signature Partner based in the Carolinas - "Signature" is the highest tier of partner in the EMC partner ecosystem.  I had to tell him that we may still be the only one, but that will likely change very quickly if it hasn't already.

You might think Varrow is no longer the only Signature Partner because other partners have made the necessary exhaustive investments in engineering talent needed to gain this status or have sold a lot of EMC solutions and have earned it. 

The reality is that EMC has lowered the bar for partners to achieve Signature status; they have done so by eliminating the need to invest in services engineers and pass multiple difficult design and implementation tests in order to become Signature.  This was always the barrier to entry for many partners - they could get the sales and presales certs, but the services certs required a level of commitment and investment that most were unwilling to make. 

Now, any EMC partner can become Signature by passing a few sales and presales tests.

So, if you are determining who will be your trusted adviser on EMC and someone tells you they are an EMC Signature Partner, be sure to ask if they are capable of delivering the solution they are proposing. 

Cloudy with 100% chance of change

I know it's a cheesy headline, but I couldn't resist. This week Varrow had it's annual all-hands company kickoff and we announced a bunch of new offerings and discussed at length our direction as a company. It was a time of great comraderie, but there was also a ton of passion around how we are evolving as a company.

The IT landscape is extremely dynamic right now. "Cloudy" is probably the best way to describe it on multiple levels. How IT manufacturers, IT services companies like Varrow, IT organizations, and IT professionals respond to the cloud today will likely dictate their relevance tomorrow. We always try to empathize with our customers, but when it comes to the cloud, we can totally relate.

The way IT is delivered, consumed, and procured is changing. Get on board. Don't resist. Embrace the change before you're swept away by it. Our strategy as a company is to help our customers take advantage of this change and help them benefit from it.  We want to make the cloud a sunny place.

It is not a wholesale transition and much of what our customers are doing today can be considered part of an overarching cloud strategy. Read an interesting blog from Paul Penny - the first in a series -- on the transformation of IT and how we can apply the spirit of the word "cloud" to our entire IT ecosystem: http://ppenny.varrowblogs.com/?p=69

Like our customers, Varrow has been gradually moving to the cloud within its own internal IT for some time now. We are smaller than our typical customer, so we have moved more quickly than most of them. Take a look at Jeremiah Cook's blog to see what we've done with the cloud for our own internal IT: http://jeremiahcook.varrowblogs.com/?p=185

I thought I'd share 3 of the BIG cloud-oriented items we discussed at our company kickoff:

1) Varrow Rescue -- this is Varrow's backup cloud offering. When we looked at where the best opportunity was for Varrow to provide a cloud offering that we could be "best in world" at, we landed on enterprise backup and recovery. Varrow Rescue in a nutshell:

• Fully managed enterprise backup and recovery solution
• Cloud replication available
• Self-service or SLA-based restores
• Industry-leading deduplication technology
• VMware and Hyper-V image level backups
• Comprehensive reporting
• 24 x 7 support

2)  Varrow Cloud Tranition Pathway Services - Although we do have a powerful cloud offering in Varrow Rescue, our strategy is not to become a cloud provider. It is to help our customers envision, design, implement and manage their own clouds - maybe Varrow Rescue is one of their clouds, maybe not. 

To that end, Varrow's Cloud Transition Pathway Services are a suite of services designed to answer the following kinds of questions:

• What applications and services can or should move to the cloud? When? How?
• What private infrastructure do we maintain? Where?
• How do we integrate and manage all of this? What help do we need?
• How does this change my organization, staffing, and skills requirements? Where do I start?
• How can we plan and budget in the midst of so much change?

3) Making a real Private Cloud - up until recently, the term "private cloud" had been more marketing than reality. A "private cloud" was really just the same stuff our customers had bought from us for years with a new name. Now though, the technology is much further along and there are opportunities to layer on additional capabilities and services to existing infrastructure and really start delivering IT more as a service to end-users. Varrow is very well-positioned to help our customer "cloudify" their existing IT investments with new technolgies in a way that is meaningful. For those of our customers reading this blog, reach out to your Account Manager or Technical Consultant to schedule some time for a deep-dive on the details of how we can help.

Cool stuff and lots more on the horizon.

Culture

Nice blog on the importance of culture - couldn't agree more...


Culture Eats Strategy For Lunch
BY FC Expert Blogger Shawn ParrTue Jan 24, 2012
This blog is written by a member of our expert blogging community and expresses that expert's views alone.

Get on a Southwest flight to anywhere, buy shoes from Zappos.com, pants from Nordstrom, groceries from Whole Foods, anything from Costco, a Starbucks espresso, or a Double-Double from In N' Out, and you'll get a taste of these brands’ vibrant cultures.

Culture is a balanced blend of human psychology, attitudes, actions, and beliefs that combined create either pleasure or pain, serious momentum or miserable stagnation. A strong culture flourishes with a clear set of values and norms that actively guide the way a company operates. Employees are actively and passionately engaged in the business, operating from a sense of confidence and empowerment rather than navigating their days through miserably extensive procedures and mind-numbing bureaucracy. Performance-oriented cultures possess statistically better financial growth, with high employee involvement, strong internal communication, and an acceptance of a healthy level of risk-taking in order to achieve new levels of innovation.

Misunderstood and mismanaged

Culture, like brand, is misunderstood and often discounted as a touchy-feely component of business that belongs to HR. It's not intangible or fluffy, it's not a vibe or the office décor. It's one of the most important drivers that has to be set or adjusted to push long-term, sustainable success. It's not good enough just to have an amazing product and a healthy bank balance. Long-term success is dependent on a culture that is nurtured and alive. Culture is the environment in which your strategy and your brand thrives or dies a slow death.

Think about it like a nurturing habitat for success. Culture cannot be manufactured. It has to be genuinely nurtured by everyone from the CEO down. Ignoring the health of your culture is like letting aquarium water get dirty.

If there's any doubt about the value of investing time in culture, there are significant benefits that come from a vibrant and alive culture:
•Focus: Aligns the entire company towards achieving its vision, mission, and goals.
•Motivation: Builds higher employee motivation and loyalty.
•Connection: Builds team cohesiveness among the company’s various departments and divisions.
•Cohesion: Builds consistency and encourages coordination and control within the company.
•Spirit: Shapes employee behavior at work, enabling the organization to be more efficient and alive.

Mission accomplished

Think about the Marines: the few, the proud. They have a connected community that is second to none, and it comes from the early indoctrination of every member of the Corps and the clear communication of their purpose and value system. It is completely clear that they are privileged to be joining an elite community that is committed to improvising, adapting, and overcoming in the face of any adversity. The culture is so strong that it glues the community together and engenders a sense of pride that makes them unparalleled. The culture is what each Marine relies on in battle and in preparation. It is an amazing example of a living culture that drives pride and performance. It is important to step back and ask whether the purpose of your organization is clear and whether you have a compelling value system that is easy to understand. Mobilizing and energizing a culture is predicated on the organization clearly understanding the vision, mission, values, and goals. It's leadership’s responsibility to involve the entire organization, informing and inspiring them to live out the purpose the organization in the construct of the values.

Vibrant and healthy

Do you run into your culture every day? Does it inspire you, or smack you in the face and get in your way, slowing and wearing you down? Is it overpowering or does it inspire you to overcome challenges? It's important to understand what is driving your culture. Is it power and ego that people react to, and try to gain power, or a culture of encouragement and empowerment? Is it driven from top-down directives, or cross-department collaboration? To get a taste of your culture, all you have to do is sit in an executive meeting, the cafe or the lunch room, listen to the conversations, look at the way decisions are made and the way departments cooperate. Take time out and get a good read on the health of your culture.

Culture fuels brand

A vibrant culture provides a cooperative and collaborative environment for a brand to thrive in. Your brand is the single most important asset to differentiate you consistently over time, and it needs to be nurtured, evolved, and invigorated by the people entrusted to keep it true and alive. Without a functional and relevant culture, the money invested in research and development, product differentiation, marketing, and human resources is never maximized and often wasted because it's not fueled by a sustaining and functional culture.

Look at Zappos, one of the fastest companies to reach $1 billion in recent years, fueled by an electric and eclectic culture, one that's inclusionary, encouraging, and empowering. It's well-documented, celebrated, and shared willingly with anyone who wants to learn from it. Compare that to American Apparel, the controversial and prolific fashion retailer with a well-documented and highly dysfunctional culture. Zappos is thriving and on its way to $2 billion, while American Apparel is mired in bankruptcy and controversy. Both companies are living out their missions--one is to create happiness, and the other is based on self-centered perversity. Authenticity and values always win.

Uncommon sense for a courageous and vibrant culture

It's easy to look at companies like Stonyfield Farms, Zappos, Google, Virgin, Whole Foods, or Southwest Airlines and admire them for their passionate, engaged, and active cultures that are on display for the world to see. Building a strong culture takes hard work and true commitment and, while not something you can tick off in boxes, here are some very basic building blocks to consider:
1.Dynamic and engaged leadership
A vibrant culture is organic and evolving. It is fueled and inspired by leadership that is actively involved and informed about the realities of the business. They genuinely care about the company's role in the world and are passionately engaged. They are great communicators and motivators who set out a clearly communicated vision, mission, values, and goals and create an environment for them to come alive.


2.Living values
It's one thing to have beliefs and values spelled out in a frame in the conference room. It's another thing to have genuine and memorable beliefs that are directional, alive and modeled throughout the organization daily. It's important that departments and individuals are motivated and measured against the way they model the values. And, if you want a values-driven culture, hire people using the values as a filter. If you want your company to embody the culture, empower people and ensure every department understands what's expected. Don't just list your company’s values in PowerPoints; bring them to life in people, products, spaces, at events, and in communication.


3.Responsibility and accountability
Strong cultures empower their people, they recognize their talents, and give them a very clear role with responsibilities they're accountable for. It's amazing how basic this is, but how absent the principle is in many businesses.


4.Celebrate success and failure
Most companies that run at speed often forget to celebrate their victories both big and small, and they rarely have time or the humility to acknowledge and learn from their failures. Celebrate both your victories and failures in your own unique way, but share them and share them often.


...nice blog for sure. The two benefits I would add to those Shawn Parr lists:

Retention - one of the most important aspects of building a fast-growing company is retaining the people who got you to where you are...money doesn't make people happy. Culture is what keeps those superstars at your company

Recruiting - I work at one of the fastest-growing companies in the country, so we are constantly recruiting folks and we are hyper-conscious of how those folks will impact our culture. I am constantly talking to potential candidates and when they ask "Why should I come to Varrow," the one thing that seems to resonate more than money, benefits, etc. is our culture...and if it doesn't resonate, if that is not a draw for why they should come on board, then it just isn't the right fit. That said, in my experience, nothing lights people up more in an interview than when we talk about the quality of our company's culture.

Why we chose EMC

We have been leveraging videos with the sales folks quite a bit to stay crisp on our product knowledge and messaging.  We focus on differentiation, making sure that what we are saying about our company or the products we sell is not an "insert vendor name here" type of message.  To date, the reps have done a "Why Varrow?" video and a "Why UCS?" video.  If you'd like to see some of the winners of past video contests, go to: http://www.varrow.com/about/people/ 

Although it is part of my job to torture the sales reps by making them do these types of things, I thought it would only be fair if I participated as well and so I did a medium-dive discussion on EMC.  It is an overview of EMC in the context of how Varrow came to the conclusion to represent EMC in the marketplace 4 years ago.  I start by talking about EMC the company, and then go through much of the product portfolio and discuss some of the key differentiating aspects of each technology.  It is a little long, but EMC's strategy and portfolio is broad, so I wanted to make sure I touched on the high points across most of what we represent from EMC.  Anyways, here it is:


Why we chose EMC from AJ Ragosta on Vimeo.

Are you lucky?

In my experience there are two commonalities associated with luck: hard work and the ability to recognize opportunity when it is staring you right in the face.  Here are some of my favorite quotes on luck:

1. I’m a great believer in luck, and I find the harder I work, the more I have of it. Thomas Jefferson
2. Luck is what happens when preparation meets opportunity. Seneca
3. Diligence is the mother of good luck. Benjamin Franklin
4. We must believe in luck. For how else can we explain the success of those we don’t like? Jean Cocteau
5. Luck is believing you’re lucky.” Tennessee Williams  
6. People always call it luck when you’ve acted more sensibly than they have. Anne Tyler
7. There is no luck except where there is discipline. Irish Proverb
8. Success is simply a matter of luck. Ask any failure. Earl Wilson
9. One-half of life is luck; the other half is discipline – and that’s the important half, for without discipline you wouldn’t know what to do with luck. Carl Zuckmayer
10. I think luck is the sense to recognize an opportunity and the ability to take advantage of it… The man who can smile at his breaks and grab his chances gets on.  Samuel Goldwyn

7 Personality Traits of Good Salespeople

Find below the results of a survey conducted by Steve W. Martin with the Harvard Business Review (defies many of the commonly held stereotypes of the traits of successful salespeople):

If you ask an extremely successful salesperson, "What makes you different from the average sales rep?" you will most likely get a less-than-accurate answer, if any answer at all. Frankly, the person may not even know the real answer because most successful salespeople are simply doing what comes naturally.

Over the past decade, I have had the privilege of interviewing thousands of top business-to-business salespeople who sell for some of the world's leading companies. I've also administered personality tests to 1,000 of them. My goal was to measure their five main personality traits (openness, conscientiousness, extraversion, agreeableness, and negative emotionality) to better understand the characteristics that separate them their peers.

The personality tests were given to high technology and business services salespeople as part of sales strategy workshops I was conducting. In addition, tests were administered at Presidents Club meetings (the incentive trip that top salespeople are awarded by their company for their outstanding performance). The responses were then categorized by percentage of annual quota attainment and classified into top performers, average performers, and below average performers categories.

The test results from top performers were then compared against average and below average performers. The findings indicate that key personality traits directly influence top performers' selling style and ultimately their success. Below, you will find the main key personality attributes of top salespeople and the impact of the trait on their selling style.

1. Modesty. Contrary to conventional stereotypes that successful salespeople are pushy and egotistical, 91 percent of top salespeople had medium to high scores of modesty and humility. Furthermore, the results suggest that ostentatious salespeople who are full of bravado alienate far more customers than they win over.

Selling Style Impact: Team Orientation. As opposed to establishing themselves as the focal point of the purchase decision, top salespeople position the team (presales technical engineers, consulting, and management) that will help them win the account as the centerpiece.

2. Conscientiousness. Eighty-five percent of top salespeople had high levels of conscientiousness, whereby they could be described as having a strong sense of duty and being responsible and reliable. These salespeople take their jobs very seriously and feel deeply responsible for the results.

Selling Style Impact: Account Control. The worst position for salespeople to be in is to have relinquished account control and to be operating at the direction of the customer, or worse yet, a competitor. Conversely, top salespeople take command of the sales cycle process in order to control their own destiny.

3. Achievement Orientation. Eighty-four percent of the top performers tested scored very high in achievement orientation. They are fixated on achieving goals and continuously measure their performance in comparison to their goals. 

Selling Style Impact: Political Orientation. During sales cycles, top sales, performers seek to understand the politics of customer decision-making. Their goal orientation instinctively drives them to meet with key decision-makers. Therefore, they strategize about the people they are selling to and how the products they're selling fit into the organization instead of focusing on the functionality of the products themselves.

4. Curiosity. Curiosity can be described as a person's hunger for knowledge and information. Eighty-two percent of top salespeople scored extremely high curiosity levels. Top salespeople are naturally more curious than their lesser performing counterparts.

Selling Style Impact: Inquisitiveness. A high level of inquisitiveness correlates to an active presence during sales calls. An active presence drives the salesperson to ask customers difficult and uncomfortable questions in order to close gaps in information. Top salespeople want to know if they can win the business, and they want to know the truth as soon as possible.

5. Lack of Gregariousness. One of the most surprising differences between top salespeople and those ranking in the bottom one-third of performance is their level of gregariousness (preference for being with people and friendliness). Overall, top performers averaged 30 percent lower gregariousness than below average performers.

Selling Style Impact: Dominance. Dominance is the ability to gain the willing obedience of customers such that the salesperson's recommendations and advice are followed. The results indicate that overly friendly salespeople are too close to their customers and have difficulty establishing dominance.

6. Lack of Discouragement. Less than 10 percent of top salespeople were classified as having high levels of discouragement and being frequently overwhelmed with sadness. Conversely, 90 percent were categorized as experiencing infrequent or only occasional sadness.

Selling Style Impact: Competitiveness. In casual surveys I have conducted throughout the years, I have found that a very high percentage of top performers played organized sports in high school. There seems to be a correlation between sports and sales success as top performers are able to handle emotional disappointments, bounce back from losses, and mentally prepare themselves for the next opportunity to compete.

7. Lack of Self-Consciousness. Self-consciousness is the measurement of how easily someone is embarrassed. The byproduct of a high level of self-consciousness is bashfulness and inhibition. Less than five percent of top performers had high levels of self-consciousness.

Selling Style Impact: Aggressiveness. Top salespeople are comfortable fighting for their cause and are not afraid of rankling customers in the process. They are action-oriented and unafraid to call high in their accounts or courageously cold call new prospects.


Not all salespeople are successful. Given the same sales tools, level of education, and propensity to work, why do some salespeople succeed where others fail? Is one better suited to sell the product because of his or her background? Is one more charming or just luckier? The evidence suggests that the personalities of these truly great salespeople play a critical role in determining their success. 

Your culture is your brand

The title of this post is from the book "Delivering Happiness" by Tony Hsieh, the CEO of Zappos. We give every new employee at Varrow this book on their first day. One of the big lessons in the book is the importance of culture in building a great company. In Tony Hsieh's words, "At Zappos, our belief is that if you get the culture right, most of the other stuff -- like great customer service, or building a great long-term brand, or passionate employees and customers -- will happen naturally on its own."

A company's culture begins and ends with the people. We at Varrow recently created a site within varrow.com that celebrates our people and offers a glimpse into our culture. Check it out:

http://www.varrow.com/about/people/

Healthcare Headlock

Until coming to Varrow, I had not worked regularly with healthcare organizations. At Varrow though, healthcare organizations represent a significant part of our business, so I have gotten to know this world much better.  What I have learned is both exciting on one hand and disturbing on the other. 

The exciting aspect of working with hospitals and other healthcare organizations is the notion that the solutions we are designing and implementing for our customers are directly contributing to improved patient care.  Being in the technology field, our opportunities to feel like we are really making a contribution is often limited to building strong relationships, helping those around us, and creating a special place to work for our employees.  But in working with healthcare organizations, we have the opportunity to do more and that is great. 

The stakes are high in the healtchare space though; mistakes or "downtime" can effect patient care and, in extreme examples, cost lives.  What I have come to learn is that many companies use this high risk landscape to their advantage.  Before I go further, it is important to explain a little about what we at Varrow do in the healthcare space.  Our scope and expertise is very specific.  We focus on the infrastructure that supports the EMR, PACS, and other healthcare applications that make hospitals go.  We handle the servers, storage, network and disaster recovery solutions that these applications run on.  We are specialists and we are the absolute best at what we do, but when it comes down to what the doctors and nurses see on a day-to-day basis, it is the applications they see.  It's all about the applications - they have all the visibility and they are the software solutions that directly improve patient healthcare.  Our role is really to make sure these applications are performing well, are accessible, and stay up and running.

I mention this because it sets the stage for the disturbing part of IT in healthcare.  Like I said earlier, the stakes are high in healthcare and mistakes can not be tolerated.  As a result, the IT leadership at healthcare organizations are extremely risk averse - and justifiably so!  But in my experience, often times application providers take advantage of this fear. 

Only in the healthcare space do application providers still wield enough power to dictate what kind of hardware infrastructure will be used to support their applications.  Many of the application providers dictate a short list of what hardware infrastructure providers they are willing to certify to work with their applications.  Given the stakes, I can understand this and if it stopped there I would say, "Ok, well they are just making sure that their applications are not running on sub-standard infrastructure."

The disturbing part is when these same application providers insist on reselling and implementing this hardware at the customer site.  This is not a core competency for them, they do not manufacture infrastructure hardware or software, they are not the best in the world at it, and they often don't have nearly the same level of expertise as the companies who specialize in implementing world-class infrastructure solutions. 

It presents an opportunity for the application provider to capture more revenue, but is it really in the best interest of the customer?  A comparable analogy would be if Microsoft or SAP or Oracle were to say, "Mr. customer, you can only buy this specific certified hardware (that we happen to resell) for our application AND you need to use our consutlants to implement the hardware."

Customers can push back and insist on buying infrastructure and associated design and implementation services from someone else, but they need to go up against an army of application consultants and account managers encouraging them to do otherwise...and, by the way, patients lives are at stake.

If I am the customer am I going to be bold enough to say to the account team for the Meditechs, McKessons, and Cerners of the world that despite their insistence on reselling and implementing the hardware infrastructure, I am going to leverage the infrastructure experts for the infrastructure portion of the solution?

Many customers are bold enough to do so.  But many more are not, so what ends up happening is they pay a MUCH higher markup on this infrastructure and related services and get a lesser experience during the design and implemention of it.

One example of a healthcare application provider doing things right is Epic Systems.  Unlike the application providers described above, Epic Systems certifies hardware but does not resell or implement it.  They insist on not doing so.  It is not a core competency.  They are also recognized in the industry for delivering projects on-time and on-budget...and they happen to be the best at what they do.  91% of the HIMMS Stage 7 Hospitals use Epic.  This is a certification that, according to HIMMS, recognizes hospitals for the following:

• Deliver patient care without the use of paper charts
• Are able to share patient information by sending secure standardized summary record transactions to other care providers
• Use their vast database of clinical information to drive improved care delivery performance, patient safety clinical decision support, and outcomes using business intelligence solutions
• Are best practice examples of how to implement sophisticated EMR environments that fully engage their clinicians

Note the last bullet.  Epic is arguably the best healthcare application provider out there and their customers are examples of how to best implement sophisticated EMR environments...and they do not try to resell or implement the infrastructure portion of the overall implementation because it is not their core competency.

So, for those folks considering a new EMR or PACS solution, consider Epic.  And if you decide to go in a different direction than Epic, stand your ground when your application provider tries to sell you the infrastructure and related services.  Ask them to break out these costs separately and on a separate quote, ask to talk to their presales and post sales engineers that specialize in the infrastructure, and then compare their cost and capabilities to your local integrator who specializes in this stuff.

Top Ten Reasons to Attend Varrow Madness (Next Week!)

Top Ten Reasons to Attend Varrow's Technology Uber-Event - Varrow Madness

#10 - All the cool kids (and even more nerdy kids) are doing it - over 350 people registered.  Click here to register: https://www.regonline.com/builder/site/Default.aspx?EventID=921359

#9 - St.Patty's Day + NCAA Tourney (Varrow will have TV's all over the place with the games running) = the perfect storm of reasons to get out of the office and learn about technology

#8 - VCE, Inc. will be bringing a real live vBlock with them

#7 - Varrow will be giving away 30 tickets to Rounds 2&3 of  the NCAA Tourney games in Charlotte

#6 - Science fiction will be represented - watch someone manage vSphere with hand motions (a really smart guy - Senior vSpecialist at EMC, Nicholas Weaver - wrote a program to manage vSphere using an XBox Kinnect )

#5 - Varrow will be runnning VMware and Citrix VDI labs throughout the day

#4 - Chad Sakac - nuff said (http://virtualgeek.typepad.com/)

#3 - Your brain will grow

#2 - There will be a Mini-Cooper with the newly announced EMC VNX unified storage platform stuffed in the back (see it for the first time)

#1 - Every one of your friends at Varrow will be there

2-1-1

One thing that each of us in the organization struggles with is making the time for personal and/or organizational improvement.  It is so easy to get consumed by the day-to-day duties required to meet the expectations of our managers, co-workers, partners, and customers.  In a sales organization, this is particularly true because the longstanding metric of success is the "numbah."  In many - if not most - sales organizations, this is the sole metric of success.  The "numbah" can become all-consuming and it becomes very easy to default to the short view and lose sight of taking the steps necessary to become better long term. 

One thing we as a team are trying to do to make the time for improvement is a program we are calling 2-1-1.  At the end of 2010, we asked each member of the team to answer the following in preparation for their Q1 planning sessions:

2: What 2 things do you do really well that have a huge impact on your success in your job? (can be anything – trait, habit, approach, etc)

1: What 1 thing do you find yourself saying, “I really need to do better on this,” that would greatly improve your effectiveness in your job or happiness in general?

1: What 1 recommendation would you make to help improve the overall effectiveness of Varrow Sales?

Every member of the team answered these questions and then during each of their individual planning sessions we discussed his/her 2-1-1 answers and identified one goal each person would strive to achieve before the end of the quarter.  The only ground rule for the identified goal was that it needed to be one with a very high probability of achievement.  The idea here being that we don't want to add yet another stressor (the "numbah" is stressful enough), but rather prompt each individual to carve out the time to achieve the goal and not just put on the backburner day after day, month after month, quarter after quarter.  It's really about making the time for improvement.

If every individual on the team achieves his/her 2-1-1 goal, the team as a whole will be rewarded with a team reward (still have to figure out what the reward will be).  We want people helping each other out and rooting each other on as they strive to achieve their individual goals.

Here is the list of goals the members of the team have come up with so far (our inside sales reps and our data center solutions principal have their planning sessions this week, so their 2-1-1 goals are not yet identified):

*organize a local technical training for the sales team in Charlotte

*organize an afternoon at the driving range for Varrow employees and provide lessons to those participating

*bring along the new sales rep on 10 sales calls and the inside sales reps on 5 sales calls so they ramp quicker

*get meetings with 3 of your top prospect accounts

*talk to all the engineers at Varrow and create a list of companies where they have relationships or have worked at in the past and with whom Varrow is not currently doing business

*get 5 of your customers out of the office and spend some time having fun

*introduce in-person your technical consultant into 10 of your long-standing accounts and your inside sales rep into 3 of your accounts

I still have to identify with the team my own personal 2-1-1 goal and add to the list.  I hope this is effective - I am optimistic it will be, but we shall see.  In the meantime, the dialogue itself was extremely healthy and look forward to having it every quarter throughout the year.

Action Item to Our Customers and Partners

Alright, the dust has officially settled on 2010.  We started our planning sessions with the teams for 2011 and the wheels keep on turning.  2010 was an amazing year for Varrow.  We brought on board many ridiculously talented and passionate people over the course of the year; some of the best engineering, sales and operations people around, who also contribute in a positive way to the Varrow culture - one where people work hard, play hard, care about each other, and do whatever it takes to create a unique experience for our customers. 

Our focus remains the second biggest reason for our success (the first being our people).  As our customers and partners invest more in us, we invest that money back into adding more expertise and delivering more capabilities and offerings around EMC, Cisco data center, and VMware.  In 2011, we will be announcing some new service-oriented offerings for our customers that will continue to enhance their experience with Varrow.

Overall, Varrow grew revenue 89% in 2010 over 2009.  Thank you to all of our customers and partners whose confidence in Varrow is what enabled us to achieve such growth. 

But, alas, it is a new year and the past is the past.  The responsibility is upon us again in 2011 to not only meet the demands of our customers and partners, not only preserve the quality of the Varrow experience, but improve upon it.  So, if you are a customer or partner reading this, please, the next time you are sitting down with one of your Varrow folks or if you want to just send me an email, either way, speak up.  Let us know what else we can do to really separate the Varrow experience from the usual.

The Year of the Customer...

...just like every year before and after 2010.  Our Storage Practice Lead, Joe Kelly, summed it up:

"Thanks for..

• Bringing us into your world of challenges and allowing us to develop a solution that is best for your business
• Viewing us as a trusted advisor, knowing that we are there in your best interest. 
• Being patient in situations where things might not have gone as planned. 
• Allowing us to become an extension of your IT family"

To read Joe's full blog: http://blog.virtualtacit.com/

What a year.  Thank you.

Real Artists Ship

I just got into my hotel after my weekly 5-hour deer-dodging drive from VA to NC. The good thing about seeing all the deer chomping grass along the side of the road as I barrel down the highway at 65+MPH is that it keeps me awake. 

I haven't posted anything for a little while because I took a break last week and spent a bunch of time with the kids.  My wife went up to Boston for a wedding, so I was flying solo with our two kids from Wednesday to Saturday.  Man, what fun we had.  Being away from them four nights a week has been manageable, but just hanging for a period of time with the kids was much-needed.  Luckily, we are close to moving down to NC.  The picture below is being submitted into evidence for those at Varrow who have been wondering if we were really coming down:

My daughter, Grace, will be 4 yrs old later this month and she is a drawing, painting, play-dohing, pasting, coloring, tracing, and stickering machine.  The sheer output of product is intense. 

A typical scenario: "Hey Gracie, Auntie Colleen is coming to visit on Wednesday," Mom says.  "Ok, I will make her a picture."  15 minutes later, the picture is done and Gracie is slapping some stickers on it to add a little flair.  Boom.  Done.  "What should we call the picture?"  Dad says.  "Disney Pink."  Ok, got it.  Boom. Done. Next.

She is unencumbered by any internal resistance to creative expression.  She is not looking for any special accolades or recognition, although she enjoys recognition.  She does not fear judgment.  Her heart and soul are in the project at hand - perhaps drawing snakes on an empty paper towel roll that is now a telescope for dad -- and the motivation is the joy of the task and the opportunity to share the end-product with others.  She is producing little gifts every day.

I mention this observation about my daughter because it relates very much to a great book titled, Linchpin, by Seth Godin where he explores the role of Linchpins in organizations. Linchpins are those indispensable go-to folks who find art in their work, whatever their work may be.

This is a form of genius.  Godin contends (and I agree) that we are all able and have at some time in our lives — even if it hasn’t been since toddler-hood-- solved a problem in a way that no one had ever thought of before, done something remarkable (worth remarking about).  This is genius and is practiced frequently by those who are less encumbered by the internal resistance to genius inherent in our brain; psychologists and Godin call it the "lizard brain" - the amygdala. (See the video at the bottom of the blog for more on the "lizard brain" from Godin.)

The amygdala is where fear resides. It is the fight or flight trigger in our head - it appeals to the most base desire for survival.  But how do we respond to this portion of the brain when survival is not at stake?  When fear is unfounded or simply unproductive?  This is when we get in our own way; we impede and tamp down the genius we are capable of producing; we fear judgment and not fitting in; we resist risk and we are wary of the unkown.  We sabotage our own success by being overly critical of our work or over-analyzing it to the point of paralysis.  We don't do.  We don't create.  As Steve Jobs said: "Real artists ship." (source: Linchpin)

My daughter is young and innocent and still relatively unencumbered by many of the fears that come with growing up and, as a result, she is creating -- and shipping on time! -- every day.  She is my little genius. 

Linchpins are very much the same.  They overcome their own resistance associated with fear and they get things done.  They create products, ideas, efficiences, relationships, etc. and they produce results.  They exercise their genius.  They put themselves out there and voice their perspective when the "lizard brain" may be saying to do otherwise.  They don't sit down, and shut up.  They are not TGIFers.  They produce.  And they are indispensable.


More from Godin on the brain (also includes a topical reference to the dangers of deer!):

Effective Selling - Thought 1

There are lots of character traits and habits/behaviors that contribute to being a good Account Manager, but in this day and age there is one simple thing that all salespeople, regardless of talent, can do to separate themselves from the large majority of their competition: they can do what they say they're going to do.

We have been conditioned to almost expect people to not do what they say they are going to do, so when people actually do follow through on their commitments, when they actually do follow-up when they said they would follow-up, when they actually do complete the big -- and little -- tasks they said they would complete coming out of a meeting, it is like a refreshing surprise.

If I was a whiny, grumpy old man I could dedicate the next couple of paragraphs to shaking my fists at the world and asking "Why? Why has the bar been set so low? What is the world coming to? This isn't right!!!"

But I won't. Why would I? If I do what I say I'm going to do, and all the people on the Varrow sales team do what they say they're going to do, we will continue to surprise and please our customers without doing any more than we would expect of ourselves anyways. 

If this is the baseline from which we start, and then when we do all of the other things that go into being great account managers, we go from being a refreshing surprise to a truly valued and trusted business partner and friend.

Jimmy V

One of the guys on the team is an NC State alum. He sent me a link today to Jimmy Valvano's classic speech at the Espy awards, less than 2 months before he died of cancer. What an inspiration Jimmy V was, and what a great guy. You can't help but love him. Enjoy.

Fun w/ VCE

Life is too short to take yourself too seriously. "Integrity" and "excellence" are two words that come to mind when I think of the people I work with at Varrow, but "fun" is definitely another one.

If you look at it on paper, there never really is time to have fun at work. You can do a cost/benefit analysis and justify not having fun every time. "Well the return on "fun" simply does not justify the investment. Now, where are those TPC reports?"

The team at Varrow is the hardest working group of people I know, but some folks got together earlier this week and made the investment in fun. Here is what came out of it:

Should we sign Randy Moss?

Randy Moss is one of the most talented wide receivers in the league. He had 1,264 receiving yards last year and is 2nd all-time in receiving touchdowns. He was recently traded by the Patriots for a 3rd round draft pick, then dropped by the Vikings 4 games later, and was just picked up today by the Tennessee Titans after almost every other team in the NFL passed on the opportunity to add him to their team. Moss is considered a selfish player with a bad attitude - he gets individual results, but the negative impact to the team is considered too detrimental by many to justify bringing him on board.

There is really no great reason why I am including this video other than the fact that I like it. Cool compilation of various Moss quotes set to music.



I am currently reading a book a friend of mine at EMC recommended titled "Delivering Happiness," written by the CEO of Zappos.com, Tony Hsieh.

Zappos arguably has the best customer service in the world and is one of Fortune's Best Places to Work. They have gone from $0 to over $1b in revenue in less than 10 years.

The top priority at Zappos is their culture. Hsieh talks a lot about his hiring practices and the cost of making bad ones - he estimates bad hires have cost Zappos over $100m. A big part of the entire hiring process is identifying how the candidate would contribute to the culture of the company. They have passed on many a candidate who would have had a significant positive impact on the performance of the company, but were deemed too risky in terms of the possible negative impact to the company culture.

In this day and age, your company culture is your brand. Gone are the Madmen days when a company could spend a million dollars with some high-priced advertising firm to create a brand. Every person at your company is a walking, talking, blogging, tweeting, facebooking representation of your company and its brand. Companies can't hide behind some glossy well-funded advertising campaign. This is a good thing of course.

So, when considering bringing on the next rock star, dig in on how the person would contribute to your culture. Do they embody the brand you are trying to build or have already built? If not, pass, no matter how enticing they look on paper.

Find below an interview with Tony Hsieh for more on Zappos hiring practices and their general approach.

People Power

I just found out yesterday that the company I work for - Varrow - was named EMC's Commercial Partner of the Year for the 2nd year in a row.  2200 companies are eligible for the award.  Unbelievable.  Varrow has grown 875% over the last few years, making it one of the fastest growing companies in the country - all in the face of arguably one of the most challenging economic periods in US history.  Humbling.

What is the trick?  How does a company enter a market where there are literally thousands of companies doing the same thing and realize this kind of success?

The simple answer: the people.  That may sound hokey or cheesy or something, but it's true.  People are the most important asset any company has...products, strategies, relationships, efficiencies - these things are all conceived, created, and managed by people. 

Knowing this, the question then becomes how much time do we spend on recruiting?  Do we treat finding the next great person the same way we treat working on a big customer project?  How much time and money are we willing to spend to bring on the next great person?  How much to keep the great people we have?  How much thought do we give to the culture within our organization and its contribution to the overall satisfaction and fulfillment of these great people? 

We've got an unbelievable group of people at Varrow...find below some photos of a handful of our people; these were from a team zipline thing we did, as well as the all-hands company meeting earlier this week.  We do the all-hands meeting every quarter at Natty Greene's in Greensboro.  It gives the management team an opportunity to review the previous quarter's results, give some insight into future direction, and recognize our great people for the work they've done.  Most importantly though, it's an opportunity to get together as a team.

The presentation of the ugly orange blazer is a new "Tradition like no other" that we started this past quarter for the top rep of the quarter.  Nice work Mark!