The Master Agent Summit in California...

So this year I decided to venture to California for our annual tech summit where a substantial amount of our vendors gather on the west coast to introduce us to many of their new products and services. The cloud, IoT, and remote infrastructure not only appear to be in good health but making some nice leaps and bounds from a few years ago. At these summits we also receive a myriad of training on various subjects, such as how to service clients in an increasingly more expansive and ever changing tech market. In fact the summit was actually called “Changing Tides.” We engaged in a deeper dive on marketing platforms and how best to reach those niche markets, how A.I. platforms like IBM Watson was going to change the world around us and how that technology will interface with your own proprietary apps, as well as having tech icons like Gary Shapiro, CEO of the Consumer Technology Association give us some stark warning about many of the things I was discussing in this blog years ago (but that companies don’t listen to). Also can’t say I minded receiving a copy of his signed book Ninja Future.

But of course we had tech on display in all it’s glory. I particularly enjoyed seeing where business phones are going and how you can either have them running on your own personal mobile phone via an application or now enjoying cordless handsets in the office with all the same features and security offered by the traditional phones with cord attachments to the receiver.

This was the scene at the Polycom booth this year

I go to these summits to be able to better serve struggling companies grappling with exceeding costs in the coming year. I also attend for the blatant grab bags of tech we receive from these vendors and our parent company, Sandler partners who treat us extremely well for the hard work all their master agents perform all over the country. But most importantly it shows me where the industry is going. Executives high up in many of these companies gave keynotes on where the industry is going and how their positioning themselves to be the most useful to their customers when that change arrives. As agents we receive a wealth of knowledge from these people and I also get to learn the ins and outs of companies I meet with in person so I can inform those who reach out to us in the best way possible about their pain points and how to remove them. I also see whose new on the block and how they’ll be doing things differently than everyone else.

One thing is absolutely paramount, and that is that every business is different. No one company can be a cookie cutter fit for another company that maybe has 10-20 employees versus a behemoth with thousands of employees and multiple office locations around the world. It’s crucial to know what every carrier is capable of in the grand scheme of things and what products and services they have available in the marketplace. And that’s why these trips are so worth it to me, and in the future they’ll pay off in dividends for you as well.