Everybody likes free stuff. If you’re a SharePoint consultant, out there running around between customer sites, don’t miss the opportunity to share the incredible free content that is available these days.
The good folks over at Channel9 have posted a treasure-trove of content from the SharePoint Conference that you can use to get your customers excited and engaged. The future of enterprise collaboration is evolving faster than it ever and getting your customers spun up as quickly as possible will only grease the wheels.
Be the one that shepherds them through the storm.
Use the content as a tool to spark conversations about where we’re going, where they’re going AND the “not so pleasant” risks & challenges that they’ll face along the way.
The vast majority of SharePoint & Office 365 customers out there did not go the conference and there’s a good chance that they’ve never even heard of Channel 9. Treat it as an opportunity to reinforce your relationships. Try to target specific sessions and specific resources as much as possible. Unless they’re motivated and passionate about the technology, your customers probably wont have the appetite to troll through the archives alone. When a topic comes up in conversation, either as a pain point, potential future requirement, curiosity, etc., spot the ideas that individuals care about and connect them with the relevant goodness.
Obviously, Channel9 isn’t the thing that you can leverage in this way… Build out your own tool box and share the love.
My normal “go to’s” are:
Channel 9 for technical or theory deep dives
Critical Path’s YouTube channel for all things training. Ted Pattison, Andrew Connell and the gang have been putting a ton of free training content up on YouTube for several years now. Best in the business. I honestly cant remember a single customer that I didn’t push their way in one way or another (training contracts not withstanding).