While You Were Selling

You were very busy running your shop, while the following people visited
India in the last five months. Steve Jobs of Apple; Michael Dell of Dell; Samuel
Palmisano of IBM; Michael Mayer of Freescale; Scott McNealy of Sun; Anne Mulcahy
of Xerox; Rich Templeton of Texas Instruments; Seenu Banda of NetDevices; Ron
Lang of Sunguard; and Tom Donovan of Panduit.

These are no ordinary people. They are the big bosses of those companies
whose products you sell day in and day out. Some of them made a lot of noise
about their visit, but some kept a very low profile. However, most of you never
came to know about these visits. This is unfortunate.

These top shots are meeting government officials, they are interacting with
the press, and they are also paying a visit to big customers. But they could not
meet that community which is selling and pushing their products at the lowest
end. I believe that some sort of interaction between the channel community and
the world level CEOs should have been organized.

There can be lots of advantages if the industry leaders can connect with
those who are at the end of the selling chain. There is nothing as good as
meeting the person behind the company. If channel members turn out in full
strength, there is no reason why these CEOs will not be very pleased themselves,
and be more motivated and encouraged about India. They can be given a lot of
feedback first hand. They can be an inspiration for many of the channel players.

All said, the principal companies will either not be too keen or will not
have time to bring their global head and the channel on the same platform. It is
up to the channel partners to ask for an occasion to meet them. I am sure the
various channel associations can come together and organize this.