Time to Dis-A-Peer..?

Get it? :)

I remember the day that I thought we needed more peer groups. I am a member of a peer group organization but we are a small and exclusive group. Not anyone can join, you have to be invited. There are a limited number of seats, we share financials, we act as each other's Board of Directors, and we expect the members to be at the top of their game. But one fine day, I was thinking that others deserved the peep groups experience too. I have several friends in the industry who I thought could really benefit from a deep peer interaction but, for one reason or another, didn't qualify to be in my group....but, I guess that the Trouble with Tribbles. They multiply...quickly.

I am a member of TPG (True Profits Group), the original IT and MSP peer group. Steve Bowser, our fearless leader, has been doing this longer than anyone in the industry by far. I guess I should check my facts before blogging but, I'm pretty sure that Steve started doing this with the Microage Computer Center franchises back in the early 90's. The automotive industry had been doing this for year. New car dealers regularly get together, even used car dealers regularly get together and they strategize, share best practices, collaborate on how to make more money, but never in IT industry. Most of the boneheads in the IT industry see everyone else in the industry as a competitor instead of an ally. Peer groups have gone a long way towards repairing our fragmented and un-neighborly industry...but how many do we need?

For years, TPG was the only game in town...and, IMHO, still the one where you want to try and score an available seat. Then, "that guy" started facilitating some. Sorry...I always forget that guy's name. You know who you are. Then I heard that Larry Schulze from the Taylor Business Group was doing some. I like Larry, his Service Management Workshop has gotten great reviews from my serv ice management team...although his utilization metrics are often trigger a number of debates in our organization....but that's topic for another time. I got Larry involved with TechData and the BIG (Business Improvement Groups) that we have going inside of TechSelect. The membership is loving those.

HTG is out there. I don't know too much about HTG although, I guess I could easy learn more. The company that we recently acquired, Guardian Angel Computer Services in Norwalk, CT, was a member and HTG's fearless leader, Arlin Sorensen, and I serve on the ConnectWise Partner Advisory Board together. What I do know about HTG is that it's essentially run by a peer, Heartland Technologies...and (again, I should double check my facts but) a former member of TPG. They've got quite a thing going on over there. It sounds like a number of smaller peer groups but then they ALL get together once a year or something like that. Again, my feedback has been that the members get a lot out of it.

Recently I've heard that others are facilitating peer groups or asking some of the existing peer leaders to facilitate groups for them. There are peer groups forming just for N-able users, there are peer groups forming just for Autotask users...Larry seems to be involved in both of those.

Next month, at TechSelect's 10th Anniversary Partner Conference, we're going to be introducing a peer component. We're calling it PeerSelect. This isn't going to be any kind of a formal peer group group session, instead we're going to allow the members to pick their peer group, then we're going to keep those groups together for several sessions throughout the conference. The concept is that, "peer interaction" always seems to be rated very highly with regards to why our members love the TechSelect conferences, so why not give them more of that. I also think that members are more "open" when they know who is in the room. We'll see how it works out.

Lately I get a lot from, what I would call, Local Peers. We're based in South Florida (with offices in Atlanta and Norwalk, CT - shameless plug) and regularly get together with other South Florida IT service providers. We sit around for a few hours, drink a few beers, and talk about what's working and what isn't. Most importantly, we learn each other's strengths and figure out how to work together realizing that there's plenty of work out there for all of us and that together we can become better and offer a greater breadth of services to our clients.

So if you're like my friend, Curt Jacobson (Corporate Technology Group), from Missoula, MT, and you're in a relatively small MSA with only a few resellers fighting for every last bit of business, maybe Local Peers wouldn't really work out as well as (maybe) arm-wrestling. OK. I'm not saying that it's for everyone...but otherwise, give it a shot. You'll find that you have a lot more in common with you local competitors than you may think. PLUS, you know that customer...? The one that uses one company, doesn't appreciate the services that we provide, complains constantly, we give them great service and, in the end, doesn't pay their bills, then switches to another local service provider? Oh, yes... You're going to want to circulate a list of those. :)

So, until next time... Don't Dis(respect)-A-Peer?

- R