CHANNEL PARTNERS CONFERENCE & EXPO — Successful tactics for boosting sales and demand generation were highlighted during Monday’s Business Success Symposium.

The preconference, on the eve of this week’s Channel Partners Conference & Expo, was sponsored by Verizon. Janet Schijns, Verizon Business’ vice president, Verizon Solutions and Sales Channels, told attendees that everyone in the channel needs to take the time to “step back, learn something and change what you’re doing.”

“None of us are too big to fail,” she said. “The truly special people listen and adapt.”{ad}

During her session titled “New Tactics for Selling Next-Gen Tech,” Luanne Tierney, Fivesky’s managing member and chief marketing officer, shared eight trends that partners need to be aware of and can capitalize on to increase sales.

The eight trends are:

“These trends are things you can apply immediately and affordably to your business,” Tierney said. “Regardless of if you’re selling Internet of Things (IoT), cloud solutions, big data, it really doesn’t matter the technology you’re selling. It’s how you …

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…differentiate your brand and then use these fantastic new tools to amplify your brand. It does start with the company defining what their differentiator is and then using these new tools to get their brand out there loud and clear.”

During another session titled “Leads, Leads, Leads: How to Fill Your Funnel Without Drowning in Data,” Heather Margolis, founder and CEO of Channel Maven Consulting, shared effective demand-generation tips.

“It’s really important that you don’t pay attention to any one thing; it all needs to work together,” she said. “So the integration of social and email, and phone, and video and different kinds of content, it’s really important that all of those pieces are touching exactly what the prospects’ or customers’ pain points are.”

People’s habits are changing, so it’s “not just about how you can reach them, it’s how they want to receive the information,” Margolis said.

“So if somebody filled out a survey, they might say they want email, but their habits are actually changing for that not to be the case,” she said.{ad}

Margolis’ demand-generation tips include: