Profiting From Your Local Chamber of Commerce

As small business owners, many managed service providers join their local chambers of commerce — but they don’t know how to truly build a business relationship with such entities. TechAssist, one of our MSPmentor 100 members, doesn’t suffer from such confusion. The company recently inked a partnership with the DC Chamber of Commerce.

Here’s a look at the relationship, along with some thoughts on how you can build similar partnerships with your chamber of commerce.

Through this partnership, Washington D.C.-based businesses will have the ability to learn about new technologies and best practices through a series of programs and educational workshops designed to make new technologies more available to business.

In addition, the partnership will give small businesses access to “strategic guidance currently only available to large businesses with enterprise IT departments,” according to a prepared statement from TechAssist CEO Nick Vossburg. (You may recall Vossburg was a guest on our June 12 MSPmentor Live: CEO Exchange Webcast).

Vossburg plans to promote the following technologies to chamber of commerce members:

• Interactive work spaces
• Telecommuting
• Networking office equipment (printers, fax, copiers, etc.)
• Computer and software updates
• Electronic security and back-ups
• E-marketing
• New media (website, email, teleconferencing, podcasts, blogs, etc.)

So, what has Vossburg done right here? For starters, he did more than attend meetings and chat with peers. I’ve gone to my share of small business seminars and local business conferences. We often see the same faces and names at each event. But many of us fail to come up with a tangible program and plan to actually help our peers in the room — and potentially make a few dollars along the way.