It’s always really hard to take notes when you’re moderating a discussion. But every once in a while an idea pops out so forceably that it becomes imprinted on your brain. No notes necessary.

Thus was the case last week when I had an opportunity to lead a Thought Leadership forum during the annual 1NService Interchange conference. The group included several representatives of high-tech vendors, like 8e6 Technologies and Packeteer, who wanted some feedback on their existing ideas. It also included some of the 1NService member companies, which represent a bunch of different channel business models including regional integrators, managed services providers and IT services companies.

The topics we discussed were various and far-reaching: touching on things like how to accommodate managed service providers without whacking out the rest of your programs and how an integrator can realistically juggle multiple relationship with multiple high-tech product suppliers AND multiple project implementation partners. Collaboration is a pretty easy word to say, but it’s pretty hard to pull off without a lot of human intervention right now.

The discussion got really lively, however, when we hit on the topic of training.

A couple of threads here. First, why is it that vendors spend hours on getting their channel partners to take a technical class and then devote only a couple of hours to sales issues? Or, better yet, why do very few cover sales management issues?

One great idea that came out of this debate was the notion that maybe several related vendors could band together to address these issues collectively on behalf of their partners. The good news, if you want to look at it that way, is that channel partners aren’t any worse off than the internal sales teams for many vendors, according to the discussion participants. Although, this is sort of a sad statement. The high-tech industry operates very much according to a sink-or-swim mentality across the board. The exceptions, honestly, seem to be the companies with direct sales legacies: EMC, IBM, Dell. You can bet they’ve trained their salespeople.

And then, the really GREAT question bubbled to the surface: Most vendors already tier their channel partners according to some sort of designated volume commitment or services skills. Why shouldn’t those partners get some sort of extra consideration when it comes to training, a reward (if you will) for attaining that level?

It actually is an idea that makes a lot of sense. For one thing, the vendor already knows that these are committed partners. What’s more, these are partners who are likely to put that training into practice. Anyone know of a company embracing this approach?

Blogs by their nature are about a moment in time. So I won’t bore you all with a lot of historical background about our company. If you don’t know me, I’ve been covering this thing called the high-tech “channel” for more than 18 years now. Since leaving my post as editor of one of the industry’s top trade news organizations, I dove right into some great projects for my now-employer SWOT Management Group (SWOTmg). You’ll hear more about those in future posts, I’m sure. The bottom line is that I figure I have a lot to offer in terms of helping improve communications and messaging between high-tech vendors and their channel partners.

I’m actually between trips right now, holed up at my mother’s place in Hawaii after attending Cisco’s latest worldwide partner summit in a consulting and research capacity. Here’s a blog post I wrote for Tech Target about that trip.

On Sunday, I’m headed to Orlando, Fla., with SWOTmg founder and managing partner Bill Brandt to chat up some great VARs at the annual 1NService Interchange event.

This is one of my favorite conferences every year, because most of the attendees are CEOs and sales and technical managers from some pretty terrific regional integrators, all of whom work together through 1NService to extend their reach. I’ll be moderating a roundtable about the evolution of channel programs, plus I’ll be running a set of interviews and a panel about the role of Collaboration within the high-tech channel. Look for updates LIVE from Orlando early next week. I’m sure some of the discussion will also be the foundation for future blog posts. If you plan to be there, look us up! You can e-mail me directly at hclancy@swotmg.com.

What you can expect out of Connected are ramblings about events I’m covering, and things we’ve learned through various SWOTmg projects. I love sharing feedback from VARs and resellers, so your comments are encouraged. I’ll be back soon with our first updates from the 1NService event.