I’m just back from the BTA Spring Break event in New Orleans. I haven’t been to one of their regional shows in a couple of years and I couldn’t believe how these have grown. From a handful of sponsors in 2013 to filling a ball room. Nice job!
The event was a great mixer with over 100 attendees from dealerships throughout the south east US coming to listen to vendors and their peers discuss topics such as managed services, print management and much more.
Click here to see all my event pictures
The first morning kicked off with a great speaker. Dr. Steven Shepard talked about the mixing of generations in the workplace and the differences between Baby Boomers, Generation X, Millennials and what he called the “quiet generation.” It really made you think about how to market your business differently to both your customers and potential employees.
David Ramos hosted a panel with Chip Miceli of DPOE, Doug Pitasi of POA, Ken Staubitz from MOM and David Lynch of RBS. Great session!
I did a session on social media for dealers where I discussed LinkedIn, Twitter, Yelp and other platforms that dealers can use to help with branding and to find new customers.
Jim D’Emidio, President of Muratec did a session with Kraig Kubicek from Avarta on Managed Services. After seeing Jim’s speech about the book Who Moved My Cheese for the 2nd time in a month, I finally bought and read it – a great read. The two talked about Managed Services; where and how do you start, what are your options and how do you get there.
Click here to see all my event videos
Lindsay Dick, director of sales from Collabrance LLC (a subsidiary of GreatAmerica) also spoke on the topic of Managed Services where she told listeners about best practices and tactics dealers can use to penetrate this market. Collabrance’s lead generation program can help with this.
Food and drink was great thanks to sponsors such as Xerox and Panasonic, who were both there looking for dealers for their respective programs. The entire venue was very nice from the vendor’s floor layout to all the speakers and sessions. Tons of great partner companies like Clover, Digitek, ESP, Katun, Lexmark, OKI Data, Print Audit, Toshiba and others had great tables with lOra of information about products and services for imaging dealers.
Darrell Amy from Dealer Marketing was running the social media for the event. You can check out all the tweets and pictures from me and dozens of other people at the show if you search twitter for #BTASpringBreak.
This was a great event and BTA has come a long way. I have to admit, when the big shows went away years ago, I figured that was it for them. But Brent and his team have not only made BTA relevant again, but also a necessary and extremely beneficial association that all dealers should be part of.
The benefits from their educational series, discounts with vendors (including me for our online copier/printer comparison service), regional shows like this, networking opportunities and the ability to share best practices with peers makes this a great organization that is the heart and soul of this channel.
Both vendors and dealers should attend these regional events. I had a great time and I learned a lot. I can’t wait to attend their 90th anniversary event in June!
~Andy