From golf buddy to business partner

The CRN Golf Challenge offers participants a tremendous networking opportunity

How many deals have been born in your office? How many contracts have come to fruition while you were sat at your desk?

Not that many, I’ll bet. The channel is unlike any other industry, where friends, old university buddies and contacts are often worth their weight in gold. No where else is business done on such a personalised level.

While the rule of never mixing business and pleasure is applicable in some industry cultures, it is the polar opposite in the channel – and nine times out of 10 doing business is pleasure for channel players. Which is why, on any given day on some of the best golf courses around the country, you will find channel executives doing what they do best – building a contact base.

Golf provides the privacy, the fresh air and four hours (or perhaps five or six in my case) of uninterrupted deal-making time. It is not that the deals themselves are constructed while you’re swinging, it is that friendships and associations are formed, making future deals all the more likely.

To provide you with an independent, no-vendor-pitches-involved, uninterrupted golf experience, CRN has launched its highly successful Channel Golf Challenge 2007. In its fifth year, the Challenge proves to be an eventful day, with a first-class golf course, slap-up post-golf supper and a gregarious gathering of resellers.

While the standard of golf can’t be guaranteed – after all I’m always there to let one side down no matter how many trips to the golf range I make pre-event – the level of contact making, friendships formed and gossip heard can be assured. With the channel focusing more and more on relationships between resellers and inter-channel partnering, can you afford to miss out on this golden opportunity?