Mike Feldman VP, IPG Global Enterprise Business

It’s show time, again. This week, I’m in San Antonio, Texas, home to the Alamo, the Spurs, the River Walk and the HP Imaging and Printing Group’s 2008 Sales Leadership conference. It’s phenomenal to be here with HP’s Imaging and Printing Enterprise District Managers from around the world. I’m hearing straight from the proverbial horse’s mouth:  What are our customers’ greatest challenges? What are the trends they’re seeing? Are security, compliance, the environment and cost cutting still hot button issues for customers?

Sales managers – the people on our team that have daily face time with customers – are often referred to as our “feet on the street.” They have constant exposure to customers and first-hand knowledge of the issues they’re facing. While we’re here in San Antonio to share the latest and greatest HP products, services and solutions with them – providing the tools and resources they need from us to do their jobs – these folks help us keep it real.

The event started Monday morning with a keynote from Bruce Dahlgren, the SVP of our Global Enterprise Business. Here’s my favorite quote of the event so far: “Nobody buys a value proposition.”  So true.

On Tuesday morning I hosted a customer panel to bring the voice of the customer directly in to our sales leadership conference.  HP is so lucky to have customers that are willing to give up their precious time to join us for an internal conference and share their perspective with our world-wide sales management team.

We’ve got lots of sessions planned over the next couple of very long days. I’ll check in again soon. More to come…

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