Shifting focus overseas, MSP Business Coach and Marketing Professional Stuart Crawford is ready to share CEO leadership, MSP business strategy and the odd marketing tip with leaders of the European Managed IT Services community.

For the past two quarters, Stuart Crawford, Ulistic senior consultant and MSP marketing specialist, is sharing his knowledge of business strategy and how to lead a profitable MSP in the United Kingdom. Crawford, who first worked with 24 of the UK's top IT firms in February, will be repeating the SPC International CEO sessions on May 23, 2012 at the Celtic Manor Resort in Newport, South Wales.

Crawford is part of the SPC International (MSPU) training team that's heading to Wales to work with Ingram Micro and many of the leading IT vendors servicing managed IT Services firms across the United Kingdom and Northern Europe.

During the SPC International CEO sessions, Crawford will share best practices for how to effectively run and manage an IT services firm that is poised for growth. Sessions include:

In less than a month, on Jun. 6, 2012, large enterprises like Google, AT&T and Facebook will launch IPv6. Few people know about this upcoming change in the Internet, and many small- and medium-business owners will need help understanding how this change will affect them and their businesses.

A?press release?issued by the Internet Society announced that Internet service providers, Web companies and home network equipment manufacturers around the world will get together on Jun. 6, 2012, to launch the new IPv6, which will replace the current Internet protocol IPv4.

After Jun. 6,?businesses that?haven't enabled?IPv6 could have a hard time doing business. Internet service providers (ISP) AT&T, Comcast and Time Warner Cable, to name a few, have already signed on to launch IPv6. This bodes well for both?their?residential and business users. Small-business owners who use AT&T, for example, will have no problem doing business?online?with other IPv6 enabled businesses. And customers who subscribe to Time Warner Cable will have no trouble interacting with IPv6 enabled websites.

Do you have a passion for IT?

Back in November 2008, I lost my passion for technology.  The perfect storm of why I hated technology had been brewing for quite some time.  We were hiring the best of the worst simply because available great talent didn't exist, client frustrations were increasing and my love for what I did simply disappeared.

Luckily for me, around May 2010, my passion for IT returned and Ulistic started to focus on helping IT consulting firms, VARs and resellers with marketing support. Today, we also provide coaching and mentoring for IT firms.

Why is this important?  I got to talking to a client the other day about the lack of performance of sales teams.  After a lengthy discussion on what makes a great sales professional, we determined that it started with passion.  I love the story he told me. I'll do my best to summarize it.

With a burning passion to serve the Managed IT Services community across Canada, MSP Coaching firm Ulistic to host full MSP training workshop in Toronto, Ontario, Canada.

St. Catharines, ON - May 9, 2012- "Working on your business" is perhaps the most overused term in business today.  Many managed IT services organizations understand the importance of taking time out of the office to work toward creating a successful enterprise.

Stuart Crawford invites the managed IT services community to participate in the first Ulistic MSP workshop in Toronto, Ontario, Canada on June 14, 2012.  This full-day workshop will focus on creating a formula for success in today's highly competitive MSP marketplace.

The workshop, which is limited to 15 companies, will combine the best of instruction from MSP coach Stuart Crawford with peer interaction.

"I have learned many things in my career as an IT professional working with some of the sharpest minds in the Calgary IT community, on the international stage with MSP University and from my peers as part of the Heartland Technology Group's (HTG) peer group program," said Crawford.  "Now it is my time to share with the community best practices, personal experiences, what I've learned over the years and all that I continue to learn as an IT professional and coach."

Here are the best leadership principles ever!  I learned these when I was a young Master Corporal in the Canadian Armed Forces.  Forget them for a while, but really need to start living these once again.

1. Achieve professional competence.
2. Appreciate your own strengths and limitations and pursue self-improvement.
3. Seek and accept responsibility
4. Lead by example.
5. Make sure that your followers know your meaning and intent, then lead them to the accomplishment of the mission.
6. Know your soldiers and promote their welfare.
7. Develop the leadership potential of your followers.
8. Make sound and timely decisions.
9. Train your soldiers as a team and employ them up to their capabilities.
10. Keep your followers informed of the mission, the changing situation and the overall picture.

It would be awesome if these principles of leadership were also part of the civilian world.  Well, Ulistic will incorporate these principles in our MSP Business Coaching business.

Teaching the best managed services providers and IT support organizations around the world the best way to build a successful business is a passion for the entire team at Ulistic. Ulistic business development coach and consultant Stuart Crawford will be at it once again in Newark, NJ.

When it comes to following your dream and your passion, Ulistic MSP coach Stuart Crawford sets a perfect example. As a young boy, Crawford possessed a passion for service and technology. Now he gets to combine those passions at the upcoming MSP University Boot Camp in Newark, NJ on May 3 and 4.

Each month, hundreds of managed technology professionals come together at various locations across the United States and globally via the Internet to attend MSPU's boot camps. MSP University - and now SPC International - continues to play a leading role in educating the global IT service provider community , ensuring that small, medium and large businesses get the best service from well-trained, informed IT professionals.

Seemless interaction is one of the keys to success for IT firms in today's competitive landscape.  When all things are equal business with do business with those they know, like and trust.  What is your MSP doing to make this happen?

Clients must have a way to open support tickets from our website into our Autotask.  This was the challenge presented to Ulistic recently when rolling out a new MSP website for a San Diego-based IT consulting firm.

For the past several years, our MSP client has been leveraging the powers of the Autotask PSA to manage its client's support needs in addition to running an effective IT consulting business.  Autotask provides the foundation for the company to move up the chain of know, like and trust.

However, opening up support tickets without having to involve an already overworked receptionist and dispatcher stymied this client.  Ulistic understood the pressure placed on workers in the office when the phones would start to ring. Having a pressure release valve in the form of  a resource right there on the company's website presented a great alternative for clients.

Are you up on PIPA and what your IT firm needs to know to help business in Alberta?

Alberta's Personal Information Protection Act (PIPA) of 2009 is nothing like the Protect IP Act (PIPA) that folks in the United States railed against in January 2012. Some may recall that Wikipedia, along with several other websites, "went black" on Jan.18, 2012, to express its disapproval of not only PIPA but also its companion the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA).

Alberta's version of PIPA is all about making businesses more open with consumers regarding the consumers' personal information. This new act "makes a number of amendments designed to foster openness and accountability in private-sector organizations with respect to the use of service providers outside Canada," according to an information sheet that can you can find here.

When you think about Alberta's PIPA, think about Google's privacy policy in which the company tells you that it shares user information with various and sundry third-parties for the purpose of processing information, etc. Well, in Alberta, if a business shares information with vendors or advertisers or outsourced data processors or whatever, the business' leaders must make sure that the consumers know how the business will use their personal information.

Over the past few months many of Ulistic's clients have been focused on running events geared toward attracting new prospects and opportunities.  Event marketing is killer when it comes to filling your pipeline, and it is one of the key focus areas of the Ulistic marketing strategy, a strategy designed to attract new business, reconnect you with existing clients and position your IT service firm as the leader in your community.

Why do I enjoy event marketing so much?  It is an immediate connection with people.  After all, people buy from people.  Business is about relationships; it is about connecting, and when you have done this, then it's about the service you offer.

Event marketing can be your magic bullet to success but only if it is done correctly.  Here is a short list of things I picked up working with my clients over the past few months:

• Design your event(s) around a theme.

Keeping customer information secure has always been a necessity. Not long ago, customer information got locked away in a file cabinet somewhere to which only a select few had a key. Perhaps that still happens, but those paper files are also backed up by an electronic copy saved on a server somewhere. In today's world, there are some companies that do most if not all of their business transactions online, accepting credit cards where, once upon a time, they might have accepted cash. Managed service providers (MSP) are no exception.

No matter how wonderful an MSP's team is at providing disaster recovery, secure backup or anything else for its clients, if the company isn't Payment Card Industry (PCI) compliant, business could come to a screeching halt. And if the company remained non-compliant long enough, it could go out of business altogether.

Paying with a credit card is convenient and shopping online, whether for a product or a service, saves time. People like doing it, and some prospects might even refuse to do business with a company that couldn't accept credit card payments. So, it's essential for MSPs that want to retain current customers and attract new ones to be PCI compliant.