Fletcher, who heads up her own sports agency business, MWF Enterprises, LLC, delivered the keynote address Wednesday at CompTIA’s Annual Member Meeting in Chicago.
Fletcher shared a series of anecdotes and stories from her career, from how she got her start in sports to how she’s built a successful business in a male-dominated industry. Many of the lessons she’s learned in the arena of professional sports are applicable to the IT industry.
“Both businesses are highly competitive,” she noted. “We have to over deliver consistently to the people we work with.”
Both professions are also challenged with finding new business, maintaining current clients and growing the business. Fletcher offered the following advice and observations:
- Be prepared for the opportunities that come your way. It’s one of the most fundamental pieces of finding new business.
- Ask the right questions of your customers and clients and listen to their answers in an authentic and real way.
- Demonstrate to your customers how much you want their business.
- Be reliable and consistent.
- Demonstrate that you can grow with them.
- Build relationships and demonstrate how you can add value.
- Capitalize on the things you do have rather than focusing on the things you don’t have.
- Anchor your business with each customer in a relational way, not a transactional way.
- Have the guts to ask clients tough questions. Make them feel safe so they can provide honest feedback.
- Understand your customer’s business so you can anticipate their needs.
Before Fletcher spoke, CompTIA President and CEO Todd Thibodeaux shared a preview of some of the new initiatives coming from the association in 2013. Several of those initiatives center on making CompTIA’s programs more accessible.
“Our benefits are PC-centric,” Thibodeaux said. “We want to make all of our training and certification products more accessible – anytime, anywhere and on any device.”
On the certification front, two new credentials are due to be introduced later this year: CompTIA Cloud+ and CompTIA Mobility+. “These are probably the two areas that people have asked us about the most,” Thibodeaux said.
Other new initiatives include the development of an IT “boot camp” series, which will provide training on technology topics in a way that a non-technical person can understand; and new e-learning courses for IT solution providers and other technology companies. The first of these courses – on cloud computing, mobile technology and IT security – will be launched on April 1
Students and staff members from the Chicago Tech Academy were recognized during Wednesday’s AMM lunch. The school, which opened in 2009 and will graduate its first class this spring, is “creating tomorrow’s IT industry leaders,” said Charles Eaton, director of the Creating IT Futures Foundation,
Eaton also told the audience that the foundation intends to develop additional programs aimed at the high school age group. “We want to tackle this issue of filling the talent gap by going to these young people.”
Outgoing members of the CompTIA Board of Directors were also recognized at the lunch. They are Linda Lynch, KI Technology Group; Mike Parrottino, Hewlett-Packard; Fernando Quintero, McAfee; Nancy Hedrick, CSI Technology Outfitters; Chuck Lennon, TeamLogic IT; and board chairman Bob Godgart, ChannelEyes.
