Starting a business is not an easy road to take as you are faced with different challenges, including but not limited to reputation, network, funding, and much more. Starting a global business as a woman thirty years ago was met with once in a lifetime opportunity and a few bumps in the road.
For Denise Sangster, President and CEO of Global Touch, Inc., she thrived in her global journey in spite of two initial challenges: the lack of a broad or global reputation beyond the database world and being an American female working globally, both of which she turned into assets.
For over 30 years, Denise has been a frequent speaker at IT companies, partners, and Wall Street events worldwide. She has advised the world’s most innovative technology companies. She helped and inspired them to build cutting-edge disruption through next-generation partner ecosystems that generate predictable and sustainable revenue, growth, and profitability aligned with required customer business outcomes.
Along the way, Denise developed a global expertise for ‘unleashing’ the power of partners and their ecosystems. She also created triangular success for her clients by transforming their competitive advantage through 360° of alignment and disruptive innovation between IT companies, partners, and customers.
Providing Competitive Advantage to Clients & Innovative Outcomes
Denise believes most technology companies continue to utilize methods, investments, and subsidies that were first created more than 15 years ago, often resulting in their (selling, consulting, and services) partners suffering from profit underperformance, translating into an IT company’s underperformance of their growth and revenue potential. She is a strong proponent of a fresh approach based on data and metrics, as well as other tools to help shorten and maximize sales cycles and the continuous customer lifecycle.
Balancing Current Performance with Need to Transform
All of the work Global Touch does for its clients is about balancing current performance with the need to transform to be ready for future opportunities and threats. This means the company is looking at the best ways to bring products to market, which includes leveraging emerging routes to market (i.e., marketplaces, managed services, etc.) and embracing traditional (distribution, resale, etc.) and atypical routes (i.e., OEM, white labeling, etc.).
Evaluating Impactful Opportunities to Create Unique Value
Global Touch is always evaluating impactful opportunities to generate unique value for its clients, partnerships, and mutual customers. It continually asks itself how it can “up” its services and make its partners even more successful. It is working on a few ideas that should be ready in the second half of 2022, but it can’t talk about them until then.
Sharing Wisdom for Tomorrow’s Leaders
Denise is a big believer that we need to help those who will follow as next generation leaders. She offers six recommendations for those who will stand on our shoulders.
- Always be exceptionally well prepared for every meeting and discussion, and dazzle peers, superiors, and clients with strategic thinking and readiness for anything that will move the company or client forward.
- Make a memorable first impression! You must be prepared with the correct business knowledge, social manners, and appropriate etiquette, plus realize the value of a solid handshake or cultural greeting for both women and men.
- Treat customers as customers for life, and devise ways to interact with them, even when they don’t have the budget to make short-term purchases.
- Women leaders of tomorrow must upgrade their self-talk, turn off their inner critic, and, instead, turn on their inner coach.
- Celebrate small daily successes with your team.
- Nurture your network around the world.
Denise considers herself lucky that many in her worldwide network have turned into personal friendships and has enjoyed watching their children grow up, seeing many join the IT industry.
