If you've been in business long enough, you've probably had the displeasure of dealing with customers who force you to do all the heavy lifting on a deal, use you as a bargaining chip while negotiating with one of your competitors or simply act unprofessionally when they hit even the slightest snag.

Only about a quarter of solution providers have completed the transition to the managed services model, according to an N-Able by Solarwinds eBook out this week. 

While that number may seem low, Derik Belair, N-Able vice president of marketing and business development, says the transition is a difficult one, and solution providers may be better off, and ultimately more successful if they take the transition one step at a time rather than trying to "eat the elephant as a whole."

The CIOs at the Midsize Enterprise Summit aren't shy about the things they dislike about solution providers.

Their patience for cold calls is nil. They're tired of the same old fast-paced, scripted sales pitch that seems to always be long on catchphrases and weak on knowledge of the customer's actual business. I've heard this again and again here in Dallas.

Some 15 years ago, I was in retail sales. I managed a department in a suburban outpost of a large, national chain.

I was good at it, but I wasn't good at it all the time. When I read an Inc.com blog post by Geoffrey James this morning, I was reminded why. Like many salespeople, I too often overloaded customers with information they neither needed, nor wanted.

Chances are, you've read at least one survey about cloud adoption among small and midsize businesses (SMBs) in your news-perusing life, and therefore you know it's growing (even among the skeptics). No surprise there.