In this episode of The Channel Zone Podcast, Mark Edwards speaks with Nick Hamilton, Founder and Managing Director of Inconnection, one of the IT channel’s best-known events agencies.

Nick shares his journey from PGA golf professional to building an events business trusted by many of the biggest names in the technology channel. The conversation explores how events have evolved from simple hospitality or “tick-box” marketing activities into carefully designed commercial experiences focused on purpose, outcome, relationships and ROI.

Nick explains why the best events are not necessarily the biggest, why personalised invitations beat generic email campaigns, and why the first five minutes of an event can make or break the delegate experience. He also discusses the rise of more intimate, high-impact events, the importance of pre- and post-event engagement, the story behind Inconnection’s MemMail service, and how sustainability is becoming a practical expectation rather than a vague promise.

The episode also includes memorable stories from Nick’s career, including the evolution of the London Comedy Lunch, creative experiences at Abbey Road, and a brilliant tale involving a deliberately terrible coach used to surprise a high-performing global sales team.

A great listen for anyone in the IT channel, partner marketing, vendor sales, events, or anyone looking to understand how memorable business experiences are really created.

In this episode of The Channel Zone Podcast, Mark Edwards is joined by Jonathan Keighley, Chief Revenue Officer at SaleCycle, for a sharp and honest conversation about what really changes when you move from senior sales leadership into the CRO role.

Jonny explains why the CRO job is far bigger than just carrying a sales number. He talks about shifting from pipeline obsession to revenue obsession, why onboarding, billing, retention, and customer success now matter just as much as closing deals, and how a true revenue leader has to think across the whole engine — from marketing and partnerships to customer experience and long-term growth.

The conversation also explores the modern sales toolkit: CRM, LinkedIn Navigator, sequencing tools, AI, meeting intelligence, and the danger of drowning in data while losing the human skills that actually drive trust. Jonny makes the case that curiosity remains one of the most valuable traits in sales, and that in a post-2020 world, face-to-face customer contact still creates the kind of connection virtual meetings often miss.

If you care about modern selling, revenue leadership, sales technology, hiring great salespeople, or building stronger customer relationships, this episode is packed with practical insight.

In this episode of the Channel Zone Podcast, Mark Edwards speaks with Tess Garner, Senior Director of Global Channel and Alliances Marketing at Tenable, about how cybersecurity marketing, partner engagement, and demand generation have fundamentally changed in the post-COVID world.

Tess shares how Tenable, as an exposure management company, works through a global partner ecosystem of alliances, distributors, MSPs, and resellers, and explains why partner marketing is ultimately about winning hearts and minds. For her, successful channel marketing is not just about content and campaigns, but about human connection, memorable experiences, and helping partners feel engaged, enabled, and excited to work with your brand.

A major thread in the conversation is Tess’s doctoral research into how B2B cybersecurity demand generation has evolved since COVID. She argues that the traditional linear funnel no longer reflects how buyers actually behave. Instead, today’s buying journey is more complex, more self-directed, and increasingly influenced by peer networks, invisible social communities, AI-driven research, and partner ecosystems. Buyers now expect faster access to information, more personalization, and far less friction.

Mark and Tess also explore the shift from long-form gated content toward shorter, more human-centric formats, particularly on LinkedIn. Tess makes a compelling case that professional audiences still want credible business content, but they increasingly prefer it in more engaging, visual, and bite-sized formats. The discussion also challenges the continued overuse of dense PowerPoint decks, contrasting them with more direct, interactive, and memorable communication styles.

Alongside her corporate role and academic work, Tess also talks about writing her children’s book Charlie and Oggy, inspired by the simple but powerful idea of doing one thing at a time. It adds a personal dimension to the episode and reinforces one of the central themes of the conversation: in both work and life, clarity and focus matter more than ever.

The episode closes with a look at Tenable’s playful and highly successful jumper campaign, which used user-generated content to create joy, strengthen brand awareness, and show the human side of a cybersecurity company. It is a fitting example of the broader message running through the whole conversation: in a noisy world, the brands that connect emotionally, communicate simply, and create memorable moments are the ones that stand out.