By: Jim Roddy, President & CEO at the RSPA
Do you remember those “choose your own adventure books” that were published when some of us were kids – and back when books were actually printed on paper? Based on what you read, you decided which path was best to pursue.
That’s what we’re going to do today because it follows the popular workshop format of Inspire 2026, the RSPA’s annual leadership conference, held Feb. 1-4 at the Royal Sonesta Kauai Resort in Lihue, Hawaii.
Instead of long lectures featuring pre-planned directives, Inspire fuses together the wisdom of retail IT channel expert speakers with small-group workshop discussions and group-sharing exercises to generate golden nuggets of wisdom VAR and ISV leaders can consider.
The retail IT channel isn’t a one-size-fits-all industry, so nobody else has the answer to your challenges. It’s up to you to determine which direction to take – with assistance from the RSPA community to guide you.
I’m going to share with you here in rapid-fire format some of the top quotes, insights, ideas, tactics, and strategies I captured during Inspire 2026 which attracted a record 310 registrants. My focus will be heavily weighted towards AI insights because that’s the current biggest mystery in our channel.
When we’re done, you can then determine which items you and your team will take action on.
The AI Advantage: AI Tools & Tactics High-Performing VARs & ISVs Are Utilizing Today
The AI workshop held Tuesday morning was perhaps the most talked about session of the conference.
Led by four AI experts/inventors – RSPA members Dennis Wilson of DBC Technologies, Aidan Chau of Maple, Jerry Abiog of Standard Insights, and Ashley Cline of Daitrix/Pomeroy – AI Day provided retail IT VARs and ISVs with relevant, practical applications for artificial intelligence.
Attendees shared first at their tables and then during an open microphone session AI use cases currently benefiting their organizations. Those that caught my attention ranged from basic applications to more complex:
- Generate initial email drafts which a human then polishes
- Software programming assistance
- Create an AI persona and ask it for marketing advice
- Presentation creation including faster image creation
- Create manuals for employees and customers to reference
- Language translation tied in with video production for product tutorials
- Guiding a marketing brand refresh; train the LLM to provide consistent tone across communication
- Provide first-level support for inbound calls
- Using a chatbot, provide internal support for SOPs (standard operating procedures) for different departments
- Enhancing employee onboarding; use AI for knowledge gathering, then train the new employee on topics such as pricing, integrations, and internal policies
- Map out routes for door-to-door sales, looking for similar retailers who could use the VAR’s services. Because this list is based on publicly-available data, initial results can be inconsistent; several merchants listed may no longer be in business. The key is to ask another AI agent to review the initial output to spot hallucinations and refine the list to make it more accurate.
- Ask an AI agent to help you create prompts to use in your creativity programs; their guidance will generate more accurate results
- Analyze the online profiles of target prospects and tailor your message to that specific person
- Ask the AI agent to challenge you as a thought partner
- “When I have a task where someone knows both the why and where we want to go but they don’t know the how, AI can fill in those blanks. It gets them started, answers questions in the middle, and validates at the end the work output was appropriate.”
- Sales meeting rehearsal with the persona of the type of person you’re going to pitch
- Wearable AI to help generate notes after every conversation. “I have a pretty good elephant brain but not that good,” one VAR said.
- Create a software application utilizing just 20 hours of labor across three weeks and sell it to merchants vs. similar past projects that took months
- A solution related to chargebacks: VAR used ChatGPT to create a knowledge base, then combined several tools to create a mini platform to help his merchants defend chargebacks. That tool generates a thorough response to the chargeback because it knows the card brand rules. The response includes an analysis of the situation and offers suggestions for how the response can be improved. The VAR said this solution has helped them successfully defend 21 of 25 chargebacks while also saving significant time.
Before I share additional insightful quotes and concepts captured during AI Day, I have two important caveats to share. First, I can’t communicate the full context of the nearly three-hour dialogue. Proper AI application by VARs and ISVs involves many nuances that necessitate an in-depth discussion among stakeholders which is what occurred in spades during this Inspire session.
Second, this session showed there’s some serious AI brainpower inside the RSPA community. When planning this session, our team was unsure to what degree attendees had implemented AI. The list I shared above shows the advanced degree to which your VAR and ISV colleagues are applying AI.
We didn’t need to step outside the RSPA community to recruit AI experts to speak at Inspire; they’re already part of our membership, and they’re eager to work with fellow solution providers less familiar with AI.
I’ll offer attribution to these insights where I can; several of them were generated through open-microphone dialogue among the audience and the AI experts/inventors on stage:
- “Today is actually about leadership decisions. AI is not a technology shift. It’s a decision-making shift. Every tech wave punishes one thing: delay. AI is not waiting for you. It is silently enabling your competitors.” Wilson
- “Where in your business are your employees silently frustrated? Where is there customer friction? Where is there technological friction – where do you have a process that is semi-manual? Today with AI, a simple software project can cost 80-90% less than before. It’s worth relooking at those friction points.” Wilson
- “Don’t worry only about the big 800-number POS guys. We also need to worry about the new companies with just 1-2 employees that embrace AI and can generate the same sales volume as a team of 6-8.” Wilson
- “If you’re a small company, I would put your money into an AI SDR (Sales Development Rep) and sales agents. AI SDR agents engage, qualify, and book meetings with minimal manual effort.” Cline
The AI experts echoed the theme of the practical workshop with a slide titled “What AI is GREAT for”:
- Forecasting the future based on historical data and leading indicators
- Optimizing operations
- Eliminating or reducing non-value-added, time-consuming repetitive work
- Writing and rewriting content better and faster
- Summarizing long emails, contracts, and call notes
- Creating first drafts of proposals and outreach
- Turning messy notes, emails, Word documents, and PDFs into structured output
- Creating report summaries
Cline then shared a slide that listed high-value VAR examples where agentic AI can be applied:
- Turn call notes into follow-ups plus CRM updates
- Summarize support threads and draft a resolution email
- Generate weekly account summaries and action plans
- Create documentation from repeated fixes and FAQs
- The first step for applying AI in sales is creating a prospect list for lead gen. If you already have leads, use AI to “enrich the leads” by learning more about each lead before your first outreach.
- One attendee spoke for many in the audience when he expressed skepticism about the success of outbound agent calls for lead generation. Among the insights shared from the stage were to use the agent for the second call after a personal connection has been made, or for initial outreaches send a targeted text message that asks the recipient to reply “1” if interested or “2” if not interested.
- The panel shared their experience-based best practices for marketing an AI tool your company has created. Turn it into a video demo, then post it on YouTube. Put it into the App Store for individual users to help get the word out, “but the real money is licensing.”
Chau detailed how he is applying voice AI in the retail IT channel’s key verticals:
- Retail: Customer service (store hours and locations, product availability, order status updates, return policies), in-store assistance (kiosk product lookup, price checks, navigate to items, loyalty lookups), and phone orders (catalog browsing, order placement, payment processing, delivery scheduling)
- Restaurants: Phone ordering (menu questions, custom modifications, upselling suggestions, payment over phone), drive-thru (faster order taking, consistent accuracy, multi-language, staff redirection), reservations (book tables 24/7, party size handling, special requests, confirmations and reminders)
- Grocery: Deli and bakery (phone orders, custom cakes, party trays, pickup scheduling), pharmacy (refill requests, status checks, transfer prescriptions, hours and availability), general inquiries (store navigation, weekly specials, curbside pickup, delivery options)
- “Predictive analytics is essentially watching game film of your customers and making predictions for them. Your clients already have the oil in their data. They just need help extracting it and bringing it to the surface.” Abiog
- “Imagine if you told a merchant in the 1990s you can’t help them with the internet. That’s what AI is now. Don’t tell clients you’re not able to work with AI because it’s not in your comfort zone. Ask yourself if you’re willing to do something different to beat the 800-number guys.” Abiog
At the conclusion of the session, workshop moderator and RSPA VP of Education and Events Kathy Meader announced the launch of the RSPA AI Resource Hub. The Resource Hub was developed through a collaboration of nearly 40 RSPA members, including the Inspire AI Day presenters.
The RSPA AI Resource Hub is designed to help retail IT VARs and ISVs navigate the rapidly evolving world of artificial intelligence. The Resource Hub consists of five detailed web pages that will be updated regularly by RSPA community contributors.
Stand Out or Blend In? A VAR & ISV Differentiation Workshop
Top Retail Expert and RSPA Board Advisor Carl Boutet led a Day 3 workshop that challenged attendees to take concerted action to remain relevant.
“You can be making the best investments in AI and leadership,” Boutet said at the leadership conference that focused on AI, “but if you’re irrelevant it doesn’t mean anything.”
The workshop generated several ideas to help VARs and ISVs stay ahead of the curve and stand out:
- Slice and dice your offering to give merchants more of a choice
- Sell the same products but offer them on different payment platforms
- The value of the solution you’re offering has to be comprehended first before price becomes a consideration
- “Price doesn’t matter if you’re solving their problem”
- Vendors who build a network of trusted advisors build the best value and network
- Find customers who value trusted advisors
- Milestone recognition for your highest-value, longest-standing clients
- Surprising customers is the best way to delight them; but you need to know your customer to know what will surprise them
- Salespeople should have a playbook of typical customer problems and the solutions you offer to help
- Promote your customers on Facebook. Tell them and show them “if you’re winning, we’re winning.” Doing this also shows you’re proud of your customers.
- Have a low, entry-level price so you can get a seat at the table with the prospect at the beginning of their purchasing process. That gives you the opportunity to communicate your value to them.
- “It’s not all about lowest price; it’s about what you get for the price you’re offering.”
- Think about the different layers of who is consuming your technology – the merchant owner, the associate, and the customer – and make sure they are being served.
- The line between the VAR and ISV and where they provide value is constantly changing. Communication between them is vital.
- Ensure you are showing in a tangible way how you are providing value; don’t just tell the merchant.
- Stay away from gimmicks. Focus on listening to the customer.
- “This all starts with knowing your customer, having personal interactions with them to ensure you are providing precisely what they need.”
A helpful framework Boutet provided to guide the discussion was the Retail Relevance Index, based on Barbara Kahn’s Retailing Success Matrix.
“We do not live in a static world,” Boutet said. “Relevance needs to be achieved and then retained. We have to keep pushing and pushing to stay relevant. And the speed of the pushing we need to do is only increasing.”
Differentiate or Disappear: How StoryBrand Helps VARs & ISVs Stand Out in a Crowded Market
Tom Bronson of Mastery Partners followed Boutet with a workshop to help solution providers communicate their value proposition.
My top takeaway, tied in with the AI discussion, that everything our businesses do must be closely aligned with the needs of our clients: “You must understand your customer and what they want,” Bronson said. “What is their ultimate goal? What’s in it for them? Keep customers’ interests by talking about them, their goals, and their problems.”
Purchase your copy of Don Miller’s Building a StoryBrand 2.0 here. The original has been listed on Roddy’s Recommended Reading for a few years now.
Channel Leadership Unscripted: Stories, Struggles, and Successes
Because I moderated the “Channel Leadership Unscripted” workshop that kicked off Inspire, I couldn’t capture detailed insights from the discussion. I can share that the leadership challenges that attendees were most eager to discuss were delegation, people development, time management, and change management.
Responding to attendee questions and offering the guidance from the stage were company presidents Dan Brattland of CoCard, Ryan Girvin of BlueStar, and Steve Martorelli of Turnkey Processing. Their answers during the rapid-fire Q&A were less opinion-based and more rooted in principles and experience – the way leadership best practices should be shared!
Which of these 8 zillion insights will you look into? Which are the most relevant to your retail IT channel business? Which will help you lead your organization most effectively?
I recommend you choose three to five to start with. That’s a digestible amount, and progress in those areas will have a noticeable impact.
The only wrong choice is to do nothing and become a less relevant business.
News & Notes from Inspire 2026
- This was one of the most productive and insightful conferences I’ve attended in my 27-year channel career. The willingness of attendees to openly share ideas and best practices was at a level never seen before by myself and many fellow Inspire attendees. The RSPA community certainly is a mesh network of independent entrepreneurs eager to help each other.
- As mentioned earlier, this year’s event set an all-time Inspire record with 310 registrants, shattering the prior record of 240 set in 2024. Attendees this year represented 120+ unique companies, well over 100 VAR representatives, and nearly 60 software provider executives and future leaders.
- Led by chief volunteer fundraiser Christine Leduc, attendees raised an Inspire-record $14,870, for the RSPA Scholarship Program, besting last year’s then-record $12,410.
- All conference attendees received a complimentary copy of the book The Generosity Habit by Matthew Kelly, thanks to a donation by former RSPA Board Chair Bob Bauer of VAR BMC. I read the book prior to Inspire – thanks to Bob’s generosity and recommendation – and really liked the theme of donating not just your money but your special talents and time to help others.
- Speaking of generosity and RSPA scholarships, an expansion of the Stanley and Shirley Hayman Founder’s Scholarship was announced at Inspire. Now through June 1, the Hayman Family Partnership will match donations to the Founder’s Scholarship up to $10,000. If a total of $20,000 is raised – $10,000 in community donations and $10,000 from the Hayman family – the scholarship will be expanded from a $3,500 annual award to a $4,500. Read more in this RSPA press release.
- Inspire 2027 will be held Jan. 24-27 at the Royal Sonesta in San Juan, Puerto Rico.
