Podcast appearances and mentions of eric loper

We are joined by Callaway Golf's Senior Director of Golf Ball Research & Development, Eric Loper. We look back on his career but also get into the principles that drive golf ball development and how he is applying them after joining the Callaway team. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

TaylorMade's Director of Golf Ball R&D, Eric Loper, joins the pod to explain the science and technology that goes into creating high performance golf balls and helps you learn how to determine the best golf ball for your game. 

On this week's show, Bob Weeks and producer Adam Scully discuss the latest in the world of golf. We also hear from Eric Loper and Paul Demkowski from Taylormade. Plus, we give away a free round at Muskoka Bay!

On this week’s show, Bob Weeks and producer Adam Scully discuss the latest in the world of golf. We also hear from Eric Loper and Paul Demkowski from Taylormade. Plus, we give away a free round at Muskoka Bay!

I've dubbed this interview and series, Microsoft's Season of Change and Transformation. This is the first interview in a series to help the partner community best engage with the technology giant as it evolves it's partner business to better serve partners and customers. As most of you know, Microsoft announced a major reorganization to it's customer and partner - facing business in early July which included the formation of a "One Commercial Partner" or OCP organization. This included three key elements - "Build With", "Go to Market", and "Sell With"*. *In an earlier episode, Bill Hawkins helped decode the announcements for our listeners in greater detail and you can listen to this Episode 18 as a primer. With Microsoft summer and implementation still underway, I thought it would be good to walk our partners down the hallways of Bellevue and Redmond and "peel back" through interviews with partner leaders on how to best align and engage with Microsoft at this critical season. My guest for this interview episode is Eric Loper. Eric leads a "Build With" organization of partner business development managers focused on growing competencies, capabilities and capacity with Microsoft's top partners in the United States. This is a second or " encore" interview episode with for Eric. If you listened to Episode 2 of the Ultimate Guide to Partnering you will remember Eric as my very first interview guest. At the time Eric and I had a great discussion and he shared with partner listeners the essential elements of partnering, his observations on technology trends and recommendations on how to best engage with the technology giant. You can listen to that episode here. For this interview episode, Eric updates us on how the changes are positively impacting his organization, the renewed excitement and energy around partners, how both partners and partner sellers now need to think and act, and the increased investments in growing the business with and through partners. A full transcript of the interview is below in the show notes. If you have not listened to the podcast, now is your chance by going to iTunes , Google Play, Player FM, other Android podcast players or by going to my website “Ultimate Guide to Partnering“. You can also review this podcast by going to iTunes and searching “Ultimate Guide to Partnering” and clicking on the album art and hitting the ratings tab. This helps others find the podcast. You can also follow and like on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and LinkedIn. Thank you for following and listening. Vince Menzione Transcript of our interview. Eric, welcome back to the podcast. It is so great to have you back for this encore episode and to update our listeners on you and the business. You were my very first interview guest about 25 episodes ago. Boy, have we come a long way since then. At the time, you had a fairly small team, focused strictly on the National Solution Provider Program, and your organization was nested in the US business underneath the S&S&P team. Flash forward six months now, all of that is changed, and I'm super excited to have you here, and hear from you about the changes. The charge in the energy in Bellevue and RedMon right now. So, tell our listeners a little bit about what's happening. Eric Loper:                       Awesome. Well, first of all, thanks for having me. It's always good to have a chance to catch up. By the way, I listened to some of your conversation with Bill Hawkins the other day. I thought that he did a great job. I took away some things from that and excited that you continue to deliver something that's pretty cool for our partner community. Vince Menzione:             Thank you. So tell us, how is the charge in energy in Bellevue right now? Eric Loper:                       I think there's a ton of excitement. We're in a place right now where we are seeing great investment. Some of that is really recognizing the opportunity this year in the US.

I've really enjoyed the experience of setting up and doing a podcast. It has allowed me to develop new skills like learning to build and host a website using WordPress and I've had the opportunity to reconnect with some old friends. This week marks the 10th episode and I appreciate the listeners and followers who supported my concept and passion for disruptive technology and partnering. Technology is advancing so quickly today. Gone are the days of the 3-year product release cycle as technology giants like Microsoft, Amazon, Google release products and services weekly across a myriad of technologies associated with cloud computing, productivity, mobility, artificial intelligence, machine learning, IoT and the like...its all advancing so quickly. As I’ve spoken with technology leaders, former colleagues and industry partners – I’ve learned two critical things about the current state of the “art and science of partnering”. First, technology giants like Microsoft, AWS and Google - despite the size of their organizations struggle to scale their compelling technologies "broadly" to what they hope is a growing set of partners. Secondly, partners that sell, deploy or build upon these technologies feel they need to stay in greater “lock step” and aligned with the technology and the organizations. Existing readiness models - industry newsletters, blog posts, webinars, partner conferences and technology briefings are all still incredibly valuable. What I’ve tried to achieve through this podcast format and interviews is easy access to useful and actionable information – that you can listen to when you want and where you want. It's like walking the hallways of Microsoft and other tech giants - to connect, innovate and align for success – on your terms. I ask questions that don't normally get asked and bring a behind the scenes viewpoint to each episode. I deconstruct strategies through questions. I’m also a connector at heart and have always believed in the business principle of "one plus one equals three or more" – which is something I learned over 20 years ago from Steven Covey's 7 habits of Highly Effective People. This podcast is what I refer to as "Connection at Scale" and in the coming weeks and months I hope to continue to evolve the format to bring a broader range of business leaders to the podcast. I’ve really enjoyed listening again to the previous interviews on how to best engage with various aspects of Microsoft's US Partner business*. Eric Loper was the first interview guest and discussed the National Solution Provider Program - Microsoft's premier and elite program for the top 35 partners in the US. William Lewallen who leads Cloud Solution Providers in the US talked about this rapidly growing program and how partners can ramp up. Stephanie Martin joined recently to outline the Partner Seller Program and how to engage with the Microsoft field. I’ve also been fortunate to be joined by my old team - Tom O'Neil, Bill Hawkins and Mike Batt each shared the incredible opportunities for partners working in Education, Healthcare and Government. Helping partners to grow by learning from other partners success is also a goal, and my first partner guest Tony Safoian tells an incredible story of how he took a small family run IT shop and grew it to a premier partner to Microsoft, Google and Facebook - all while minimizing business and sales conflicts one might expect from competing business practices. I've also stepped outside the traditional partner bounds and featured Microsoft’s Government team - with Jonathan Friebert's call to partners to help shape and drive government policies supporting digital privacy and computer literacy. Key themes from the first interview episodes are: Transformation is happening fast and advanced partners have found new models and are evolving their business models quickly - other partners need to get on board. Partner often struggle and fight the business transformation and moving their ...

I was excited to host this first interview episode today, joined by former colleague Eric Loper, Microsoft's National Solution Provider - NSP Leader. From Venture Investing to Enterprise Sales, Eric is a 16-year industry veteran focused on delivering people centered innovation.  In his time at Microsoft Eric envisioned and built a $39M customer offer engine, consulted senior leadership on competitive strategy and pioneered Microsoft’s managed partner marketing model.  Today Eric leads the National Solution Provider Sales Business at Microsoft focused on driving revenue with the most strategic US partners. Eric shared his perspective on the evolution of the business, how partners have evolved their model and the new business opportunities emerging from the intersection of technologies such as: Big Data, Azure and Artificial Intelligence (AI). Eric speaks to the attributes of some of the best Microsoft partners and how to best engage his organization to drive growth and success engaging with Microsoft. Towards the end of the episode, we dove into Eric's personal and professional journey, his leadership philosophy, role models, core principles and advice he would give to others. Eric's life statement is to : "Focus on living each day intentionally, without fear, with a spirit of power, love and self-control to leave a legacy in the lives of others." A great aspiration! Eric recommended two books on professional development - links are here: -Turn This Ship Around!: A True Story of Turning Followers into Leaders, by L. David Marquet https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00AFPVP0Y/ref=dp-kindle-redirect?_encoding=UTF8&btkr=1 -Living Forward:A Proven Plan to Stop Drifting and Get the Life You Want, by Michael Hyatt  https://www.amazon.com/Living-Forward-Proven-Plan-Drifting-ebook/dp/B012H10GBW/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1489616679&sr=8-1&keywords=living+forward+book If you have not listened to the podcast, now is your chance by going to iTunes , Google Play, Player FM, other Android podcast players or by going to my website “Ultimate Guide to Partnering“. You can also review this podcast by going to iTunes and searching “Ultimate Guide to Partnering” and clicking on the album art and hitting the ratings tab. This helps others find the podcast. You can also follow and like on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and LinkedIn. Thank you for following and listening. Vince Menzione

TaylorMade's Director of Golf Ball R and D, Eric Loper, explains the technology that drives the TP5 and TP5x golf balls and why five layers delivers more distance.