My Guest Post From The Rainmakers Jigsaw Conference

Last Monday through Wednesday, I attended the Rainmakers Jigsaw Conference in Las Vegas, NV.

This was my 2nd time attending the event.

One of the Jigsaw staff members asked me to write a guest blog which will go out to their 2M plus members so I said yes. Of course I had ulterior motives. If someone reads my post, looks up my profile and decides to use our services, I won’t object.

Below is what I submitted to Data.com:

Hi! I’m Ray Ruecker and I’m the Managing Director for Connect 5000, a boutique C-Level scheduling, training, and assessment firm based in Kansas City. Since 2006, we’ve specialized in connecting executive decision makers to technology and consulting companies with high average sales.

Simply put, we generate introductory sales meetings and connections with key decision-makers that boost sales. I’ve been a Jigsaw user since 2006.

This is my 2nd time attending the Jigsaw 4th Annual Rainmaker Event. I attended last year and had a wonderful time and made several new friends and connections.

On Monday, I flew from Kansas City directly to Las Vegas and arrived at Planet Hollywood. I checked in and got ready for the opening reception.

I walked down with Pamela Larsen, of Certified Languages International, who I met last year. It can be intimidating to walk into a conference or a room by yourself not knowing a single soul. Last year I braved it and one of the first persons I met was Pamela.

It was great re-connecting with fellow Rainmakers from the previous year as well as Salesforce.com staff members like Katie Yeigh, Sameer Kumar, Shannon Duffy, and Kevin Micalizzi.

The reception was laid back and consisted of drinks, appetizers, and dinner. I recognized about 15 attendees who were there from the previous year. I chatted with folks and caught up with them as well as met new people who hadn’t attended the conference before.

The next morning I joined other fellow Rainmakers for breakfast and the first session was a keynote from Andy MacMillan, the SVP of Products, Salesforce Data.com. He spoke about Jigsaw’s past and the future direction as well. Seema Kumar spoke as well on the future of Data.com Connect.

We then separated into breakout sessions and I attended Stan Georgiev’s session who spoke about new approaches to data quality. I had chatted with him briefly the night before at the opening reception.

Finally, I sat in on Stuart Slater’s session titled “Top 10 Tips and Tricks for Using Data.com Connect. He suggested some helpful websites that supplement Data.com and some tools to automate our sales process.

We broke for lunch and I enjoyed a delicious helping of sandwiches, salad, and cookies.

Ray