Thrive 2026 Advisor Growth Plays: How to Win New Business and Deliver More Value After the Sale

TL;DR:

If your growth plan depends on sharper prospecting, stronger customer conversations, and more differentiated offers, Thrive 2026’s advisor-focused breakouts are built for you. In a market where AI is reshaping what customers buy—and how they buy—these sessions will help you sell bigger, move faster, and deliver value well beyond the initial close. Register for Thrive 2026 today.

5 advisor growth sessions to prospect smarter, sell bigger, and expand value after the sale

The market isn’t short on solutions. What’s scarcer and more valuable is a repeatable motion that turns conversations into closed-won deals, and wins into expansion.

That’s what this advisor growth breakout lineup at AppDirect’s Thrive 2026 is about. In this article, we break down the five sessions designed to help you unlock growth for your advisory business, and the three practical plays that matter right now:

• Lead with value, not products: Use AI and cloud conversations to open bigger, stickier deals

• Strengthen your sales motion: Modernize discovery, positioning, and cross-sell with real tactics

• Expand into new revenue categories: Energy, business continuity, and healthcare modernization plays you can take to market

About AppDirect Thrive

Thrive is AppDirect’s premier annual event for organizations that buy and sell technology, taking place September 29 to October 1, in Los Angeles. Roughly 1,200 leaders shaping the future of B2B commerce will gather for three days of insight, conversation, and connection.

Breakout sessions will run on October 1.

Explore all the the Thrive 2026 sessions

Register today

Advisor strategies you can run this quarter, not someday

These sessions aren’t built for theory. They’re built for execution: clearer entry points, stronger discovery, and more confident positioning that helps you win now—and expand value after the sale.

1. Lead with AI solutions for bigger cloud deals

Most advisors already know AI belongs in the cloud conversation. The difference is whether you’re treating it as an add-on, or using it as the reason the customer leans in.

In this presentation and demo, you’ll dig into where AI fits across Microsoft, Google, and AWS, and how to spot the moments where AI becomes the cleanest path to a larger, stickier cloud deal. It’s less about tools and more about how you frame the opportunity so the deal actually moves.

What you can expect: Strategies to navigate the hyperscaler AI landscape, match the right solution to the right customer, and use AI as a lever for core cloud revenue.

Why this matters now: AI is reshaping buyer expectations inside cloud renewals and expansions. If you want to avoid commodity cloud cycles, you need a clearer why-now narrative that connects AI to outcomes, not features. For supporting context on prioritizing near-term value, see Fast-tracking AI value: Strategies for immediate impact.

2. Selling strategies in the AI era

AI isn’t only changing what customers buy. It’s changing what customers expect from the person selling it.

This panel and demo are designed to make that shift practical. You’ll hear how high-performing advisors are reworking their discovery questions, account reviews, and customer conversations to surface cross-sell opportunities and win higher-margin deals—then see how AI-enabled selling guidance and tools can support that motion in real time.

What you can expect: Practical strategies from channel leaders for driving new sales, plus a look at AI-enabled selling guidance and tools designed to help you identify opportunities and modernize discovery.

Why this matters now: Customers have more information than ever, which means your edge is interpretation and relevance. Teams that modernize discovery, positioning, and cross-sell will outperform teams that keep running the same script.

For customer conversation prompts that help you lead with risk and trust, read Get comfortable talking security with your customers. For a preview of advisor tooling themes, see All the new advisor tools we showcased at Channel Partners 2026.

3. The easiest sale you’re not making: Energy

Energy is a category that can feel secondary, until you realize it checks three boxes most growth leaders care about: it’s timely, it’s tangible, and it can move fast. Advisors who can run the energy conversation confidently have a clean path to recurring revenue.

In this session featuring an energy broker panel and demos, you’ll hear what’s working from advisors who are already winning in the category and the tools that support the motion. You’ll learn how to capitalize on the AI-driven energy boom with a solution that can be closed in a single call—making it one of the easiest and most lucrative additions to your portfolio.

What you can expect: A practical, repeatable approach to turning the AI-driven energy surge into a recurring revenue stream for your business.

Why this matters now: Customers don’t need convincing that energy matters—they feel it monthly. What they do need is a clear path from curiosity to action. For a simple pre-read on how the motion works, see Take the guesswork out of selling energy: A clear path to recurring revenue for technology advisors. For a deeper dive, see How to easily win lucrative energy deals: A guide for advisors.

4. How advisors can win business continuity conversations with 5G SuperBroadband

Business continuity is a high-value conversation, and SuperBroadband gives advisors a powerful way to win it. Beyond connectivity, SuperBroadband is a managed service designed to keep critical operations running through continuous monitoring, automatic failover, fast recovery, and ongoing support.

In this demo and guided discussion, sponsored by T-Mobile 5G, you’ll learn how partners can spot the right opportunities, qualify customers quickly, and position SuperBroadband confidently against less complete solutions.

What you can expect: The discovery questions, differentiators, and expert support you need to start winning more business continuity deals immediately.

Why this matters now: Business continuity has moved from a niche IT topic to a mainstream operational priority—especially as more work, customer interactions, and critical systems depend on always-on connectivity. Advisors who can qualify continuity needs quickly and clearly differentiate a managed, monitored service from basic connectivity are positioned to win higher-trust conversations and more durable, service-led relationships.

5. Transforming healthcare operations with secure, cloud-ready communications

Enterprise infrastructure modernization can show up as a string of separate projects—network upgrades, phone line replacements, and document compliance—when it’s more effective to treat it as one coordinated strategy. This panel is designed to unify those threads, bridging copper/POTS replacement priorities with secure cloud migration and AI-powered healthcare workflow optimization.

What you can expect: A practical way to audit existing customer accounts for legacy vulnerabilities—such as aging copper lines or outdated fax workflows—and move those clients toward modern, compliant, cloud-ready infrastructure.

Why this matters now: Modernization is accelerating across enterprise environments, and healthcare organizations face especially high stakes around reliability and compliance. Advisors who can connect these needs into a single, clear modernization path are better positioned to create larger opportunities and deliver value well beyond the initial transaction.

A sharper growth motion, end to end

If growth has felt like a grab bag of tactics, these sessions map to something more cohesive: better entry points, better conversations, and better paths to expansion.

• Lead with AI to open larger cloud opportunities

• Modernize how you qualify, position, and cross-sell

• Add new revenue categories that match what buyers care about right now: cost, continuity, compliance, and modernization

Save your spot for Thrive 2026

Ready to build your Thrive agenda? Register today.

More articles in this series

Thrive 2026 AI Playbook: Build Confidence With AI—From Basics to Hands-on Workshops

Thrive 2026 Lifecycle Roadmap: Expand Customer Value Through One Platform

Coming soon: Thrive 2026 Ecosystem Blueprint: How to Scale Growth Through Marketplaces and Ecosystems that Matter