Customer centricity is the key to partner programs, incentives, benefits, and a lot resources!
Daphne van Vliet
Critical Thinker & Challenger of Culture in Tech #Diversityofthought #Human2Human ???
What a month! ?? After preparing to get partners informed for six months, we have an amazing achievement with our partners to be within the top five list countries worldwide with the most qualified solutions partners! We can be super proud of the Microsoft Partner eco-system, by seeing partners studying hard, supporting each other's customer success, and qualifying for the solution designations! ?? ??
We have seen LinkedIn posts of your achievement and are looking forward to seeing more partners attaining the solution partner designations! ???? In this blog I will guide you to the benefits of being a solution partner including free training, incentives, sales plays, marketing resources, and next-level co-selling! If you have decided to attain a solution designation and you are ready to explore new ways of working with Microsoft and earning incentives, this blog is for you!
For the partners who are working towards attaining the Microsoft Cloud Partner Program, take note of the free skilling opportunity at the upcoming FastTrack School in November! Microsoft has various certification tracks, which help excel our customer success with the latest technological developments. At aka.traincertposter you can find a clear overview of your potential training path. At the Training Calendar , Cloud Champion , Microsoft Learn , and the MCPP Fast Tracks (in Dutch) you will find many options to register for training and preparation for the exams in November. Here are some highlighted upcoming training sessions:
The Partner Enablement Guides can bring clarity on the opportunity to upskill and on how to find focus. Start learning (on-demand ) on our partner training resources page for sales and technical partner page with?training, enablement, and building skills.
Customer Centricity, Programs & Partner Incentives??
At Inspire, Microsoft introduced Customer centricity to be the leading way to business. The partner role is key in serving customers with extensive requirements which have proven to meet the solution designations and Specializations. Microsoft invests in its partners with customer centricity close in mind, Solution Designations in place, and with the sales cycle in mind to be the new direction to look for incentives.
On all the different solution areas and sales plays, various incentives are aligning with customer needs, interests, understanding, and intentions.
To make sure that you are not missing out on incentives, check out the monthly session at the Partner Training Calendar!
Focus on solution areas with MCPP and Specializations
Microsoft and our partners share a common goal: to help our customers drive and secure business growth and digital acceleration by bringing the value of our mutual technology. Through the Microsoft partner ecosystem, we are transforming to help partners capitalize on the vast opportunities of cloud solutions and services.?To fully grasp the opportunity, it is important to find clarity and focus to build technical, marketing, and sales enablement while keeping the focus on building your own profitable managed services. The best place to see content about the MCPP (replacing silver and gold) is the?Partner Training Gallery . In case you want to learn more about attaining the solution designations with my perspectives, check my earlier blog ''Evolving the Microsoft Partner Network to the Microsoft Cloud Partner Program! '' including the gracious Internal Use Benefits (200 E5 within MW).
When you have attained the Solution Designation the Specializations are the next level of expertise which can help you to stand out even more towards both customers and Microsoft to be a proven qualified and knowledgeable partner!
Understanding your customer needs and market trends to capture opportunities for cross and upsell
Microsoft invests in research for customer insights to understand the markets and respond with innovation. Learn about these opportunities, for example, the SMB customer insights: cybersecurity blog, the Work Trend Index: Microsoft’s latest research on the ways we work , or SMB customer insights: the value of being an early adopter .
Use metrics in Partner Center to increase adoption and satisfaction , and support your customer's security, licensing, and compliance. The Insights Overview dashboard provides a snapshot view of the Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) such as Customers, Subscriptions, Azure Consumption Revenue , Teams usage report, Office 365 usage dashboard , Dynamics usage dashboard, Enterprise Mobility + Security usage dashboard , Power BI usage dashboard , and product licenses . You can visualize and spot opportunities. If you would like Microsoft to bring you to the next level of insights on propensity, check Project Orland .
Here are my top 5 tips for you to consider when you are learning from the customer insights in Partner Center.
Business hygiene and getting recognition for your work
Doing business with Microsoft requires an understanding of your partnership opportunities in the Partner Center. Partner Center is your start to understand which incentive programs you can enroll in, find, and manage your co-op fund incentives (Empowering Microsoft Partners with 5 tips to get the most out of your co-op funds ), manage your customer health, and build a solid pipeline with potential collaboration with Microsoft on leads and current customer base.
By understanding your customer needs and marketing engagement you can qualify leads. In case you want to connect with the Microsoft account team or technical specialists there are several ways to get connected and collaborate. While this Dutch blog is outdated, it can still be a reference on how to work with Microsoft's ''De Microsoft One Commercial Partner (OCP) organisatie voor Partners ''.
Especially if you are working with Microsoft-managed customers, it is smart to be in touch and sync to collaborate and be mentioned in the account planning. To be able to share referrals you need to have a co-sell-ready solution in Microsoft Appsource . There are also other ways to contact the Microsoft teams, more on that later in the blog. Make sure to set up customer associations on the different Microsoft workloads you are already managing with CPOR or PAL for visibility and incentives. Check my earlier blog on MCCP to learn about resources and context ' Evolving the Microsoft Partner Network to the Microsoft Cloud Partner Program! '.
In case you missed a customer on the insights because you might not be the transactional partner, make sure to invite a customer to establish a reseller relationship with you .
To enable partners to bring their managed services and solutions to the market Microsoft has directed the incentives towards customer exploration to build intent on the value and focus less on the transaction in regards to incentivizing partners. Your managed services can potentially be the leading proposition for Microsoft to go to market with. The more Specializations you have and the visibility of your customer will help you gain access to more incentives. To access these (see also the customer sales plays) Microsoft expects you to be committed to working together by sharing leads or collaborating on technical/marketing. To get started you will have to set up a Partner Business Profile. Set up at least one of your solutions in Appsource and start sharing either partner-led referrals (for visibility only) or referrals with the ask you potentially have, for example, to be considered in the account plan.
Setting up your business profile creates your partner page on Appsource. Check this video for a reference for publishing your offer and managing and sharing opportunities.
MPN Mergers: With the storm of mergers and acquisitions it can help to attain MCCP by merging the various accounts your business has. In Partner Center you will be able to merge accounts. Make sure you look into the roles to give access to your technical, sales, and marketing managers/teams.
Last but not least on business hygiene and security. Make sure your Microsoft business is run secure by setting up Granular Delegated Admin Privileges.
Engage with Microsoft on your customers
There are various ways to connect and collaborate with Microsoft on both a marketing, technical, and sales level. Keep these in mind when you are engaging with customers to help you accelerate on both a technical,
Microsoft FastTrack (Technical)
FastTrack is an amazing program that can help you accelerate your customer's deployments while building your cloud skills and learning from and engaging with Microsoft engineers for?free! There are some requirements. For example, you and/or your customer needs to give the commitment to work on a specified project. A minimum estimate of Azure consumption after one year or a minimum of 500 M365 licenses that need to be deployed. Learn more about the requirements and how you can work with Microsoft engineers on your customer case. Visit the FastTrack pages for?Azure ,?Microsoft 365 ?and?Dynamics 365 ?to learn about eligibility.
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Partner Technical Services (Technical)
For personalized assistance across multiple technical roles, our?Partner Technical Services ?allow you to engage with Microsoft technical consultants offering everything from?presales?deployment?assistance,?app development?and?architecture?guidance across Azure, Modern Workplace and Business Application solutions. Partner Technical Services are available to partners who have?Advisory Hours ?through the MPN and soon only through the Microsoft Cloud Partner Program.
Collaborate with Microsoft on behalf of your customer (Technical & Sales)
Microsoft has dedicated customer teams. The reality is that customers often outsource their whole IT estate to partners. It can be desirable that a partner communicates directly with Microsoft on behalf of a customer. To organize a meeting regarding a specific customer you can nomination yourself as a the partner on behalf of the customer through the nomination contact?form . Although the form states modern workplace you can comment in the last section if it is in regards of another product. You should comment that you are a partner and whether or not you want to involve the customer or are speaking on their behalf.
Microsoft Support (Technical, Marketing, Sales)
In case that you are an indirect provider, you can contact your indirect reseller for support. If you encounter problems with a Microsoft service or with Partner Center, you can escalate to Microsoft for help, and track the issue until it's resolved.
Partner Center support ?- Get help and create tickets for all Partner Center programs.
Support on behalf of customers ?- Get help and report problems on your customer.
Go-to-market with Microsoft (Marketing)
Are you hosting your own Microsoft webinar for customers? You can add it to the?Microsoft Event Calender .
In case that you have a co-sell ready solution even more go-to-market benefits apply. You can learn more at?Co-sell with Microsoft .
Collaborate on leads, referrals, and deals (Technical & Sales)
Learn how to manage your referrals inside Partner Center. At the Microsoft Partner Training Gallery you will find your key takeaways to be to (1) learn how to manage leads and co-sell opportunities that you receive from Microsoft, (2) understand how to register a co-sell deal within Partner Center, and (3) understand how to access help and resources along the way.
In this blog you will find step-by-step how to create a co-sell deal: Next Level Microsoft Partner Sales & Marketing: Co-sell together. As a reference, this video also gives clarity on how to get started with sharing leads (when your co-sell solution is in place).
Leverage the NEN 7510, NTA 7516 and ISO 27001 to support your customers to be compliant and secured with Microsoft
Organizations in the Netherlands that process patient health information must demonstrate control over that data and their organization consistent with the requirements set out in the NEN 7510 standard. Microsoft is not itself subject to NEN 7510, but its cloud customers in the healthcare sector need to establish that they comply with NEN 7510 regarding solutions built on the Microsoft Cloud. Microsoft cloud services undergo various periodic certifications and audits, some of which include elements closely related to requirements specified in NEN 7510. Read more at NEN 7510 - Microsoft Compliance | Microsoft Learn and check this customer documentation which summarizes how Microsoft Office 365 and Azure demonstrate compliance with NEN 7510 . Read more in this Dutch blog ''In de cloud voldoen aan NEN 7510 en NTA 7516 '' by Hans van der Meer!
If you are looking for your material in support of a customer campaign, for example on security check Microsoft 365 & Security for Partners (To access all links you need to be signed in at partner.microsoft.com). Here is an illustration of some of the contents you can leverage.
In addition, extra tips to support your readiness to start with security, workshops or solution assessments to potentially start earning and enabling customers!
Solution Assessments (free of cost, nomination by partner):
Partner Webinars:
MCI Enrollment Guide for Partners:
Explore Workshops & Access Content
Re-evaluate the partnership with growth and scale with new hires!
Our partner training, support, services, and sales programs create growth opportunities. And our commitment to transformation goes far beyond technology. Enable your colleagues and teams with all the free training resources to grow their careers and your partner potential to enable your current and new customers. As a partner you potentially have Internal Use Rights, you can leverage these to a broader level of your day-to-day processes and working hybrid (200 E5 licenses), which is from my personal belief allows more freedom and flexibility in everyday work. Build your workforce with corporate social responsibility to your local communities by collaborating with partner experts on a new view of hiring.
The corona funds from the EU have brought a lot of investments in re-schooling and also into education. IT knowledge for example has set up training with the STAP budget to attract new talent to our industry. Organizations such as the ITPH Azure Academy , Techionista , Techgrounds , and ITVitea are specialized at educating talent including Certifications in different solution areas.
Techionista : Microsoft Azure Certified Data & AI: Azure Fundamentals (AZ-900), Microsoft Power BI Data Analyst (PL-300), Data Engineering on Microsoft Azure (DP-203),
ITPH Azure Academy : Microsoft Azure Certified Data & AI (Azure Fundamentals (AZ-900), Microsoft Power BI Data Analyst (PL-300) en Data Engineering met Microsoft Azure (DP-203).?Power BI: storytelling met data, Microsoft Azure Certified Machine Learning & AI, Data-Analyse met Excel
ITVitae: C# Software Developer , Cyber Security Specialist , Data Engineer / Data Scientist , Java Software Developer
Techgrounds : DevOps & Cloud Technology, Tech & Systems support - contact [email protected] for more
Final words
Thank you for making it to the end of this blog. I hope you have found some useful tips and guidance to progress on your partnership with Microsoft! Let me know if you find this blog useful and share what topics I should be discussing in the next episode!
EMEA Sr. Partner GTM Manager @Microsoft
2 年Rens Ploegstra, Mitchel Verdonk, Anne de Bart
Experienced Business Development Manager | Focused on Digital Transformation & Corporate Innovation | Dedicated to Technology and Social Good | Connecting Startups and Communities | Tukker
2 年Manuel Bruggeman Erwin de Bont
Critical Thinker & Challenger of Culture in Tech #Diversityofthought #Human2Human ???
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