The Winning SMB Team

Happy Wednesday, folks! I hope you're having a great week.

Last week, I travelled to Dublin to be part of the Microsoft SMC+DS and Partner Summit - the first of its kind (SMC+DS is Small, Medium and Corporate Businesses, and Digital Sales in case you're wondering...). More than 1500 people coming together to participate in a conference with three key objectives: Discover. Connect. Grow.

Part of this was an opportunity to compete in the "Copilot Demo Cup", a fun competition to put together the best short demo of a scenario that used Copilot (fun and light-hearted was also part of the brief - that's important context for understanding why we have Christian Moser dressed as Freddie Mercury in the header picture).

Each area attending fielded a team, including mine: the SMB team! I thought I'd use today's edition of Interesting Stuff to talk a little about what we did to win. I can't share the recording (thank you DMCA), so I'll walk you through it instead!

The Story

Rather than do a features-and-benefits demo, we wanted a storyline. Something that people would remember. So, we went with a story in three 'acts', with an accompanying soundtrack of Queen's hits:

Act One: The Jeopardy

I play the role of CEO of a Microsoft Partner. I get a call from my Partner Development Manager (played by the awesome Vanessa Truong-Vetter ) informing me of an opportunity with an important customer, Bohemian Rhapsody Records (you can probably tell where this is going...).

Vanessa outlines the scope of the opportunity, tells me that I'll receive the lead and a follow up call from our Vendor Tele lead (played by the tireless Ilasha Prabhu , who also did the video editing for us). She also casually drops into the conversation that I'll be meeting with the customer and need to have a statement of work and a presentation prepared in just FIVE MINUTES! But it's OK, she tells me. Don't feel too Under Pressure! ??

As I'm beginning to panic about how I'm going to do this, our narrator (read expertly by Celine Garbi Joergens ) talks the audience through the context of the customer, the market, and where our partner fits into the story.

Moments later, I get the call from Ilasha, and in comes our first use of Copilot: meeting transcription and recap. Ilasha blasts through the details so fast it's almost impossible to keep up, so I turn on recording and transcription to help me with the notes.

The act wraps with me exclaiming that I have now just THREE MINUTES to pull this all together, but I know I can use Copilot to help... It's A Kind of Magic, after all!

Act Two: The Journey

Wasting no time, and with the voiceover from our narrator, I get right to using Copilot in Word to begin crafting a statement of work including migration considerations, features and benefits, milestones, terms and conditions, and other details relating to the customer's needs.

As I complete the document I think "I Was Born To Love You, Copilot", but wait, what about the presentation?

I move into PowerPoint and use the statement of work document as a basis to prompt Copilot to create a presentation, complete with speaker notes and layout in seconds.

As the countdown to zero reaches the last few seconds, I have just enough time to summarise what I've done, the Copilots I've used, and the fact I've received the opportunity, summarised the details, created the statement of work, and the presentation in under five minutes (with some poetic licence over timing thanks to some handy video editing! We had a very short slot to do the demo and doing it live would've been prone to overrun).

Act Three: The Joy

As the countdown stops, it's time to meet the customer (played magnificently by Christian Moser ). He explodes onto the stage to rapturous applause, before shaking my hand vigorously and thanking me for addressing the needs of his company - "Don't Stop Me Now", he exclaims! But, just as our meeting is ending, he pauses and wonders if the Microsoft folks in the audience truly know how to prompt. Is the deal going to fall apart at the last moment?

Enter Vanessa Truong-Vetter and Ilasha Prabhu who interrupt proceedings and say they can prove we're ready if we all get involved in something to help me out. Stomp, stomp, clap! Stomp, stomp, clap!

As the audience finds their stomping and clapping rhythm, the music kicks in and Vanessa leads the chant WE WILL, WE WILL, PROMPT YOU!

The end.

Summary

In a demo that in total lasted around seven minutes we covered several key Copilot scenarios, including:

• Meeting transcription and recap.
• Document creation.
• Presentation creation from source documents.
• Meeting scheduling.
• Copilot for Sales.

The response from the audience was unbelievable, and the judges were very kind with their words - and we won. And while winning is great, it was the collaboration with amazing people across the UK, France, Germany, and Austria to create a fun story that will hopefully have created a memory that will last for years in everyone who was there that is the best bit.

I was blown away by what we achieved in just three half-hour meetings, a few hours of demo recording and editing, and an hour of rehearsal the morning of the competition. Go team SMB!

Conclusion

Copilot capabilities are powerful, but you need to adapt your working habits to truly benefit from them every day. Since investing in Copilot is a financial move, ensuring everyone who gets it knows how to get the best from it.

A fun and frivolous 'demo cup' competition is a great way to encourage your teams to truly think about how to use the capabilities both internally, and in helping our customers get the best from it. Why not run your own in your business?

Until next time...

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