P2P: 750 Dynamics Referrals Submitted
An annual focus of the Microsoft Worldwide Partner Conference is partner-to-partner activity.
The 2011 WPC in Los Angeles, with its 12,000 reported partner attendees, presented exceptionally strong opportunities for P2P activity. Microsoft officials said attendees had scheduled 25,000 P2P meetings and counting during WPC and reiterated a previously disclosed estimate of $10.1 billion in P2P activity among Microsoft partners in 2010.
But the company also provided an update on a new structured P2P effort, called the Dynamics Lead Referral Program, in which Microsoft passes leads from non-Dynamics partners to Dynamics partners and pays bonuses to the referring partners if the deal closes. (Read "Dynamics: The Power of Referral.")
We described the program's basic outlines in a feature in March this way: Partners who come across a potential Dynamics customer can refer the deal to Microsoft by registering it with the Microsoft Dynamics organization. Microsoft then makes a referral to an appropriate Dynamics partner. If the deal closes in 12 months, the referring partner gets a bonus worth 5 percent of the deal value, up to $20,000 per deal.
From the WPC stage this week, Microsoft's top channel executive, Jon Roskill, said, "In the first six months of running this, over 750 of these deals have been submitted."
Roskill didn't mention the amount paid out in bonuses, the number of deals closed or the value of deals that have passed through the program. Due to the length of the sales cycle, Microsoft may not have meaningful figures yet for those metrics.
In any case, it's good to see that some partners are taking advantage of a relatively painless way to pass along some business and make some money.
Posted by Scott Bekker on July 15, 2011