News
Precious Gems in Plain Sight
- By Anne Stuart
- December 01, 2006
If you've been a Microsoft partner for more than a minute, you already
know that the company offers an astonishing array of programs and services
intended to help boost your business.
But the Microsoft Partner Program's top executive worries that you're
missing out on some of the best ones.
Allison Watson, corporate vice president for the Worldwide Partner Group,
says that while several tools are anything but secret, they're still frequently
overlooked and underused.
Among those she views as most valuable is the Microsoft Solution Finder,
a searchable online directory designed to help generate solid sales leads
for partners. How does it work? "It's very simple: Is your solution
[listed] in our tool?" Watson says. If so, when potential customers
use the tool to search for products and services they need, Solution Finder
will steer them in your direction. Currently, the nine-month-old directory
includes only a fraction of available solutions and, in September, generated
fewer than 1,500 leads. But Watson hopes to see both listings and leads
skyrocket as more prospects and partners of all levels discover the tool.
(For more on Solution Finder, see "Looking for Leads Online").
Also new on the sales side: Demo Showcase for the People-Ready Business,
a resource for Certified and Gold Certified Partners that was unveiled
during the Worldwide Partner Conference in Boston last July. The toolkit,
available online, is keyed to Microsoft's "People-Ready" campaign,
which emphasizes linking software to specific jobs and industries. "It's
not even about showing customers what it can do for them. It's about showing
customers, in their roles, how whatever problem they're having can be
solved," Watson explains. "It's an integrated demonstration
environment that, for the first time, allows me to talk to a health-care
executive about health-care solutions" or to
tailor presentations to, for instance, people in sales, marketing, IT
or operations.
The Demo Showcase is designed to complement another benefit that Watson
would like to see get more use from all partners: Telephone Pre-Sales
Technical Support. Callers can get unlimited free assistance not only
about technical questions (for instance, about a particular solution's
security features, scalability or interoperability with other products),
but on business and technical issues as well. For example, partners might
seek pointers on the best way to position new products or deal with specific
sales scenarios.
While partners can request assistance via e-mail or a query submitted
online, Watson urges them to seek real-time help by phone when they're
in the field and run into customer questions that they don't know how
to answer. "They're a phone call away from someone who is going to
take the time to go through the competitive comparisons" or provide
whatever other on-the-spot help they need, she says. "So when all
else fails, get your mobile phone out and call from the customer site."
In addition, Watson wishes partners would make better use of the Partner
Marketing Center, which she says can "practically do all their marketing."
The center guides users through building annual marketing plans, creating
and executing campaigns, developing seminars, sending out direct-mail
brochures and other tasks. While the center is geared largely to beginners-"a
'Marketing Center for Dummies,' a little bit," as Watson puts it-it's
stocked with enough resources to benefit even more experienced partner
marketing teams. It's available to partners of all levels.
As her last "hidden gem," Watson mentions the Partner Learning
Center, also available to all partners. Actually, "that's one of
our most used tools, but I still don't think it could ever be used enough,"
Watson says. "A lot of [partners] use it already, but they could
still use it more."
About the Author
Anne Stuart, the former executive editor of Redmond Channel Partner, is a business technology freelance writer based in Boston, Mass.