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Creating a Focused Uniqueness: Move from Obscurity to Prioritised in the eyes of Microsoft

You have joined the largest partner program in the world to help grow your business – and it is possible.

But what comes with being in this ecosystem is also knowing how to stand out. This means refining your uniqueness and creating a spotlight that means your customer niche knows who you are and what you do.

This way, when they think about your business there is no obscurity, and they prioritise coming to you. You have what we call 'Focused Uniqueness'.

But, how do you do that? 

First, find your space in the market 

To help you stand out from the crowd and differentiate from your competition, you must occupy a specialist niche. To occupy a greater share of your target customer’s mindset you need to clearly articulate a niche you focus on.

Instead of being a commoditised generalist, partner’s need to decide what they want their business to be. Microsoft’s priorities are always changing, so Partners who focus on their specialised niche, finding the way to grow and evolve their skills and capability in line with their customers, markets and industry requirements will step into the spotlight.

Second, a deliberate approach to Sales & Marketing 

To maximise the results you get for the time, money and energy you put into your business, you should deliberately engineer the shortest most direct pathway possible to achieving meaningful outcomes.

While many partners have a separate marketing function within the business, many have not truly coupled this activity with the requirements for achieving the business goals. Setting clear goals, milestones and accountabilities for deliberate activities for the sales, marketing and operations team is not negotiable. To be successful with go-to-market, there needs to be a disciplined focus on being in market with the right things. It requires laser focus on the business scorecard, and a regular optimisation cadence and forum to discuss when you’re off track.

Finally, repeatable processes to elevate your GTM
To deliver business growth, you must have a connected process to repeatably streamline sales and marketing performance that helps elevate awareness of your unique offers. 
Even if business units are operating in line with the business goals, there is much more to ‘go-to-market’ than picking an offer from the Marketing Resources Hub and sending it to the contacts in your CRM, or advertising on Google or LinkedIn. Go-to-market is not a case of ‘set it and forget it’. Successful Partners have a proven process around how they use their core capability to define an offer aligned to their ideal client and take it to their target market. They are evolving their messaging often, and creating their proven pathway by measuring success at every stage of the funnel.

If you'd like to understand more about Focused Uniqueness, or the other two key outcomes of an Investible Partner business, download our eBook.

We talk about how to get your business from operating aimlessly to on-blueprint, and also how you can change the mystery of Microsoft into a method in your business. 

Investible Partner eBook