Microsoft Partner Strategy: From Mystery to Method

If you have been following our previous posts, this is the final attribute of what it means to be an Investible Partner with Microsoft.

This comes down to knowing the game you are in.

With focused uniqueness and a winning playbook supporting a growing, profitable business, Investible Partners need to turn the mystery of Microsoft into a clear and deliberate method of partnership. That starts with understanding Microsoft economics, mechanics, and intuition.

So, how do you do that?

Understand Microsoft’s Local Economic Scorecard

To be a valuable and profitable Investible Partner, you must consistently gather insight into Microsoft’s local economic scorecard so your success stays tightly aligned to their financial outcomes.

Go-to-solution partners do not just know what Microsoft’s economic scorecard looks like. They also measure their own business metrics against it. When you align with Microsoft’s financial outcomes, your business grows with theirs and your value increases.

Gathering this intel, managing it well, and measuring it regularly shows Microsoft that you are a valuable and profitable Investible Partner.

Know Your Key Influencers Inside Microsoft

To be a well-connected Investible Partner, you need to understand how Microsoft is organised locally and who sits in key influencer roles. That is how you become an active contributor to positive scorecard results and the preferred choice for future challenges and opportunities.

Microsoft’s internal roles are aligned to their commercials. Before approaching a Microsoft seller, Technical Lead, PDM, GTM Lead, Inside Sales, or any other partner-focused role within Microsoft, partners need to know their customer, size, segment, product, industry, commercials, and impact on Microsoft’s bottom line.

With this understanding, the challenge becomes knowing who to speak to and how quickly those conversations can move toward real opportunities, while also understanding how your business and Microsoft can work together into the future in a mutually beneficial way.

Be a Valuable Source of Critical Information

To maintain a competitive advantage as a truly locally aligned Investible Partner, you need to stay tuned in to the subtleties and unspoken nuances that matter to Microsoft.

That gives you currency as a trusted source of critical contribution.

Partners need to keep their finger on the pulse. To be a locally aligned Investible Partner, you must understand subsidiary program or portfolio performance across reporting periods such as H1 and H2, so you can see where the focus and energy are building — and predict which way they will move.

Microsoft’s programs are designed to satisfy competitive requirements in the market. Understanding those pivot points, and being decisive with them, shows that you are aware of Microsoft’s priorities and empathetic to helping them achieve their goals.

Final Takeaway

If you want to elevate your Microsoft partnership, you need more than a good solution.

You need a clear Microsoft partner strategy. That means understanding Microsoft’s local economics, knowing the influencers who shape opportunity, and becoming a valuable source of insight that helps Microsoft succeed in its market.

That is how you move from mystery to method.

 If you would like to understand more about knowing the game you are in — or the other two key outcomes of an Investible Partner business — download our eBook.

We explain how to take your business from obscurity to prioritised in the eyes of Microsoft, and how to move from operating aimlessly to working on-blueprint.