Microsoft Sales Plays: How to Unpack Business Priorities and GTM Alignment

 We are unpacking one of Microsoft’s Sales Plays using Desmond’s Sales Play unpacker that we introduced in our previous article. As a former Microsoft Partner Development Manager, Des has spent many years helping partners better understand how to harness the opportunity Microsoft offers its ecosystem. 

If you missed our previous article, go back and read that first. In this article, we are looking at one of the FY21 Sales Plays as an example and applying our approach to unpacking it.

Today, we are looking at the Modern Work & Security Sales Play.

What Are Microsoft Sales Plays?

As shown in the Modern Work & Security structure, the blue section outlines the Modern Workplace and Security Solution Area. From there, the Sales Play is broken down into business objectives, priorities, and the related sales plays.

But what do these mean?

• Business objectives are the metrics Microsoft is looking to drive through that particular sales play.
• Priorities are the customer priorities. This is what Microsoft perceives as the customer priorities — what customers are trying to do.
• Sales Plays are the collection of materials packaged together, along with the technology that aligns to the solution area, its objectives, and customer priorities.

What do Microsoft business priorities mean?

In this context, Microsoft business priorities describe the customer outcomes and commercial goals Microsoft wants partners to support through a given solution area and sales play.

How to Unpack a Microsoft Sales Play Using Taxonomy

So, let’s look at the Modern Workplace solution area against the taxonomy.

• Microsoft’s business objectives are to grow usage, increase premium mix, and drive seats.
• Taking the first option, the customer priority is enabling secure remote work.
• To enable secure remote work, we can use one of the three Sales Plays. For example, Teams Meeting & Calling.

How do partners align capability to a Microsoft sales play?

Technically, what does that really mean?

If this is your Sales Play, you are deploying and managing meeting services, meeting rooms, and large events. Those things are the technical capability you need in order to align to this particular Sales Play.

So the question becomes: Do I have that capability in my business, or do I need to build it? If you were covering just calling, then the higher-end technical skills you require would also include PSTN calling capabilities.

Our new taxonomy might look like this.

What Is the Go-to-Market Bill of Materials?

The Microsoft website has a go-to-market Bill of Materials (BOM) for all of its Sales Plays. The go-to-market BOM is split between customer segments — enterprise and SMB. When you look at the BOM, you will see a range of campaigns in the box. Pick one and download all the materials.

What is a go-to-market bill of materials for Microsoft sales plays?

It is the packaged set of campaign materials and go-to-market assets Microsoft provides to help partners activate a specific sales play for the right customer segment.

What Really Are Microsoft Business Priorities?

When we think about Modern Workplace & Security, the business process priorities are:

Growing usage — This is about getting customers with existing products and software in the Modern Workplace mix to deploy and use more of those products.

Increase premium mix — This is the upsell conversation. It is about moving customers from E3 to E5, or from Business Premium to E3. These are new capabilities that you are moving customers toward.

Drive seats — In an organisation that is not using O365 or M365, what does the partner need to do to make that customer one? This is about new seats. Or, for a customer that does not yet have a seat for every person in the organisation, what do you need to do to grow those seats?

Final Takeaway

Interested to know more about our implementation program? Check out our Sales Play On-Ramp^(TM) program. 

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