In our previous article, we spoke about the importance of unpacking Microsoft Sales Plays. Specifically, we looked at the challenges Microsoft partners face when they do not have a proven process for understanding ever-changing sales plays and the investment priorities that support them. We also looked at the opportunities that open up when partners can properly unpack and align to Microsoft Sales Plays and take more decisive action in market.
Now, we are taking you through the four keys to Sales Play clarity.
These are the things you can do in your business today that will help you be seen in the eyes of Microsoft.
Having meaningful alignment with Microsoft priorities has far-reaching consequences, both in a good and bad way.
When you make a splash, the ripples travel far — so you want to make sure you are having the right kind of impact.
The good is the way you open yourself up to opportunity within the ecosystem. When you make a splash, the ripples are far-reaching. The bad is that if you have the wrong alignment, you will be pushing something that you cannot execute on. So you have to choose wisely about whether you want to make a splash, and with what.
Meaningful alignment means choosing Microsoft priorities that your business can genuinely execute on, rather than chasing visibility without the capability to deliver.
The second key point is what we call having tech intensity.
Tech intensity plays an important role in helping your customer realise their opportunity. It is also about allowing you, as a Microsoft partner, to be more deliberate in the way you focus on the outcomes for your customers.
To elaborate: when we think about having tech intensity, it is not about assessing the technical skills and capability you need in your business as a tick-box exercise. It is not a skills and competency checklist.
This is about creating the opportunity to have more focused technical outcomes that you can deliver for particular customers. At Partner Elevate, we call this having a strategic certification mindset. Do not think about that competency tick — think about having a more strategic mindset around how that competency is going to help drive your business forward.
Tech intensity is not just certification for its own sake. It is about building the technical outcomes and strategic capability your business needs to deliver for the right customers.
This is about taking the core capability that Microsoft builds into its products and adding your unique value on top.
Think of your uniqueness as being a chef rather than a cook. The chef takes the raw materials and adds their unique flair. They understand what pieces go together, what works together, and then create a new dish. A cook takes the recipe, follows the recipe, and produces the same meal according to the recipe.
So we want you to be more like a chef and not a cook.
Partners add uniqueness by layering their own value, delivery approach, and market relevance on top of Microsoft’s raw capability instead of repeating the same generic play as everyone else.
There is no doubt you are going to get distracted. There are always other opportunities that will get put in front of you and require you to refocus.
To have the ability to refocus, you need a proven and repeatable process that helps you make these decisions effortlessly.
They become more decisive by using a proven and repeatable process to assess which Microsoft Sales Plays fit their business, their capability, and their opportunity to execute well.
Our next article, “Unpacking the Microsoft Sales Play: Our approach,” walks through the process we use to unpack Microsoft Sales Plays and decide which ones deserve focus. It shows Desmond’s take on a Microsoft Sales Play using his Sales Play taxonomy.
Interested to know more about our implementation program? Check out our Sales Play On-Ramp(TM) program.
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