268 – Cracking Microsoft SME&C: The Partner Playbook for Growth

Recorded Live at Ultimate Partner LIVE in Redmond, WA

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Welcome back to the Ultimate Partner® Podcast.

Join Alistair Butler, Jennifer Weis, and Steve Hale in a deep dive into Microsoft’s Small, Medium, and Corporate (SME&C) business – aptly called the “Acre of Diamonds.” This session unveils how Microsoft’s intentional decision to establish SMEC as its fourth and fastest-growing region, now a $72 billion business, creates unparalleled opportunities for partners. Learn about the MCEM framework, a common methodology for solution selling, and how partners can strategically align their sales organizations, leverage Microsoft’s investments, and build a “win formula” to unlock immense customer value and profitability in this high-growth segment.

Key Takeaways:

• Microsoft’s SME&C (Small, Medium Enterprise and Channel) business is now its fourth and fastest-growing region, representing a $72 billion opportunity for partners.
• This dedicated SME&C region brings unprecedented consistency, dependability, and investment that did not previously exist across Microsoft’s geographies.
• Partners must align their sales organizations with SME&C’s customer segmentation and internal structure (ATU, STU pods) to gain engagement from Microsoft sellers.
• Leveraging Microsoft’s funding and investments, particularly for driving Azure consumption and specific customer workloads, is a critical strategy for partners.
• The MCEM framework provides a consistent methodology and language for solution selling, enabling partners to fast-track their go-to-market and collaborate effectively with Microsoft sellers.
• Success in SME&C requires partners to have executive buy-in, build a clear “win formula,” and focus on delivering end-to-end customer lifecycle services, as Microsoft relies heavily on partners for stages like “realize value” and “manage and optimize”.

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https://youtu.be/a8jwaqWFNAA

Key Tags:

Microsoft partners, Acre of Diamonds, SME&C, mid-market, channel business, MCEM, Microsoft investments, partner programs, solution selling, Azure consumption, customer value, win formula, executive buy-in, sales alignment, territory planning, ATU, STU, ecosystem multiplier, partner profitability, co-sell, services revenue.

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https://youtu.be/s33fltuizEo

Key Tags:

Microsoft, Lori Borg, Microsoft Partner, Go-to-Market, Technical Agility, Organizational Agility, AI, Agentic AI, Ecosystem, Partnerships, Growth Mindset, Digital Transformation, Business Strategy, Innovation, Technology, Microsoft Americas, Channel Partners, Sales, Marketing, Engineering, Customer Success, Microsoft Azure, Microsoft Cloud, Satya Nadella, Leadership, Entrepreneurship, Change Management, Business Growth, Co-selling, Solution Areas, Digital Marketing, Cloud Computing, Microsoft Programs, Partner Hub, Future of Work, Tech Trends.

Transcription:

Transcription:

[00:00:00] Jennifer Weis: My recommendation to a partner is if you wanna get serious in this space, go figure out what solution you’re gonna go sell. Build your wind formula, set how many goals you’re gonna do, and then build a territory plan.

[00:00:14] Vince Menzione: We believe this time is like no other. We believe we refer to these as the tectonic shifts,

[00:00:20] Intro: all the hyperscalers in the world, if you add them all together.

Managed services will be one and a half times larger because it is the customer buying behavior that has created the need for all of us to rethink our models. Until we have data quality, the effectiveness of AI cannot be realized and effectiveness of the partnerships cannot be realized. Can you figure out, first, what your purpose is and how Microsoft can support your purpose and how you can support Microsoft purpose?

Now we have a partnership. It’s the ultimate partnership.

[00:00:52] Vince Menzione: Welcome to The Ultimate Partner. I’m Vince Menzi, own your host, and my mission is to help leaders like you achieve your greatest results through successful partnering. We just came off Ultimate Partner Live at Microsoft Redmond Campus.

Our most powerful event yet over two days. We gathered top leaders to tackle the real shifts shaping our industry. If you weren’t in the room, this episode featuring Alistair Butler and Jen Weiss of Microsoft and Steve Hale, a partner from suse, brings us to the conversation of the acre of diamonds and how to achieve your greatest results.

Working with Microsoft, it’ll bring us to the edge of what’s next. So let’s dive in now. So I’m excited to help lead this conversation with you all. And this is, has a very unique theme. It’s called Acre of Diamonds, and anybody who knows who about acre of Diamonds, it’s actually a fairly common term. It was a thesis.

Russell Conwell who created Temple University in Philadelphia, which has become an outstandingly successful university system, wrote this thesis about your acre of diamonds. And I’ve been talking about how Microsoft, especially its S-M-C-E-N-C business, its small, medium enterprise and channel business, that mid-market is really your acre of diamonds.

’cause so many partners tried to focus in on the very top at the tip, tip of the top. And we talked about that. Yesterday, Nicole and I had that conversation about like focusing in this area. So I’m thrilled to welcome on stage. Alistair, Jennifer and Steve, thank you for joining us. Come on out. Come on out.

Woohoo. We got some, a kickass team here. Jennifer, so great to see you. I heard

[00:02:36] Jennifer Weis: that introduction. I’m a little, I’m

[00:02:38] Vince Menzione: sorry. Whoops. I’m dropping things. I’m gonna grab it for you.

[00:02:41] Jennifer Weis: Where to go.

[00:02:41] Vince Menzione: Yeah. I didn’t want to get. You know, start attaching. Thanks. Good to see Alison. I don’t think I can live up to that side.

See my friend introduction. Oh, we know. We all kind of know that. So, um, we’ve got an incredible panel conversation today and I really wanted to spend some time with each of you. I thought we’d take a moment just from a context perspective, have you intro, because I did a little bit of an introduction, but I didn’t do it justice, to have each of you introduce yourselves.

Your roles in your organizations, and then we can talk about like, how do we take advantage of this business opportunity. So Steve,

[00:03:13] Steve Hale: we’ll start with you since great to see you, Vince. Great to see you, sir. Well, it’s a pleasure to be here. Thanks so much for the invitation. I appreciate it. Real. Uh, quick background.

I think I’ve worked in four different buildings around campus here, over my, my career. But, uh, you know, right now I run, uh, software, uh, partnerships at suse. So it’s a really a pleasure to be here with all of you. So great to have you in the room. Alistair.

[00:03:35] Alistair Butler: Thank you for the opportunity. Lovely to be here, Vince.

So good morning everybody. My name’s Alistair Butler. I run our, um, mid-market West business here in our SME and C

[00:03:47] Vince Menzione: business. Right. And you, and you’re even struggling with that we call SMC. I know, I know. We,

[00:03:52] Alistair Butler: we, we, on the day it happened, we are, we EC now, but uh, we’ve moved a little bit past that. There was intentionality for it.

Yeah, of course. Our mid-market customers, um, you know, we really wanted the enterprise piece in that small, medium enterprise and channels

[00:04:08] Vince Menzione: and just to find that. Mar the, the, the scope that you have. ’cause it’s a very significant, you talk about it very casually. Yes. Like you have a lot of customers in that market.

Yeah.

[00:04:17] Alistair Butler: So, um, I think many of you would understand, um, Microsoft’s regions and SME and C as its fourth Yep. Uh, region. That’s a $72 billion business in, of its own right. Um, you can do the math on roughly what that’s going to be in the us. Um, but for me, I have, um. Um, small, medium, uh, corporate customers or enterprises.

5,000 of those through the western part of the us

[00:04:41] Vince Menzione: Yes. That’s a very significant number. Absolutely. 5,000 just in the us in the western us.

[00:04:47] Alistair Butler: Yeah. And then I have a peer, uh, Noman Act who has a similar sized business on the east, and then we have a Canadian team in the Latin team and a team.

[00:04:54] Vince Menzione: Yeah. And after Jen, I’m gonna ask you a que another question about how your team is organized as well.

Sure. But Jen, kick ass, by the way, I do know I’ve known you for many years. Um, you have an excellent reputation from partners about the work that you do in helping organizations, and I got to see up on stage yesterday as well. So,

[00:05:13] Jennifer Weis: yeah. Well, thank you for having me. Here I am. My role today is I’m actually A PDM in our global SI organization, but I heard Vince mention some of my history and you talked to Lori this morning and you talked to Alyssa this morning and you’re asking the number of years, and I started counting back and I’m like, I’ve been in the Microsoft ecosystem for.

30 years, so, and we were just joking right? Outta school? Yeah, we were just joking behind back there. I said I was a Microsoft partner when I received a fax to put an internet email. For a company with Microsoft Mail, an exchange for, oh, beta was just coming out. So I’ve been, I’ve been in the Microsoft ecosystem since then and uh, I’ve worked for small sis, I’ve worked for medium size sis working on that.

SMC or back then, I don’t remember. It was. Called SMB, I think we know it’s something else. And then I heard you mention CDW as the director of software sales at CDW. And that’s where kind of the conversation today will come in from what I did at CDW to take it from a, you know, 200 million to a billion dollar, you know, Microsoft business there just a number of years.

And then went to an ISV. So I got the ISV part of it, a partner to partner part of it. Now I sitting here representing kind of the Microsoft PDM, but a lot of the stuff I do now is all the stuff that I did when I was a partner and how I learned to be agile and really evaluate every year what’s Microsoft doing and how am I gonna have to change the business and change it really quick to drive results.

[00:06:48] Vince Menzione: And the work is that you do is very in instructional to organizations like Steve’s. About how to align for success. So I think it’ll be a little bit of a cross conversation here. You bet. But Alistair, I want to spend a moment here a little bit more of a double click. So first of all, 5,000 organizations is fairly significant.

Yes. For any of you who don’t know, there’s probably about 11,000 enterprise organizations at the very, very top of the pyramid. Maybe even less than that today. ’cause it, you know, down. So you’ve got a number almost equal to that, just in the Western United States. Yes. And then you have sellers, you have leaders, you have, uh, managers or leaders underneath you as well.

Yes. Talk about how your organization is structured a little bit for the, for the partner. Yes.

[00:07:32] Alistair Butler: Very, very happy to. So one of the things that, uh, within Microsoft and end caps that the way we try to run the business, of course, is with consistency. So just like, um, leaders in the strategic parts of our business where they have an account team unit, an A TU, um, and then those are supported by our stews.

Our, um, uh, specialist technical units we’re exactly the same. We’re exactly the same. So we have an a TU layer, and then we have our stews in the Azure space and biz apps and in modern work and, uh, and security. So, you know, there’s a number of layers to that, to, to get to that, uh, amount of reach or so. But I think one of the things that I would stress as to, um, where we are at now as a company, it was a very intentional decision, um, by Satya and, and, and Amy to, um.

Create SME and C as it is now. Yes. This was a decision 18 months ago into Microsoft’s fourth. Region prior to and forever and a day, we were actually part of the geographic regions. That’s right. We would roll up to them, but, um, it’s now Microsoft’s largest region at $72 billion. It’s also, its fastest growing region at $72 billion.

So, um, for any of you who have been around us for a while or worked with big companies, when a decision like that is made, it’s. Big. Yeah. All of a sudden we are not sharing resources with strategics. We have our own teams, uh, with uh, GPS, with um, our SE and O teams marketing. And that will take time to mature and of itself.

But with the new leader that we have, um, we’re very much elevating, uh, the investment into, into, into the segment. And, uh, that should be opportunity for all of us.

[00:09:28] Vince Menzione: And I just wanna differentiate for those who are watching and, and paying attention today. ’cause I, you bring up some interesting points. If you’ve been around Microsoft long enough as I have it, we, it was sort of a, we didn’t pay enough attention.

We didn’t have the right rigor and we didn’t have consistency because every region, every geography, every industry, in fact, public sector being one of the industries would treat that part of the market differently. And we didn’t put the right level of investments depending on where the investments got laid across the business.

By creating that fourth region, you created a level of consistency, dependability about execution structure, organizational structure, investments that did not exist in Microsoft. And that’s why to me, it has become an acre of retirements,

[00:10:13] Alistair Butler: um, completely and. Um, to su to suggest that, you know, our success will, um, come with the partner community as part of that segment is a gross understatement.

Yes. Everything that we are, uh, building, um, in our programs, in our M stem phases, in our training and enablement, um, is now going very much through a part lens. And, you know, that’s why it’s so wonderful to be chatting to a few folks here today

[00:10:40] Vince Menzione: and. Just a few years ago. In fact, when it was first stood up, it wasn’t getting the same level of attention from the partners.

It’s one of the reasons why we have you here. Yes. Uh, and it also wasn’t, um, set up in a way, or the commitment wasn’t quite there. I remember it was about a few years ago, first conversations I had with then the leader of the organization who was Kevin Piker about doubling down. Like it was the first like foot in the ground saying, we are gonna double down now we’re gonna bring partners in.

Uh, you mentioned that having the scale of the organization, but you also have, I will say, I’ll suggest, uh. Your organization is structured so that you have maybe, uh, more accounts per rep Yes. Than when you get up to the very largest enterprises account. So I might have Coca-Cola and that’s my only account, but when I get into, which is very, a very significant organization’s, what you call small medium.

Enterprise. They’re still very big companies and most companies, they are enterprise big enterprises

[00:11:36] Alistair Butler: in other technology companies. Completely. It just speaks to Microsoft’s reach and brand and, you know, what’s over a $200 billion business today. But yeah, so look, the, at the higher strategics, you know, that’s a one to five type ratio in accounts.

Then we get into majors growth. Um, that might be anything from five to. To 20. And then it’s our, then it’s our segment that comes in. We top out at 50, 60 accounts per rep, but it’s in that a TU and stew model, which we actually run, um, in pretty thoughtfully designed pods. So small teams are really hunting in those pods with their partners, um, with their partners.

And, uh, um, the ability to reach the customers with that is with those partners.

[00:12:22] Vince Menzione: I wanna dive in a little bit and I’m going to ask the perspective from the partners in the room. Steve, you and then also get Jennifer’s perspective as a partner development manager. How do you engage, how do you find the engagement?

What, what, what is, what is the type of engagement you do? What, what are best practices you can share with our community here?

[00:12:40] Steve Hale: Yeah. It’s, it’s a great question. I think, um, if, if I’m sitting in the audience and I, I don’t, I don’t know. What your size and scale is. If you’re a smaller consulting partner or you, you’re a part of a, a larger, you know, technology company, an ISV or who, whomever, the way I look at it is sort of the so what factor, like what we know that we have a huge ecosystem to be able to tap into with Microsoft.

And so, you know, at the end of the day, how do we do it? How do we do that in a way that’s gonna help us drive solution selling? So, um, we were talking a little bit earlier. When, um, so I, when I did this at Microsoft, I just remember bomber would, would, he would pound his hand on the, on the conference room table, and he said, the field is always right unless proven wrong.

So the business units were already saying, Hey, we’re gonna build these solutions. We’re gonna have this stuff, we’re gonna go to market. Yeah. And he would come in and pound his fist and say, the, the field is always right unless proven wrong. And so what he meant by that, where we’re. You know, preparing for the midyear reviews, right, with the 90 slide deck.

And then the, you know, six point font was all about like, how are we gonna drive customer solution value? And that was the part that I loved about it. Right? That’s where. If you think about the history, you’re talking about a TU and the whole design of what happened back in Tailwind and all of that, um, what it was all about was making sure that we have a solution oriented selling mechanism that is integrated with partner solutions.

And that’s the part that that’s beautiful about it. Microsoft has always been true to that part of it. And if you think about. The strategy of it is very different than, let’s say, I mean, not to, um, you know, say one is better than the other, but like an Oracle model or whatever, where it was a very direct selling motion at Microsoft.

What, what bomber did was, which was cool, I. Was he peeled off a little bit of services margin out of the consulting business and fed it into the ecosystem part of it to help develop ISVs and and integrator partners. We were talking a little bit earlier about, you know, your, your history at Biby and, and you know.

That is what it’s all about, is like if you really are in the ecosystem selling business, which Microsoft is, that’s great. Okay. Prove it and then show us that you, you, you have an alignment to that model in terms of how you do investment and help the businesses grow, and that literally becomes the ecosystem multiplier.

So what

[00:15:12] Vince Menzione: instruction would you have for the partners in the room and those watching us on livestream? How, how to engage with

[00:15:18] Steve Hale: Alistair’s organization? Very self, selfishly, I would say figure out how to use their money.

[00:15:23] Vince Menzione: Okay.

[00:15:24] Steve Hale: Very cool. I mean, to, to be fair, right? Yeah. And, and the reason why I say that is because there, there, if you look at the consumption model that we, that.

We want to drive with Azure, right? You want to try and figure out, like, how do you tap into that part of it to be able to drive those? Um, look, at the end of the day, the way I think about it, when I talk to my sales teams, it’s all about the workloads. It’s about what is driving the customer investment?

Where is the money coming from? Where is the Vander Gold for, I don’t care if it’s a, a huge, you know, Coca-Cola or all the way down to a, a smaller, uh, a smaller company that’s trying to. Innovate. They want to innovate. They need partnerships that are gonna help ’em go drive this. This is stuff that I did with, um, after I left Microsoft.

I was with Bridge Partners here as a consulting firm that’s, that’s, uh, uh, very near and dear to my heart. But, you know, it’s going from a massive company down into, um, a, a consulting organization that’s always thinking about customer value and solutions. So that would be. You, you know, I mean, figure out how to tap into the wealth of Microsoft, but also at the same time be very, very focused on the workloads and the customer solution value.

I mean, how do you get

[00:16:39] Vince Menzione: relevant? Jen, I want to come to you because I know you spent a lot of time with organizations and, and their lack of relevancy, their lack of engagement models, and I know there’s some points you want to share on that as

[00:16:51] Jennifer Weis: well. It, well, it, it. Builds on what you both were saying and and using Microsoft’s money.

And to be blunt, so when you mentioned Biby, I was at BUR for years. Biby was acquired by CDW, then I was at CDW, then I went for startup ISV. But that was exactly it. We would sit down every year, first off being relevant as a partner. No offense, it’s not about the partner’s model and what the partner does.

If you wanna be relevant to Microsoft. You have to do it the Microsoft Way. Mm-hmm. So every year we knew changes were coming. Microsoft is not simple. It’s complicated, but at the end of the day, it’s not. If you just take that ego out of the way and you say, okay, Microsoft’s gonna come out in the June timeframe and they’re gonna come out with their incentives and investments, and that’s how their sales reps are compensated.

So every year I sit down with that plan. And I would go through it and I would say, okay, how am I going to make money? Yeah. Off this plan? And how am am I going to model our win formula to be able to go after you said the solution areas, how am I gonna do that? And I’ll put a plan together. And then I, I think it was Lori Alyssa said, then I go to the executive board and say, okay, I plan to bring in, you know, you gave me a quota of whatever million in profit, right?

This is how I’m gonna make a million in profit, but. I’m gonna need to make these three changes. Do I have your buy-in? And every year they’re like, go for it. And we did it, and I would deliver. And then the next year I’m like, okay, here we go again. But if you go into it with the attitude of it is what it is, yes, you can influence changes for future years, but you’re not gonna change it that year.

Yeah. So you just accept what it is. And then you build a strategy to maximize the heck out of it and earn, I mean, Microsoft, we, we, when we were at Burbank, they were our biggest customer because we used their funding, but we used it and delivered results and delivered results and delivered results. And so we even went to Microsoft many times and said, I think we can do it better, but we’re gonna need investment from you.

You

[00:19:02] Steve Hale: bet.

[00:19:02] Jennifer Weis: Right? And we wanna bring this program and they’d go. Okay. You did it last year, so go ahead, do it again. So that’s how we built a great strong Microsoft practice in consulting. Then we brought it over to CDW and then we brought it to the licensing piece of it, and we just build kind of a program sales, and there’s really three elements to that.

The first element is, uh, someone was mentioning it, the maniacal focus, right? Yeah. The first element is everybody on your team has to know what you’re actually doing. Our goal is to drive x. And this is how we’re gonna do it. We built a win formula. Well, you have to have this marketing funnel. Then from this marketing funnel, you then deliver this and train your sales reps on this.

And you just, you build that whole win formula from your account based marketing to your hero offer. And you go through those pieces of it, and then you just turn around and deliver. But you needed that. You needed the executive buy-in, so you had to have from top down if it’s just alliance driven. And it was mentioned this morning.

It, it doesn’t work.

[00:20:05] Vince Menzione: It doesn’t work.

[00:20:06] Jennifer Weis: And so you, that’s what we did is we, and we did it really quick and really agile and we just repeated that motion and created that flywheel.

[00:20:13] Vince Menzione: Yeah. And that’s what we did. You got the executive commitment within your organization, right? I got the executive

[00:20:17] Jennifer Weis: commitment within the organization.

So we’re doing that with partners now. We worked on a majors motion, 15 partners. We walked in, it’s like half the partners got it and they’re like, yep, we’re gonna adopt it. And they’re. Crushing it just in the last two, you know, two months. Some of the other partners are still trying to decide what solution, and so they’re a little bit farther behind.

So that’s my recommendation. Build a plan, get executive buy-in. Then build your win formula with all the roles aligned and then just go deliver. But you make it easy and you make it simple.

[00:20:51] Vince Menzione: Yeah. And you mentioned all the roles. This is with the Alyssa conversation earlier, right? Engineering go to market, co-selling, your alliance team, your executive team at the executive level to executive

[00:21:01] Steve Hale: level.

Yeah. What, what I, what I loved about what, um, Alyssa said earlier was, uh, you’ve gotta have the technology piece of it. Yeah. Like once you, if you have that, then you’re good to go. And then the co-selling motion, right? Yeah. Which is what. They’re really, that’s gonna be the next question. That’s where we’re gonna roll into.

But I, I loved her point of view on that. And I think it’s like, how do we, how do we connect with the, with the machinery that is happening at Microsoft, it is creates this scale. And how do we do that in a way that’s gonna be profitable for all of us and help our customers? So, Alistair,

[00:21:33] Vince Menzione: thousands of sellers, right?

Mm-hmm. Within the organization. How do I get their attention? Right? I, I’m one of 165,000 partners in the Americas. Lori Borg mentioned earlier. Yes. So how, I mean, that’s an incredible number of partners. Tapping on the door, on your door.

[00:21:48] Alistair Butler: It’s a quest. It’s a question I get a lot and, uh, we still okay on Mike?

You can, yeah. Yeah, we’re good. You’re good, you’re good. Um, so it’s a question I get a lot and, um, it’s easier to answer now that we are specifically a fourth region, if you’re serious about that. Customer segment, you really need to think, um, through firstly making sure your sales organization has some dedication to that customer segment.

Um, you know, just speaking very openly, if my, uh, sellers are engaged with a partner and you know, the first time they’re together and they have an open discussion, okay, so how do you look at us? And they’ve got seven strategic accounts and four. They turn off straight away. Yeah. Right. Because they’re trying to, my sellers are trying to engage really with anything from two to five partners to run their scale business.

Yeah. Okay. So a lot of that’s regionally based. A lot of that, of course, is still into its relationships and connectivity and rhythms that are running in the business. But if you’re serious about wanting to grow with us and SME and C business, really think about segmenting your own sales teams, um, for that.

That’s, that, that’s number one. Um. And I can give a very brief example of we had a, we had A-A-G-S-I, huge player. You would all know them. Um, came to, uh, myself, uh, last summer. Um, we’re making plans for six months away. Um, we’re actually going to double down, um, our Kevin Ster and, and create a, uh, a mid-market segment.

What’s your advice? I showed them my a TU structure, if you align to that. When you’re ready and you can demonstrate the right skill base and understanding of M Em. I’ll make all the introductions. Ah, M em. Yes. The executive team listened to that. They came back three months later and they showed us the plan and they were activated across my sales team within six weeks.

Yeah.

[00:23:51] Vince Menzione: Yeah.

[00:23:52] Alistair Butler: It can be done now. There’s an intention to that and I think maybe just the final piece, um, here, Vince, to your go have an opinion. There is in the segment enough white space for all of us have an opinion on what the solution areas that you have, skills and expertise in sustainable, um, and the industries where you have presence.

It’s a really difficult thing sometimes for a partner, and I’ve been around partners since the mid nineties to actually be declarative. But when you share that opinion and your value proposition. The connection into the sales team is so much faster. It happens at the first meeting versus folks finding out at the third or fourth, and I’ve just wasted, you know, two months of starting to, it’s much, much better to be cleaner and clearer.

Um, all of our growth, um, is in the middle part of our mail even. And, uh, we, Microsoft partner to help us go Microsoft account list, by the way. Absolutely. Now for

[00:24:52] Vince Menzione: those who don’t know it, yep. You mentioned M em, I’d like to double click on SEM a little bit. For those who don’t know M em, we’ve actually had speakers talk about M EM specifically on stage.

Great. It’s a great topic, but I think we should double click and I think with amongst the three of you, you probably have different perspective on here, but I think I’ll, I want to get all three of your perspectives on M EM and how to engage as a partner to drive msem.

[00:25:16] Steve Hale: So at the end of the day, it’s a framework, it’s a methodology to be able to help us be able to, I think, strategically and tactically sell better.

Right? So, I mean, we got all the acronyms in the world. Um, at the end of the day, I think it comes down to how do we have a connected fabric in terms of how we do solution selling together and how we deliver. Um, you know, that value and messaging, I, I was, um. It was funny, I was at a, uh, a dinner and a customer came over.

It was a partner dinner, and the customer came over and they said, and I’m not gonna say who the partners were, but um, the customer came over and said, Hey, are you guys actually working together? Like we were having a conversation with the technology company and, and, and the customer said to us. I love that about you guys.

I love that you’re actually sitting down and talking about technology working together to help us deliver value in my organization. You know, so m sem and, and you’re, you’re the expert on it. It, it’s a framework. It’s a methodology. That’s great. How does it help us? How does, how do we make it real? And how does it deliver customer solution value?

Yeah. In my, my opinion. Double click on me.

[00:26:31] Jennifer Weis: Yeah. Well, well, with M Sem, I was talking earlier about the wind formula.

[00:26:35] Vince Menzione: Yeah.

[00:26:36] Jennifer Weis: The, and, and you mentioned the, the funding programs and different things. Yeah. So within M Sem, there are the five stages. But within each stage there’s specific guidance given to the sellers on this is the ha halo conversation you have, this is the hero offer you pitch, and the hero offer usually comes with funding to deliver something.

So, and there’s even, I think

[00:26:58] Vince Menzione: we actually have a slide that might help us along here actually. So let’s go. There’s

[00:27:01] Jennifer Weis: even campaigns in a box.

[00:27:03] Vince Menzione: Yep.

[00:27:04] Jennifer Weis: Right? That you and marketing materials. I was shocked when I started to work with some of the partners, even some of my own, but the partners that weren’t mine, and I would ask, do you know what M SEM is to their sales teams?

And the sales teams are like. No. Yeah. And I’m like, okay. And then I would say, show me your strategy, you know, wind formula for how you’re going to land this. And they’re like, well, here’s our offer. Here’s the technical capabilities. And that’s not a strategy, that’s a, that’s a technical solution. So we would go through the wind formula that you see there.

We would go through and say, well, what are you doing at each stage? But there’s, there’s a link on this slide too. I said, Microsoft has this built already. You just need to go get the material and make it your own. Right. Go get the campaign in a box. Go get the, the, the halo conversations and material. Go get the hero offer.

Just make it your own. And so we help optimize that. They have a strategy and then it’s like, now we just go land this with your sellers. Yeah. And that’s you. You gotta build that formula to be able to land it. And if you follow the Microsoft methodology, then when you go in and talk to. You know your sellers, it’s really easy because you’re talking the same language.

You have the ability to collaborate and sit down at the table together ’cause you’re talking the same thing. And it, it gives the, the partners the ability to, to fast track going to market, but then make it their own. Yeah.

[00:28:28] Vince Menzione: And Alistair, this is very deliberate at Microsoft. When, when, when I was a Microsoft gm, we didn’t have this No.

Everybody followed their own methodology. You have a common language Yes. That you’re, when you, when you’re having reviews, funnel reviews, any business reviews in your business, you’re talking through this right.

[00:28:44] Alistair Butler: Absolutely. So M CAPS is a hundred thousand people organization that is wired to this.

[00:28:49] Vince Menzione: Yeah.

[00:28:50] Alistair Butler: And you know, it’s been around a few years, uh, a few years now, but the commitment to it, and I suspect the longevity will, will continue because it really has given so much more clarity and understanding of our own business. As to how competitive we are, um, uh, what the customer experience is. Dare I even say, what’s the profitability profile for our partners in that?

And yes, we live by this for any operational review. It is so important that your sales teams have an appreciation of this. Yes, they don’t need depth, but they need an appreciation. But you must have at least one person. Or at least a small team, really understanding the programs, how you leverage the dollars, the timings, the announcements to actually filter all of that into your sales team.

That is a, that is a critical point as to doing, doing business with us, really. But yes, for anything that we’re doing on our pipelines and looking at program activations and, and anything that you might imagine on a sales dashboard, um, uh, finds its way back, uh, back to this.

[00:30:00] Vince Menzione: Steve, when your sellers, you’re working with your organization and your sellers, how are you implementing em to help them be successful working with Microsoft?

[00:30:08] Steve Hale: You know, I think at the end of the day, what, when, when we talk about leveraging our, our partnership and our center of gravity with a partnership like Microsoft, at the end of the day, like what, you know, and I’m not trying to get into like product specific stuff, but. It. What we’re, what we want to do is make sure that our delivery of what we’re trying to focus on, we, we talked about this earlier, which is be be really clear about what we’re going to do, and also be clear about what we’re not gonna do.

Yeah, because otherwise we can just be random and we can, you know, say we’re gonna do all these things, but, but, and we’re trying to conquer the world. And that’s why Microsoft did the segmentation in the first place, right? That’s right. And that’s where, that’s right. Trying to get very focused. So if you think about, I mean the orig, the original a TU piece, they used to call it the atomic, uh, unit.

And so it became the account team unit, all of that stuff. And now it’s being implemented and they’re doing it for a reason. And, and, and ER’s point is like. Are we gonna focus on mid-market customers or, you know, be dedicated to that. Be clear about what you’re gonna do and be really clear about what you’re not gonna do and prioritize.

[00:31:19] Alistair Butler: There’s, um, there’s a, um, little piece here to add as well, particularly for the partner community, for the segment that I’m part of. Yes. Um, different to our strategics who have. Um, the CSUs in stages four and five. You’ll see ladies and gentlemen, realize value and manage and optimize. We have a lot of Microsoft people around, around those, those don’t exist in our, that’s right segment in SM, E and C, we are fully committed to that being partner.

A partner delivered. Uh, and lifecycle delivered with your services. Right. So where we coach our sales teams much more in recent years is the connectivity into the partner base such that we are getting actually an understanding of your services. I. And when we’re together in the customer, um, that’s a really positive thing.

Yeah. And, um, many, many changes have happened in a very short period of time, uh, that we’re really positive about lots of energy going into it. And, uh, even in our CSP program that plays very, uh, cloud solution partner program that plays very prevalently here. Um, good, uh, profitability and margin for our partners in that aspect.

[00:32:32] Vince Menzione: That comes back to the IDC study that we talked about yesterday. And was it $8.65 of services revenue for partners for every dollar of Microsoft. Yes. Commitment. And I think the point you’re making too is there’s, you don’t have this massive consulting services organization. You really need the partners in the room here to drive that.

[00:32:51] Alistair Butler: We do. And there was even an organizational announcement where. Um, folks in our global, um, solution partner teams even joined us. So we’re now one organization. Yes. Obviously that cements the, uh, commitment to

[00:33:03] Vince Menzione: that part of our strategy. That’s right. So Nicole’s organization absolutely is part of you, same organization that you sit in now.

So it’s really intertwined the partners into the business. Anything else we should add? Yeah,

[00:33:14] Jennifer Weis: well I was just gonna add, and I talked about it yesterday in the breakout session, if you attended, is the other thing that I’m doing with partners that is coaching them on how to do account planning. Yeah. And you, we were helping them to understand that Microsoft and the enterprise builds these four segments in their account plan, but in the SM.

E and C, it just doesn’t roll off the tongue.

[00:33:35] Vince Menzione: That’s why they’re using smack. That sounds

[00:33:38] Jennifer Weis: terrible. Uh, you build a territory plan and you mentioned another partner that came to you guys and said, we are, we’re gonna invest in this. So my recommendation to a partner is, if you wanna get serious in this space, go figure out what solution you’re gonna go sell.

Build your win formula set how many goals you’re gonna do. And then build a territory plan, you know, so that you can come to the teams and say, I’m going after this market or this industry. I have a target list of a hundred accounts. My goal is to close 20 deals. And this is how I am su structuring, accountability and ownership within me, my partner organization.

And we’ll align with you on the, the first, the blue stages on there. And then once we’re done with that, then we go deliver the. Purple stages because there’s no CSU. Yeah. So it’s, it’s not complicated. It’s complicated to learn how to put it together, but once you know how to put these things together, it’s

[00:34:34] Alistair Butler: not complicated.

And then my, my best sellers working with their three to five partners on their territory plans are doing exactly what, yeah, Steve was suggesting where there’s clear delineation on who’s on first, who’s on second. Within that, under a common. Under a common language, it’s, it is designed well. It is designed simply.

Um, and the partners where we do it the best with, we just fly. I love

[00:35:02] Steve Hale: it. I love it. Yeah. The, the, the, the cool thing about Microsoft is that they will get super, super complex about everything, but then they generally will boil it back up into something that’s executable. And that’s what I love about it. I mean, they wrote the book on co-sell.

They did. And so like Howie. You talk about M and all the acronyms and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, all that kind of stuff. But at the end of the day, they really know what they’re doing. And if you tap into that method and go along with the acronyms and figure out how the machinery works, it’s a great ecosystem be to be a part of it really is.

[00:35:35] Vince Menzione: Well, we are up on time. We promised everybody a break. Um, hopefully you’ll all be around if for networking for a little while. I know Jen was leading a session yesterday. There’s a lot of great knowledge in the room here on how to engage with Microsoft. How be more successful driving your business. And if you haven’t, we haven’t.

We actually have a double click on M Sem. As a video that’s in our ultimate partner. If you got Ultimate Partner website on YouTube or even the ultimate partner.com and go through our sift through our search on sem, you’re gonna find some in great, some great instruction on what SEM is and how to engage with sem.

So, and I know we could, we could spend hours on SEM here and we have some great experts who can take you through this. So I want to thank each of you got great conversation today for our partners. This is, this is how you need to engage this. This is where the acre of diamonds is for each of you. So I want to thank you all for being part of this conversation.

Thank you. You, you. Thank you.

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