270 – Microsoft’s Tectonic Shifts: A Partner Roadmap for FY26 with Nina Harding

Microsoft’s America’s Partner Leader joins Ultimate Partner

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Is your business ready for 2026?

Welcome back to the Ultimate Partner® Podcast.

Nina Harding, Microsoft’s partner leader for the Americas, joins host Vince Menzione to discuss the seismic shifts happening at the start of Microsoft’s fiscal year 2026. This isn’t just another discussion; it’s a deep dive into Microsoft’s renewed partner-centric strategy, the transformative power of AI, and the tactical steps partners need to take now to thrive. Nina reveals how partners are now “front and center” in Microsoft’s priorities, how a new industry-based structure is changing everything, and the crucial role of AI in boosting sales and innovation. She shares actionable insights on co-selling, the new “Frontier” mindset, and why being a “customer zero” for AI is no longer optional. This conversation provides a strategic roadmap for every partner looking to align with Microsoft’s vision for the future.

Key Takeaways

• Partners are now one of Microsoft’s top three priorities, with a major focus on tighter integration with sales teams and a “partner-first” tone from leadership.
• Microsoft is moving to a 100% industry-based structure in the US, with new industries like oil and gas and gaming, to focus on solving customer problems with industry experts and partners.
• The new “SDC” (Software Development Company) term is more comprehensive and inclusive than the traditional ISV (Independent Software Vendor) term.
• AI is delivering a 10% increase in pipeline, a 23% higher close rate, and a 9% larger book of business in revenues for sales reps who use it consistently.
• The “Frontier” mindset is Microsoft’s new theme for FY26, emphasizing the exploration of possibilities with AI, moving beyond out-of-the-box functionality.
• The most critical advice for partners is to become “customer zero” for AI, differentiating themselves by articulating their value proposition and depth of expertise by industry.

If you’re ready to lead through change, elevate your business, and achieve extraordinary outcomes through the power of partnership—this is your community. At Ultimate Partner® we want leaders like you to join us in the Ultimate Partner Experience – where transformation begins.

Key Tags:

Microsoft, Nina Harding, Vince Menzi, Ultimate Partner, partner strategy, fiscal year 26, FY26, AI, artificial intelligence, Copilot, Microsoft partners, co-sell motion, customer engagement methodology, CEM, industry-based, operating units, OUs, Total Addressable Markets, TAM, small medium enterprise, SMC, software development companies, SDCs, ISV, channel partners, account executive, AE, solution areas, Biz Apps, security, Azure, Microsoft field, America’s Partner Brief, APB, agentic AI, marketplace, digital transformation, Frontier, enablement, technical roles.

Transcript:

[00:00:00] Nina Harding: We’re finding such intense productivity. Um, for example, with our sales reps, the ones that are using AI consistently, we’re seeing, um, about a 10% increase in their pipeline. We’re seeing a 23% higher close rate and 9%, uh, larger book of business in actual revenues.

[00:00:25] Vince Menzione: Welcome back to the Ultimate Partner. I’m Vince Menzi, the CEO of Ultimate partner and your host, and I am thrilled today to welcome Nina Harding, Microsoft’s partner leader for the America’s business. Nina, welcome to the studio here.

[00:00:41] Nina Harding: Oh, thanks so much for having me.

[00:00:42] Vince Menzione: So excited to have you. Was great.

Many of you don’t know this, but Nina actually lives here in Florida. Yeah. We both live in Florida only. Yeah. We live

[00:00:50] Nina Harding: pretty close to each other everywhere. Pretty close together. Yeah. What, three and a half miles, maybe?

[00:00:54] Vince Menzione: Something like that. Yeah. Yeah. It’s crazy. Yeah. And this is our Boca studio. For those of you who haven’t been here yet, Nina’s gonna be here this, this winter.

We’ll have you, we’ll have you on stage.

[00:01:03] Nina Harding: Great.

[00:01:03] Vince Menzione: In front of our partners, all of our partners that watch and listen to the Ultimate Partner, but so, so thrilled to have you join us today. We have such an amazing conversation to have today because. This is an important inflection point in Microsoft’s year, right?

The beginning of fiscal year 2026. Yeah. For those of you looking at your calendars and watches. Uh, it’s 2025, but for Microsoft we’ve started fiscal year 26 and so, so many changes that are happening. So much excitement and enthusiasm around the new year.

[00:01:33] Nina Harding: Absolutely. We have a lot

[00:01:34] Vince Menzione: to cover today.

[00:01:35] Nina Harding: Yeah, we do.

Yeah,

[00:01:35] Vince Menzione: we do. So I thought maybe we’d spend a minute on that, if you don’t mind. Sure. Maybe we’ll start there because there were a lot of announcements made. Sure. And, uh, Judson and Nicole and some others were on the on stage just about a week and a half ago talking him through the changes. Yeah. I thought maybe you could help lead us through some of the conversation Yeah.

On what’s changed and what’s stayed the same.

[00:01:56] Nina Harding: Right. Um, well, I think the. Biggest change I’ve seen is partner is front and center as one of the top three priorities at the company.

[00:02:06] Vince Menzione: I’m so happy to see that. So

[00:02:07] Nina Harding: that is really exciting. Yeah. So, uh, we had to start, as you mentioned, a couple weeks ago, and every single.

Presentation every, some single executive was talking about our partners. Uh, when Judson normally has like a panel of customers up there. This time he had two partners in one customer. So I love that the tone is really, uh, forward on partners. The major changes that you’re seeing, uh, first is that we’re trying to bring the partners more into the core business.

Uh, align them with the sales teams. So what that means is our channel partners are now sitting toe to toe, shoulder to shoulder with the um, sm. C and e folks, right? Yeah. Yep. So, um, what we hope with that is there’s even tighter integration. We get rid of some of that friction that might have been there, and we operate as one.

I love that our partners really become that extension of our Salesforce, um, out, out there on the front lines, um, on the, on the other side. We have an opportunity in the enterprise to go even tighter and deeper with our services and what we’re now referring to as our SDC software development. SII

[00:03:24] Vince Menzione: know, it’s I know, I know, I know.

Good

[00:03:26] Nina Harding: old, good old Sandy

[00:03:27] Vince Menzione: Gupta and I had a conversation about this at our last event and, uh, it’s so hard it doesn’t roll off the tongue very easily.

[00:03:33] Nina Harding: No, it doesn’t, but it’s actually much more inclusive. Yes. So, um, it’s funny, I had a conversation with an Nvidia and. They were the ones that kind of prompted even that opening with me of saying, Hey, we don’t see ourselves as an ISV.

And they’re not, they’re not, right? They’re, and so SDC is much more comprehensive, but kind of going back to some of those changes, that’s, uh, that’s where we’re seeing even tighter integration and how that shows up. That shows up in the way. Um, we look at pipeline, how we do reporting, um, in each of the ou, um.

Do you want me to talk about the OU as well? I do. Let’s

[00:04:11] Vince Menzione: talk about, so just for people that don’t under, don’t understand our acronyms. Yeah. But, uh, so Small Medium Enterprise and corporate is Ssec.

[00:04:18] Nina Harding: Yes. Is smec and

[00:04:19] Vince Menzione: a lot of partners we’re gonna, we’re gonna talk about where, what partners sit where. Sure.

And then the OU are the operating units. Correct. Uh, they are. And what people don’t always realize about the way how Microsoft is structured, because you sit on a leadership team and you’ve got representatives that are very industry focused, right? Correct. Across various aspects of the business. They have their own vp, they have their own marketing organization, they have their own selling organization, and so on and so on.

[00:04:43] Nina Harding: Yeah.

[00:04:44] Vince Menzione: So talk to us about that. That’s the operating units,

[00:04:46] Nina Harding: right? So, um, we affectionately call them operating units, but they’re really, as Judson affectionately calls them tam capture units. Right. So, um, a country, uh, you could have a country, yep. Or, um, an aggregate of countries or you could have division of countries.

They’re really based on the TAM capture opportunity. So in the United States and TAM being total

[00:05:12] Vince Menzione: addressable market, correct? Most correct. Sorry. No, that’s right. Yes.

[00:05:14] Nina Harding: Um, but for example, in the US. We have gone 100% industry based this year. I love it. It’s really, really exciting. Yeah. So we no longer have territories anywhere, and we’ve actually been able to introduce some new industries like oil and gas, right?

So I’ve

[00:05:31] Vince Menzione: seen that

[00:05:31] Nina Harding: gaming, those are real industries that make a difference, uh, to everyone. And so what’s exciting about that? As the conversation is changing, we’re going further and further away around how do we position product to how are we really solving customer problems? And the conversation is all at that industry level, in that language with the experts from the industry helping to solve problems with the customer.

And that’s where our partners come in too.

[00:06:01] Vince Menzione: It makes such a big difference. And then the partners that are surrounding that, or that sales organization are ones that are laser focused on that specific industry, right?

[00:06:09] Nina Harding: Absolutely. And that’s so critical. Um, I think today where our partners and even Microsoft sellers, we.

Perhaps we’re comfortable positioning product or doing implementations,

[00:06:22] Vince Menzione: selling that ea.

[00:06:24] Nina Harding: Right, right. Um, now we’re moving into this kind of imagineering stage. Yes. Where we’re really, where we’ve talked about being the strategic advisor to, uh, a customer. Well, now it’s really here. Yeah. You have to speak their language, you have to understand their business problems, and then you have to help them also reimagine what the future looks like.

[00:06:45] Vince Menzione: It’s so critical. Uh, we were the first industry in public sector when I was there, and we were the only ones who spoke a different language. And then the rest of the field organization was territories. And it was, you know, accounts were just split up. They had different sales reps. There was really no knowledge of what that customer did.

And like you, like you’re saying here, I mean, it’s so, it’s so critical and important.

[00:07:04] Nina Harding: Absolutely. Yeah.

[00:07:05] Vince Menzione: So I wanna dive in a little bit on Ssec and the channel and how that integrates. So the OU relies on partners and co-selling is an incredible piece of what they do as well, right?

[00:07:16] Nina Harding: Absolutely, absolutely.

So, and

[00:07:18] Vince Menzione: I know that you, you said that they’re paid a little bit differently. Before we started you were, you were talking about compensation packages.

[00:07:23] Nina Harding: Yeah. So we’ve, we’ve really, uh, made an effort this year to make sure that for our enterprise partners, so in particular the services and the. SDCs, right?

The ISVs, yeah. Um, that we have a really strong co-sell motion, right? So we’re focused on making sure that we’re understanding all the opportunities together. Uh, we’re looking at propensity maps and that we’re making those introductions at a deeper level from a compensation perspective, um, and even a review.

The methodology and making it, um, part of the day-to-day rhythm of the business. As we refer to it as, yes, uh, Microsoft, um, means it even is in the way we do monthly business reviews, how we’re showing up, evaluating the business. What is the partner attach rate? Are we seeing a difference when a partner is attached at stage one versus stage two versus after the deal closes?

Yeah. Um, are certain partners performing better? Is the size of a deal getting bigger because the partner is in there? Um, those are the things that we’re able to do now that we have much tighter integration with Microsoft’s SEM model. Yeah,

[00:08:36] Vince Menzione: and that’s why I was, I, I knew you were alluding to the sem. Yeah.

So a lot of people that have been to our events before. We’ve had, SEM has been repeatedly covered or talked about.

[00:08:47] Nina Harding: Yeah,

[00:08:47] Vince Menzione: so that’s Microsoft’s customer engagement methodology.

[00:08:51] Nina Harding: Very good.

[00:08:52] Vince Menzione: And, uh, and it, and what’s really, really terrific about this, this wasn’t there when I was at Microsoft, is really this.

Structuring of this is, this is the steps you take in the sales process. These are the things you do. This is when partners get engaged in the process with you. Right, right. It helps the sellers better understand what the expectations and accountabilities look like.

[00:09:13] Nina Harding: Yeah. Especially the accountabilities around the different roles.

And that’s what I like, is that we’ve actually gone down to the role level and not only what their role is with the customer, but what is their role with the partner. Yeah. And then what role does the partner play at different stages? So the maturation of the model has really opened the aperture, I think, for the opportunity for partners to come in and make a material difference and be part.

Of the engagement process. Yeah,

[00:09:41] Vince Menzione: that’s so, so critical. And one of the things we do at our events and some of, in fact we’ll cover, we’ll have a co-selling workshop conversation here later this month. We’ll have a couple of experts come in, um, including Jen Weis, who’s one of the partner development managers, uh, well known.

And then we have a lot of leaders that come in here to talk about this because partners don’t always, aren’t always aware. Of what their role is, right? Mm-hmm. And May and maybe the partner alliance manager, the leadership does, but within their own organizations, there’s some coaching that they need to do with their As as you’ve had to do with your organization.

Yeah. They have to do with their organization as well to make sure that they’re showing up right when they have those conversations and meetings

[00:10:21] Nina Harding: and actually in showing up. Right. One of the conversations I’m finding I’m having with a lot of partners, more than I’ve ever had is going back to some of the basics.

Like, when was the last time as a partner that you looked at what your internal profile looks like? How are you showing up in our systems? Um, what are the areas of expertise that you have? What are the customer success stories that are associated with you? And I know that that all sounds very simplistic, but we’re also in the world of ai.

Yes. And if we’re starting to put agents in front of all this information to help make recommendations to the field. And so I encourage our partners to go back and look at some of the plumbing, look at the basics. We’re going as far as in the Americas we’re introducing something called the A PB, the Americas Partner Brief.

And I know it sounds crazy, A PB,

[00:11:12] Vince Menzione: this is a new one for, for me. I know, I

[00:11:13] Nina Harding: know. Um, it’s just, and what is it exactly? It’s just getting introduced. Um, it is a detailed, much longer profile on a partner, that act that can be built with. The partner, uh, that goes into their industry expertise more around, uh, their customer penetration and what they’ve done, uh, helping to understand the workloads that they really can make a material difference on.

It’s not just about migration, but. What release of Oracle can you migrate to Azure? Yeah. That’s the level of detail that our field needs. And as a partner, you wanna differentiate yourself by these types of things. Yes. So these APBs allow us to have that much more detailed conversation about the value proposition and what differentiates each partner.

And then in front of that. We have an agent, and so as a sales rep is out there, and maybe they’re in healthcare life sciences, maybe they’ve got an epic implementation, but now they can say, Hey. I, it’s an epic, uh, implementation on Azure and I need to understand which partners can do that migration. Nice.

Um, which partners have built, agents have worked with, you know, any plethora of, um, solutions and ideally that’s what comes to bear.

[00:12:28] Vince Menzione: So this is happening in partner center, I’m assuming, or is happening outside of partner.

[00:12:32] Nina Harding: It is happening internally right now. Okay. Um, as a tool internally. So, so it’s

[00:12:37] Vince Menzione: an AI tool.

Yeah. We’re gonna talk a little bit more about the opportunity you’re around.

[00:12:41] Nina Harding: No, we have not exposed it through partner center yet. This is

[00:12:43] Vince Menzione: eating your, your own lunch here basically. Absolutely.

[00:12:47] Nina Harding: Yeah. We, we need to be AI first and everything that we do. Um, and I, I have a. Ton of examples of around, around how it’s transformed the way I do business, how I even work with partners, how I prepare to work with partners, how I go to market, or how I even do performance reviews.

Yeah, I mean, it’s really fun. That is amazing. Um, what it’s doing to.

[00:13:10] Vince Menzione: And then what you’re saying is too, these partners need to show up in a certain way so that they can be identified. Right? You, you need to have the right articulation of what your value proposition looks like.

[00:13:20] Nina Harding: Mm-hmm.

[00:13:20] Vince Menzione: So that Microsoft can find you.

This is, this is almost like SEO years ago with finding a search engines and things.

[00:13:27] Nina Harding: Well, it also will highlight their designations and their special specializations, but those are used to really unlock. Access, right? Yes. Um, unlock access to different, uh, incentives or access to EI, right. Or access to the field.

But it’s that next click down where the magic happens. And as we all know, there are quite a few people that can get to the designations, but they don’t necessarily have the magic sauce that your. Firm has. Yeah. Right. And that’s what we’re trying to do is make sure that we can help you illuminate that differentiation.

[00:14:01] Vince Menzione: Yeah. And, and, and your sales teams are perfectly aligned with the customer and know exactly what the customer is asking for at different levels. Right? Absolutely. And I think a lot of people miss this too, of, I do want to jump in on, on some of this tectonic shift conversation mm-hmm. Because AI and some of the other areas, but I do think that people misunderstand, like, what does an account executive do?

What does the sales team look like? Maybe you can just help us double click a little bit on that. I look at the account executive as almost like the quarterback.

[00:14:30] Nina Harding: Mm-hmm.

[00:14:31] Vince Menzione: And then they have solutions people that support them, right? Yeah. They, whether it’s ai, whether it’s cloud, whether it’s, uh, you know, office and, and other applications.

How do you, how do, how should a partner think about engaging with that, that team?

[00:14:47] Nina Harding: Well, there are a number, number of, uh, caveats to that. I’m just saying directly engage with that team, right? Yeah. Yes, exactly. The first. The first is, uh, I do recommend that partners, if you have a partner development manager, that you’re working with them on understanding and fine tuning.

Your value proposition with regards to a particular opportunity. Um, when we introduce you into the account, it is very effective. And then we’re actually tracking it. And going back to that reporting I was telling you, it’s on the leaderboard, right? And so even leadership is paying attention to all of that.

But as you’re looking at the account team, you’re absolutely right. We do have the ae, which is like the quarterback, right? Yeah. They’re responsible for the overall. Relationship. Um, but we now have, this year we’ve moved to just three solution areas. So yeah. Ah, is that ah, is that wonderful? Yes.

[00:15:41] Vince Menzione: I’m relieved.

[00:15:42] Nina Harding: I know. Well, I think everyone is. Yeah, right. Yeah. Um, so what

[00:15:45] Vince Menzione: are they?

[00:15:45] Nina Harding: Right? So, so we have, uh, Azure in ai, right? We have our biz apps. And then security. I love it. Pretty straightforward. Very straightforward, right? And then you, you put it all together there. Um, but what’s nice is that then you’ll have the, the specialist by those three different areas.

And as a partner, you wanna understand where you fit across all of them, or one or two. Right. Um, and then we also have, um, our customer engagement, right? So they’re looking at the success of the customer and the implementation. Those are actually a really key person for a lot of our partners, in particular, our services partners.

’cause they often are right in their, um, uh, making the recommendations Yeah. On which partners to bring in to help make what we’re positioning real.

[00:16:33] Vince Menzione: Yeah. So Azure and ai

[00:16:36] Nina Harding: mm-hmm.

[00:16:37] Vince Menzione: Which pretty self-evident business applications. Mm-hmm. We double click on that with me. ’cause we always thought talked about dynamics as kind of being its own separate thing, but this is also tying in the, the whole office suite and everything else into it as well.

Right?

[00:16:50] Nina Harding: Yeah.

[00:16:50] Vince Menzione: So there’s everything that’s customer facing. Yeah. Per,

[00:16:53] Nina Harding: you know, your stuff. That’s good. Um, yes. We’re in this, uh, this world where you’re seeing the commingling and blurring of the lines Yes. Between productivity tools and actually your Yes. Traditional ERPs, CRMs, right? Um, and that is where we’re unlocking a lot of the magic.

There’s a lot of momentum for us, um, right now, um, for our partners as well as, as a lot of the customers are saying, Hey, I want that blending. I want my, uh, end workers to be able to fluidly go between their experience in Outlook. And being in the ERP system. Yeah. Right. Um, I wanna be able to use co-pilots that go across, both generate the emails, uh, you’re, you’re a sales rep.

I wanted to automatically send some of these emails or write the emails that then I can add to, uh, before I send it to my customer. We’re finding such intense productivity. Um, for example, with our sales reps, the ones that are using AI consistently. Consistently. So that top quar quarter, shall we say, like in everything that they do, we’re seeing, um, about a 10% increase in their pipeline.

[00:18:09] Vince Menzione: Interesting.

[00:18:10] Nina Harding: Yep. We’re seeing a 23% higher close rate. That’s interesting. That’s really, and 9%, uh, larger book of business in actual revenues. That’s pretty cool.

[00:18:23] Vince Menzione: It’s very, well, it says as a seller it says, I need to get on board.

[00:18:27] Nina Harding: You do.

[00:18:27] Vince Menzione: Yeah.

[00:18:28] Nina Harding: We all do. Yeah. Right.

[00:18:29] Vince Menzione: So, well, let’s, let’s talk about that a little bit too.

Yeah. Like ai, we can’t, you know, I’ve talked about the tectonic shifts, right? So we talk about how rapid change transformation has been going on for quite some time. We used to talk about the fact that COVID. Was it an accelerant four, five years ago? Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. But then this thing called chat, GBT happened.

Then copilot happened like three years ago. Let’s call it three years now. And Oh, you’re

[00:18:50] Nina Harding: being generous. It’s not that long get that. It’s,

[00:18:52] Vince Menzione: it’s, no, it was November of 22. That’s of two. Yeah.

[00:18:55] Nina Harding: When

[00:18:55] Vince Menzione: chat GBT hit hit the market.

[00:18:57] Nina Harding: Yeah. Yeah.

[00:18:57] Vince Menzione: And then copilot. The spring afterwards.

[00:19:00] Nina Harding: Right.

[00:19:00] Vince Menzione: But this accelerant is happening so fast.

In the beginning, we overestimated what we expected. The bill Gates comment like, we overestimate what’s gonna happen in the year. We underestimate what’s gonna happen in 10 years. We’re starting to see this hockey stick now. What would you say?

[00:19:14] Nina Harding: Yeah, it’s incredible. Um, where we saw customers may be dipping their toe into things like copilot, right?

Yeah. Um, now we’re seeing them double down and. Make it pervasive and available to everyone at the company. You’re starting to see it transform the way, uh, we’re setting up, uh, call centers. Yeah. The way HR is engaging, um, the way that we’re putting together sales proposals, it’s in every piece of the business.

Now, finance, help me understand what, what are you seeing from my numbers? Gimme some intelligence so I look a little bit smarter. Right. Um, and you’ve

[00:19:48] Vince Menzione: been talking about verticals. I think about financial services. I

[00:19:52] Nina Harding: think about

[00:19:52] Vince Menzione: healthcare.

[00:19:53] Nina Harding: Oh, healthcare. Yeah. I mean, the

[00:19:54] Vince Menzione: impact in healthcare is astounding.

[00:19:56] Nina Harding: Oh, absolutely. Like the going to your doctor now you actually get to have a conversation with your doctor. Yeah. They have Dragon there, right? That’s right. That’s recording the conversation, putting it, putting it into, uh, the system. And I know with my, my doctor, I feel complete transformative relationship.

It’s almost like we went back 25 years, but not. With today’s technology in healthcare

[00:20:20] Vince Menzione: because now they have Epic or, or Cerner, whatever, whatever the application. But Epic is 90 per 80% of the market right now. Right?

[00:20:27] Nina Harding: Yeah. You have

[00:20:27] Vince Menzione: a great relationship with Epic as well.

[00:20:29] Nina Harding: Absolutely. But what I love is, to your point about healthcare, um, we’re back to like actually caring for the patient.

Not having to do all the data entry.

[00:20:39] Vince Menzione: Oh, I used to hate it. The doctors just sitting there tapping away. It still happens. By the way, they’re not all using Dragon yet. Oh, that’s blue. They’ll, they’ll get there. We’ll, got some work to do. Partners.

[00:20:47] Nina Harding: Let’s get ’em.

[00:20:48] Vince Menzione: I’ll give you a list of some of my, my doctors.

[00:20:51] Nina Harding: Yeah.

[00:20:51] Vince Menzione: But no, it’s fascinating. Um. Agentic ai. Yes. Right. So we layer, we talked mostly about the, the current use and copilot and other, and other uses. But this agentic AI really starts to change the game.

[00:21:03] Nina Harding: Mm-hmm.

[00:21:04] Vince Menzione: Because now applications start talking to one another, talks about this business applications that all spark start speaking to one another.

Yeah. You work with organizations like ServiceNow, as an example, that have been really leaning in on agentic ai. Yeah. Hopefully they’ll be coming. Michael Park will be coming to the podcast here soon.

[00:21:20] Nina Harding: Good.

[00:21:20] Vince Menzione: He’s also a former microsofty, but um, just this whole agentic piece is really, what are you starting to see there?

[00:21:27] Nina Harding: Oh, it’s exciting. Yeah. Um, it’s transformative. So let’s, let’s give a practical, everyday example, right? We’re all partners here, understanding in the partner world, I had someone on my team. In a matter of maybe two hours, build an agent that digested all the information around all our incentives worldwide.

Oh

[00:21:47] Vince Menzione: my gosh.

[00:21:49] Nina Harding: And now you can just ask the agent a question on incentives. Can you believe that? I mean, that’s just a little basic, practical two hour project. What we’re seeing is agents are showing up to help our, our, you know, practical reasons around partners, help our our field find the right partner.

Ask really interested, interesting, like kind of nuanced questions and be able to address that. Um, but it is allowing us to have autonomous and semi-autonomous. Workflows, right? Yeah. It’s, it’s really, uh, in incredible what we’re, uh, doing. I’m looking at every part of my business on where can I supplement to create a better experience for our partners or for my team.

Using an agent. Yeah. So that they can focus on the value added work. Just like we were talking about healthcare. I want my doctor to talk to me. Yeah. I want him to have a conversation with me. Absolutely. I want my team to have conversations with the partners and explore what’s possible. Not trying to kind of look through the, the minutia detail.

[00:22:55] Vince Menzione: Well sit there in partner center and trying to figure out how much business you’ve tracked this year. Oh yeah. They don’t have to do that any longer.

[00:23:01] Nina Harding: No, we now have agents that can actually put all of the information together and distill it in one place. I so love it. And then even go out, you can ask it to go out and get market information.

Yeah. Or think of new ideas and concepts. What haven’t I considered on doing with X, Y, Z partner? Yeah.

[00:23:18] Vince Menzione: Let’s talk about the organization a little bit more. Mm-hmm. I wanna double click on the fact that now you have this separate organization that’s very channel focused and your organization is enterprise partner focused.

[00:23:28] Nina Harding: Mm-hmm.

[00:23:28] Vince Menzione: Because the two do come together at certain points. Absolutely. Right. The, those channel partners. Selling first party, Microsoft’s first party products into those, uh, into those accounts, as well as selling those partners that you’re working with. So there’s this combination. I see a lot of it happening in the marketplace, right?

I see this collaboration happening. What’s your point of view on marketplace and the collaboration with the partners that you work with?

[00:23:52] Nina Harding: Yeah. I think, uh, marketplace is a very, very powerful co-sell, um, tool, right? Yeah. It, it, it allows, uh, in particular our software development companies and even services companies and then software development companies can bring in channels, channel partners as well.

Yeah. But it allows you to reach out to our entire customer base, um, and have the ability to accelerate the sales. Yeah. And also help highlight what your offerings are. And tailor them. Uh, I think that’s, uh, really important. But getting back to kind of the concept of, of the small SME. And c and, uh, we don’t want to say

[00:24:33] Vince Menzione: smec do, right?

EPS well, I, it rolls off the tongue sometimes, but say, but those

[00:24:38] Nina Harding: are internal organizations, right? And so we really don’t externalize it too much, right? For example, uh, when I do addresses to the America’s partners, it’s across all of, all of the different Absolutely. Areas. And our partners take an ISV, very few ISVs.

Only sell into enterprise. Yeah. They’re really across all segments. So we work together and, uh, my tagline internally is that if partner people don’t know how to partner and do business across all sorts of areas that we’re in the wrong business. Exactly. So, um, I’m not, I’m not, so I’m excited about how it’s energizing and connecting with the sales organizations where it’s also.

Uh, positioning our products to make sure that they’re segment specific and they’re addressing the needs of the customers in the segments. Uh, as well as that we have incentives that are really geared around the different behaviors that the partners are driving and the benefits that they’re driving for our customers, um, across multiple segments.

So it allows us the fidelity to meet. Our customers and our partners where the value proposition is even more

[00:25:46] Vince Menzione: effectively. And it makes, it makes perfect sense and you start thinking about the enterprise and how you’re driving across it, and then also against the ous. And then I, we like to talk, talk about the long tail, right?

You start getting into even the mid-size market and then into the smaller accounts.

[00:26:01] Nina Harding: Mm-hmm.

[00:26:01] Vince Menzione: And, and all of the Microsoft toolkit. And the partners toolkit are coming into those customers. We just did a session here last week on MSPs.

[00:26:09] Nina Harding: Mm-hmm.

[00:26:09] Vince Menzione: Because that whole world is changing because they now need to be ready on Microsoft technologies and understand how to work more closely with Microsoft.

’cause it’s no longer the old days where they were turning the crank and worrying about a laptop computer.

[00:26:22] Nina Harding: Yeah.

[00:26:22] Vince Menzione: They are really, they’re, they’re doing AI now. Yeah, they’re doing cloud in a big way

[00:26:26] Nina Harding: and it’s a different, it’s a different model, right? Yeah. Um, we’re very quickly moving away from this transactional sales approach.

Right? That’s right. And I don’t mean to simplify it to that extent, but yeah. The paradigm has shifted to, wow, you’re actually advising a customer on changing their business processes or, yeah. Or, uh, bending the curve on innovation or, uh, what, how do you have more intimacy with your customers? Um, or how do you make.

The day in the life of an employee better. Right, exactly. Those are the, those are the conversations you need to be having and that’s very different.

[00:27:04] Vince Menzione: Very different than the transactional, I want to sell you an EA or whatever the, whatever that conversation was. And that was the old model.

[00:27:10] Nina Harding: Yeah.

[00:27:10] Vince Menzione: To your point, that’s how they need to think differently and operate differently.

You’re starting to see some acquisitions happen, like some of your partners. Mm-hmm. Like Insight is a good example.

[00:27:18] Nina Harding: Yeah.

[00:27:19] Vince Menzione: They’ve gone after organizations that did that. Exactly. That understood solution selling. And bringing the whole portfolio to a customer. Mm-hmm. And you’re starting to see more and more of that m and a activity happening in this market?

Well,

[00:27:30] Nina Harding: it’s critical. Um, it’s no longer go in and position and sell the solution the customer wants you to be. There through the duration to actually have the impact.

[00:27:39] Vince Menzione: So critical. You know, it’s almost like Microsoft picks a theme every year. And this year for me, watching start and seeing Judson up there talking about Frontier for the first time.

Yeah. Uh, I, I love it. Um, it’s not a novel concept, but I, I think the approach is like, we’re gonna lean in in a way that we haven’t before. Yeah. We’re gonna, we’re gonna. Appreciate partners and customers that also lean in on this frontier. Can you, can you take us through what frontier actually means? Yeah.

So we’re

[00:28:07] Nina Harding: talking, we’re, we’re really going hard on front the frontier company, right? Yeah. Um, and what that is, is it’s a mindset shift, right? Think about the frontier. That’s where the, it’s the world of the possible. The West,

[00:28:21] Vince Menzione: I think about the west. The west,

[00:28:22] Nina Harding: right? Um, but it, it’s really around making AI.

Absolutely centric to the way ev everything you do. Yeah. Right. So it’s about the, um, the agenta computing, the use of copilot, um, even GitHub as you’re, you’re developing your solutions and it’s really thinking around what is the world a possibility versus being limited by. What functionality came outta the box.

Right. In theory. Right. Um, so we’re really excited about it and we’re excited about bringing our partners along on the journey. The conversation is shifting. We’re talking about that all the time with customers. It’s just fundamentally, it’s, it’s about exploration of what we can do together. I love that.

Um, as you’re looking at that, we need to almost have the ecosystem in our sellers and every company on the frontier of what is possible, uh, with AI and making sure that we’re as efficient as effective, creating the experiences that are optimal for our clients all the time. And then re-imagining how do you go about serving your customers differently?

[00:29:37] Vince Menzione: I love it. I love Frontier. I’m, I’m ready to get my cowboy hat, Adam. Um, I wanted to spend a minute here, if you don’t mind. I have a favorite question I ask each of my guests. Sure. A little bit off the track of partners, but in a way it ties back into it. So Nina, you are hosting a dinner party and. It could be anywhere in the world.

We were talking about Denmark earlier. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. We’re talking about South Florida, talking about New York City. Mm-hmm. Another great location. Mm-hmm. We both, you lived there and I just came back from New York.

[00:30:07] Nina Harding: Yeah.

[00:30:08] Vince Menzione: Um, you can invite any three guests to this dinner party. Mm. Your choice. Present, current, or past?

Some people have even referred to the, in the future, somebody in the future that they would invite to this dinner party.

[00:30:22] Nina Harding: Mm.

[00:30:22] Vince Menzione: Whom would you invite and why?

[00:30:26] Nina Harding: Ooh, that’s a good one. Um, first I’d invite my mom. Um, okay, so I. I lost her at 26, so she never knew me as an adult. So, um, and she was one, you were 26 at the time?

I was 26. Uh, she was 54. Um, and uh, so it would be really interesting to know her as an adult and have an adult conversation around, uh, career family. Children, just the, the way the world works. Uh, she spoke seven languages and watching what’s happening in the, in, in the world today. She was definitely, um, a woman of the world.

Uh, let’s see, who else would I, I’d actually invite my grandfather too, so I’m, I’m leaning in on family. I think I love the family

[00:31:12] Vince Menzione: conversation.

[00:31:12] Nina Harding: Um, the, the reason is I think. Family is so core to who I am. Um, it’s one of my most important values, uh, whether it’s my personal family or my work family. I treat them, um, with that kind of respect.

But with my grandfather, the reason why I’d love to bring him into the conversation is, uh, he was in Denmark and very. Involved in World War ii and, uh, he, I found out he wouldn’t talk about it, um, very much about the resistance in Denmark. But, um, he helped with a lot of, uh, getting the Jews out of Denmark into Sweden on boats at night.

Wow. And I’d love to have. A conversation now that I understand that. Yeah. About it. Yeah. Um, he was also, uh, involved in setting up the eu. He was on the, uh, tax board in Denmark. Uh, and so just to see things that I’m living and breathing in my world today to, to have conversations on what his thought process, he also did business in Burma.

Oh my goodness. Right. And, uh, all over it was a Burma back in the day. Yeah, right. Exactly. And he adopted, uh, a boy from Burma who became my uncle. Wow. Uh, so just the things and the experiences that in today’s world, uh, I never had a chance to explore there. Um, and then in the future. Going back to family.

Uh, I have two little boys, uh, four and 13 months. Oh boy. Can you believe that? Oh boy. I know. I crazy boy. Um, I would love to invite, um, their wife.

[00:32:46] Vince Menzione: Oh, I love that. I love that because

[00:32:48] Nina Harding: I would love for them at this dinner party to meet the previous generations and the roots, um, and have the exposure to the history, the, um, the multicultural nature of our family.

Um, but. The reality is I’m also a little bit older. I don’t know if I’m gonna have the pleasure that you just had a few weeks ago. Oh, such a great with the weddings and I’m really looking forward, um, that I’d have a chance to really spend some meeting time with that. I match that though

[00:33:15] Vince Menzione: as a young child to meet your future wife, like, and for you to meet their future wife at that point.

[00:33:21] Nina Harding: Mm-hmm.

[00:33:21] Vince Menzione: Mm-hmm. And time.

[00:33:22] Nina Harding: It would be pretty cool. Yeah.

[00:33:23] Vince Menzione: And so cool to have your mom back.

[00:33:26] Nina Harding: Oh,

[00:33:26] Vince Menzione: and um, and your granddad. My dad was, I lost my dad when I was in my twenties, so I understand that, like, that hole that you feel like you’ve gone many years without.

[00:33:36] Nina Harding: Yeah.

[00:33:36] Vince Menzione: And he was also World War ii, so, uh, was part, was part of the occu, he was part of the D-Day invasion and the occupation and everything.

So, but

[00:33:45] Nina Harding: yeah.

[00:33:45] Vince Menzione: But that whole generation was so different. They were so quiet about. There, time spent there.

[00:33:50] Nina Harding: Very, very, and I think, um, in today’s world, I, I would love to get to some of those core values and those decision and, um, points and what guided them. Yeah. Um, those truths. So cool. That are part of your core.

[00:34:04] Vince Menzione: I always like to ask this question. It sets us up, uh, as we finish the conversation today. All of our amazing partners that are watching and listening today. Yeah.

[00:34:11] Nina Harding: Yeah.

[00:34:12] Vince Menzione: Nina. We’ve got a big year ahead, right? A lot of, a lot of incredible things. Um, Microsoft, in my opinion, has built the most incredible ecosystem, the largest ecosystem by far, and has done the most work here.

And I think a lot of organizations, I, I tend to go on sometimes with LinkedIn with people, and they really don’t understand how Microsoft operates, which is why we do what we do. We try to help. Them to better, uh, establish relationships and engage and co-sell and mark marketplace and the like with you and your team, what would you say to them now about what they need to start doing as we get into the, because it’s still the summer here, at least a, a

[00:34:50] Nina Harding: few Hey, we’re, we’re, we’re way into Q1 here, right?

So it’s

[00:34:53] Vince Menzione: Q1. We’re, we’re kicking, we’re kicking into the year in big time. Yeah. What if these partners need to do better, differently? How should they be thinking about fiscal year 26?

[00:35:03] Nina Harding: Yeah, well, you’re, you’re hearing it in almost every question you’ve asked. AI is central to everything we’re doing, so, um, get on board, learn.

Um, we know that it can be scary in the beginning there, um, there could be some hesitancy from people, um, and. Uh, I really encourage you, we have so much training, uh, but the most important thing is to become customer zero and to embrace that technology. With yourself and then with your, your colleagues and at your company.

So, so important because how are you gonna position, how are you gonna evolve with your customers if you don’t inherently know? Yeah. Um, I often recommend to people just start with something that’s personal. Yeah. So I’m Danish. Uh, Danish, uh, at birthdays and weddings and celebrations. You write an a song in honor of the bride and groom where?

The birthday. Birthday. Oh, how cool

[00:35:59] Vince Menzione: that is.

[00:35:59] Nina Harding: And, uh, oh gosh. I would sw sweat having to put these songs together to rubber ducky or, oh, Susanna, I, I can go now in to copilot and it can write me a song in 30 seconds. I mean, it’s awesome. So just start with something that. Doesn’t feel scary. Then very quickly it’ll move to performance reviews.

It can, it can move to how you prepare for a customer engagement or a partner engagement. Uh, it can help you innovate on ideas or market opportunities, help you look around corners. So that’s the number one thing. Yeah.

[00:36:34] Vince Menzione: And customer zero. People don’t all understand that. That’s Microsoft’s terminology. We used to say eating your own dog.

Food, food, food. Right? Yeah. Which we don’t use the term dog food any longer, but essentially like use the technology that you’re selling.

[00:36:46] Nina Harding: Absolutely. Absolutely. So that’s the number one thing. Um, because you have to evolve with it. Or unfortunately, I don’t know what that market is gonna look like for you three, five years from now.

[00:37:01] Vince Menzione: And you, the leading indicators will. Show us that you need to be on board. You need to be staying trained every day on top of this because it means that your pipeline, your sales, everything is going to be impacted by that.

[00:37:12] Nina Harding: Yeah. Uh, the second thing that I also encourage for partners is in this world where, um, everyone wants to do everything.

I think the power of differentiating yourself and creating your value proposition is so important. What that means is your value proposition on. Success you’ve had with customers, making sure that that’s tangible in stories and videos, whatever. Um, making sure that you understand by industry what your value proposition is and your depth of expertise.

If you’re doing everything right, you know that expression in your peanut buttering peanut butter, you’re probably not showing up as doing something great that. From a field perspective. So that differentiation is really, really important.

[00:37:56] Vince Menzione: I’ve worked with some of the large, but when I was doing consulting work back in the day before we started up the, the events and podcast, um, these organizations wouldn’t understand how to engage at the OU level.

Mm-hmm. And they didn’t speak the language going into the meetings. Mm-hmm. They’d have, they’d have a healthcare conversation the same as a financial services

[00:38:14] Nina Harding: company. Yeah. You can’t do that anymore. Yeah. And these were

[00:38:15] Vince Menzione: large ISVs. These are multi-billion dollar organizations that don’t understand that.

[00:38:19] Nina Harding: Yeah. Well, and, and that’s what you’re seeing at Microsoft. Uh, in the US we’re a hundred percent verticalized, right? All industry based with Canada, Latin America, but even within the countries you click down one level, it’s verticalized. Yes. So, um, the power of that differentiation and the application to a customer.

Pain point, uh, trends by industry Absolutely critical. So,

[00:38:47] Vince Menzione: so critical.

[00:38:47] Nina Harding: Um, and then the

[00:38:48] Vince Menzione: differentiation, I’m sorry, you mean, but like getting, getting people’s attention, right. You need to be able to show up in a way that people understand what your value looks like.

[00:38:57] Nina Harding: Absolutely. Yeah, absolutely. You can’t do everything, but you do these things really, really well.

[00:39:02] Vince Menzione: Really well.

[00:39:03] Nina Harding: You want something to pop in the, in, in the, in the mind of the sellers when they hear, yeah. X, y, Z scenario. Right? Absolutely. Um, so that’s, that’s really critical. Uh, I enablement. Um, it is, we are, we are evolving so quickly. If you did training six months ago on ai, I hate to break it to you, it’s a new world.

It’s old ready, right? It’s old. So make it, make it part of like your Friday mornings or your Friday afternoons. Make learning. An experience. It’s part of your routine. It’s something fun. Do it with your colleagues. Share top 10 best tips and tricks. You need to really embrace the enablement piece, um, more so than I think we’ve ever needed to before.

[00:39:48] Vince Menzione: Yeah. And being technical in that regard too. Being, being on top of that. Technical expertise is so critical. Yes. You’ve put more resources there as well. Right. You’ve, you’ve lined up more resources for enablement.

[00:39:59] Nina Harding: Absolutely. You’ll see that in our field sales organization, we shifted where our. Resources are.

So, um, it was in the news, right? We made some, uh, big changes, uh, in early July, but we also are hiring up in other places. Yes. So it wasn’t a net deficit, it’s actually an increase in technical roles. Yeah. Um, so we’re seeing it speaks

[00:40:21] Vince Menzione: to too, as AI has proliferated, uh, our world and our, our movements. Um, we, certain roles are not as important anymore.

The roles that are important are the ones that are more specific to executing performance, which are more technical in nature and enablement. So it makes, this makes perfect sense.

[00:40:39] Nina Harding: Yeah. For example, in uh, the US we have, what, 350 open roles right now for, um, solution engineers. Nice. Nice. So what you’re seeing is this shift and for our partners, I encourage you to look at where the conversation is going.

Um, but what happens is, is that you have to be able to translate between the technology and the business. Yes. And that is what’s so critical right now. Um, I would of course always say, make sure you’re looking at things like your designations and, um, making sure that you’re on top of the incentives and how those are all growing and shifting.

There has been a tremendous amount of investment made into partners this year. Very nice. Um, and then, um, outside, outside of that, I think, let’s have fun. Let’s have fun. Let’s go. Let’s go solve some real. Problems together. Yeah. Let’s innovate together. Let’s collaborate. It’s in the conversation that I’m finding the magic now.

It’s not just in the routine kind of kind of map and play of of, of, um, mapping an AE to an AE on a deal. It’s actually in the exploration of what’s possible. Yeah.

[00:41:53] Vince Menzione: And what’s possible is amazing. We have an incredible year ahead. Yeah. Yeah. And we would love to have you come join us. We’re gonna have a busy.

Fall and winter year. So for those of our. Viewers and listeners who haven’t heard it yet, we just opened up our registration for our rest and event. Washington DC area is always a popular spot, October 27th through the 29th. Great. We’ve got an open invitation for you to come. Great keynote for us. Great.

Uh, we’ll be doing something around Ignite. We don’t know exactly what that looks like. TBD and then this winter we’re gonna be back here. I’ll hopefully be joining you in January Yeah. With, with what you’ll be doing. But then we’ll have some things going on here as well.

[00:42:33] Nina Harding: Great. So

[00:42:33] Vince Menzione: I’d love to have you back here in the studio.

[00:42:34] Nina Harding: Absolutely. Thank you for the opportunity. It’s wonderful to you. It’s so great to make, have

[00:42:38] Vince Menzione: you make the trip today and be with us. Yeah. So great to have you with our partners that are watching a lot of, a lot of which you listen, some, we’re starting to get more YouTube now. More people are watching us.

But, uh, so great to have you here today. So thank you so much for being here.

[00:42:52] Nina Harding: Absolutely. Thank you.

[00:42:53] Vince Menzione: Thank you, Nina. Thank you for watching and listening to this episode of The Ultimate Partner. We’re [email protected] or Ultimate Partner.com where you can find all information about our community ultimate partner experience, as well as our live events.

And we’ve got a busy fall plan for you where we’re hosting our live event in Reston, Virginia, in the Washington DC area. On October 27th to the 29th, we’re gonna have an amazing list of speakers and people there in the room. So great way to continue learning how to become the ultimate partner and stay tuned ’cause we’ve got more ahead that we’ll be announcing that the fall continues, uh, possibly another event in the fall, as well as being back here in the Boca Studio this winter.

So thank you again for watching and supporting us.