In our previous two articles in this series, we talked about the challenges Microsoft Partners face when they don’t properly understand Microsoft Sales Plays and how to use them, the opportunities that arise from having clarity around the Microsoft Sales Plays, and the four keys to finding that Sales Play clarity.
Today, we are unpacking one of Microsoft’s Sales Plays using Desmond’s Sales Play unpacker. As an ex-Microsoft Partner Development Manager, Des has spent many years helping partners better harness the opportunity that Microsoft offers their ecosystem.
So, let’s get into it.
Solution area.
The solution area is one of the four key areas that Microsoft have all their products and services categorized in. At the moment, those are:
- Modern Work & Security
- Applications and Infrastructure
- Data & AI
- Business applications.
So, at the top of the taxonomy is the solution area – which is the breadth of the technology capability that Microsoft put together.
Sales Play
What sits under that is the SalesPlay. This is about turning technology, voice or products and services into something that your customer practically needs. This is where the Sales Plays come in.
The Sales Play identifies specific customer needs and priorities that Microsoft is trying to drive. And this is where the dollars hit - the alignment between what Microsoft's trying to drive in the overall scorecard. For example, you might set a scorecard in your business around needing X amount of revenue. Then you might ask, what solutions am I going to sell for X amount of revenue?
Then, which sales plays are going to drive which revenue and align to which of our priorities?
Technical SalesPlay
At Partner Elevate, we see the Sales Play as broken down into two different and very distinct pieces.
The first piece is the technical piece of the Sales Play. From a Partner’s perspective, this is the functional and technical skills needed in the business. You might have to acquire, train, or develop them in order to deploy, configure and support that Sales Play offer.
Go-to-Market Sales Play
The other part, which is what a lot of people do talk about, is the go-to-market SalesPlay. This is the link to what you’re selling into market. For each of these, Microsoft provides a go-to-market bill of materials.
In the BOM you'll find things like how to execute the SalesPlay, selling battle cards, eBooks, videos, or thought leadership articles. But, fair warning here – slot of this content is very generic. It is Microsoft-centric and spoken in the voice of Microsoft. They are positioned around customer priorities in general, not your customer priorities specifically.
As you can imagine, taking these Sales Plays out of the box and throwing them in to customer land is not what we recommend. What you need is to focus on your messaging, your offer, with your value wrapped around it. And that’s really where our program comes in.
Interested to know more about our implementation program? Check out our Sales Play On-Ramp(TM) program.
Prefer to talk to someone? Book a meeting.
