Go large with go-to-market: how to leverage your Microsoft partnership to accelerate new customer adds

As proud as you may be of your company’s brand and the story behind it, positioning your business as a Microsoft Solution Partner with proved expertise in Microsoft products, such as Business Applications and Coplot, adds the extra heft you need to succeed in the digital innovation space.

Here are five ways to put your Microsoft alliance and abilities front and center:

1. Tap into go-to market genius – Microsoft may have sailed past its $3tn market value on the strength of ingenious IT products and services. But it’s also a master at knowing what end users need and knowing how to sell it to them. Microsoft’s product messaging is backed by in-depth market research, knowledge of existing and future trends, and buyer behavior analysis. So, weaving some of its winning comms strategy into your own unique go-to-market messaging and overall value proposition seems a no-brainer. It will support your mission to differentiate your services and leave your prospects keen to know more.

2. Verticalize your solutions with Microsoft – When considering your go-to-market strategy, have you considered tailoring your messaging to highlight the value you deliver to different industries that you service? Remember that digital innovation and business acceleration can mean very different things in the context of specific sectors. In manufacturing, digitizing warehouse data might be the key to digital transformation; whereas companies in financial services might envision digital customer services as key of their innovation journey. Think too about the way businesses desire to work AI solutions into their operations is reshaping buyer behavior. Microsoft provides industry-specific content for a lot of its products, so go ahead and explore their industry solutions library for examples you may find useful.

3. Learn about your customers’ buying intent via Cloud Ascent – Another significant factor to look out for is buyers’ intent. Microsoft CloudAscent is an invaluable resource which offers a wealth of insights into your target market, and how to tap into their real-time buying intent (such as readiness to migrate form on-prem to cloud) that your customers have demonstrated in the past months.

4. Secure the Solution Partner designation – It’s hard to overstate the momentum you’ll gain from becoming a Microsoft Solution Partner. As this article sets out, securing such a designation extends customer reach and can also open the door to additional Microsoft funding. Not only customer-facing badges (credentials) and co-branded campaigns are available to use for all designated partners in sales and marketing materials, but more importantly, the access to the Microsoft co-selling opportunities and funds is granted exclusively to Solution Partners. And if all you need to accelerate your GTM initiatives is a boost of value content, Microsoft supplies ready-made or templated GTM content assets, from ad banners to training workshop scripts, providing the partnership visibility that will satisfy your prospects.

5. Let Microsoft help you sync up your marketing and sales – A huge 90% of sales and marketing professionals have said their functions operate in silo. But this ignores the power of operating both in harmony. A LinkedIn study also finds businesses that align sales and marketing have 24% faster growth than companies that don’t. Microsoft offers its Solution Partners excellent marketing and sales enablement to fill your pipeline and win new business. You can use campaign roadmaps and execution guides spanning the whole customer lifecycle funnel to engage, nurture and convert leads throughout the customer journey, from awareness, pre-sales and post-sales activities to loyalty programs. Explore Microsoft’s GTM directory for joined up Marketing and Sales campaign support here.

6. Go to market with Microsoft – Now you’ve built your buying audience, developed your message, aligned your marketing and sales, you are well equipped to run engaging GTM campaigns. With the support of campaign assets and available funds, you can run your GTM campaigns alongside Microsoft. Use the Solution Partner designation logo in all of your sales and marketing materials, and start to take advantage of co-branded, co-funded marketing campaigns that fill your pipeline with strong leads ready to convert. Microsoft also ready-to-go campaigns in a box – complete with a free campaign dashboard – for those who are still developing their marketing capacity and capability.