Meeting with Margo Day, VP of Partner Relations

Today was pretty interesting. I drove on over to the substation of the mothership that represents Microsoft in Atlanta. Well, ok Alpharetta may not be considered Atlanta anymore, but I digress. They handed out the mandatory 'Microsoft Koolaid', and my flavor was grape today.

Today's meeting was put together for a few select SBS partners ( I think there were around 8 of us) to have an interactive session with the person that can make a difference.

Some key takeaways.... First, I think there is an agreement that there is an inconsistant message regarding the SMB Market in Microsoft's world. This really is to be expected. Microsoft has started this program and aligned it to the SBS Server 2003 product set. I think it will take some time for them to really incorporate the other product offerings from an SBS perspective. I am certain that the fact that this program is as successful as it is will mean additional resources will focus on improving it. That's the message I took away from Margo on this. That being said, I'm extremely pleased with the resources that they have given us, and the fact they've realized that the enterprise market is tapped. The statistics around the SMB market are staggering, and I have to give them kudos for realizing this before the other giant software companies have (SAP, Oracle, etc).

Second, partners that are key influencers in sales of microsoft products really have no way to show this to Microsoft reps. We really don't get to track this or get credit for it. There is a disconnect between the solution selling messages that we hear from management and the comp plans of the field reps. The bottom line is that Microsoft is a product company, that has a responsibility to its shareholders: Sell more product... This really isn't a surprise, and I expect the alignment between the mothership and the pod ships (?) to become more aligned in the future.

Third, I was really hoping to talk about leveraging some of the Microsoft Marketing muscle into our space. Give us some better templates to use to target the Small Business Owner. I'm not the marketing expert, but I've had to create collateral (hopefully I spelled that right) for Small Business Server, SBS with Sharepoint (and why it's valuable to a small business, and the CRM Product. I would think that they have much better resources to provide us with compelling messages to the Small Business Owner in our regions. I may write her a letter outlining some of my ideas around this...

All in all, this was pretty fun. I met some fellow partners and we all shared some of our internal issues and concerns about building and managing a practice. The various levels that were represented here were pretty cool... One guy had a brand spanking new practice, a couple of certified partners, a gold partner, and it ranged up to a guy I wasn't really sure shouldn't have been in a home...Who doesn't know what a podcast is these days? Oh well, he probably has more business experience than I'll ever have...

Tomorrow is the Partner Quarterly Briefing...From what I understand, the Koolaid flavor is Cherry. Yummy!!!