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| Back to associated article: Microsoft Partner Benefits and Risks |
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| Research Report: 2006 Guide to MS Programs for Partners Customer Campaigns |
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By Paul DeGroot [bio] The following an excerpt of a Research Report published by Directions on Microsoft, an independent research firm focused exclusively on Microsoft strategy & technology. More samples of our content, as well as a list of upcoming articles and reports are also available. Customer Campaigns, the structure around which Microsoft began building its marketing and sales efforts starting in the second half of 2006, mark one of the company's most ambitious efforts to leverage its research on how businesses function. Building a Map of Business This structure began with an effort to map all common business functions, relationships, and activities in modern businesses. Although an interesting exercise, particularly for a company often criticized for its lack of knowledge about businesses other than software, the mapping exercise does not easily translate into concrete sales. One technique that Microsoft has found useful is to convert abstract or general business roles into specific personas, fictional people who embody the knowledge, concerns, and aspirations that people in their position in the business world commonly express. Thus, a manufacturing business likely has people like Phyllis in the finance department, Kevin the sales manager, and Ichiro the IT professional, all of whom are among the more than 100 personas that Microsoft has developed to guide product developers, marketers, sales staff, and partners to sell software in manufacturing industries. Customer Campaigns Microsoft then developed Customer Campaigns that the company believes can address common concerns of real customers. Partners can identify individuals in the companies they deal with who correspond closely to the personas, and present them with products, technologies, or solutions that are likely to address their concerns. Initially, five Customer Campaigns are aimed at business decision-makers in enterprises and midmarket companies (which typically have at least some dedicated IT staff). The 2007 campaigns aimed at this group include the following:
The following three campaigns are aimed at IT decision-makers in enterprises and midmarket companies:
Finally, the following four campaigns have been designed for small businesses:
Aligning with Competencies While the Customer Campaigns emanate from Microsoft's horizontal business and product groups, the campaign owners have worked closely with Microsoft industry teams to put those campaigns into the context of the industries that customers, including larger enterprises, work within. The Customer Campaigns can also be linked to partner competencies. For example, a customer in a customer-facing role, such as sales or customer service, might be a good candidate to hear about how Outlook can work with Microsoft CRM to track customer contacts or a customer's service history, or how a SharePoint extranet can be used to let good customers track their order status and history. Relevant competencies in this scenario include Information Worker (for Outlook and SharePoint), Microsoft Business Solutions (for Microsoft CRM), and Advanced Infrastructure (for configuring the extranet). By linking partners to Customer Campaigns, which in turn are optimized for specific categories of decision makers in certain market segments, Microsoft hopes to focus partners on sales opportunities that promise a high likelihood of success and profitability. To ensure that partners are better equipped to close those deals, Microsoft provides partners with a Demo Showcase—a large library of prebuilt demos that are highly targeted to specific personas, verticals, and Customer Campaigns—that partners can take on sales calls. Microsoft will also spend US$30 million on incentives and discounts for partners training to deal with the common complaint that partners can't find enough trained technical staff to meet the demand for their services.
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