Advice on Building a Relationship with Microsoft

For those of you who are trying to establish a relationship with Microsoft, I thought I would share some of my insights and advice after 15+ years with the company.

As you well know, Microsoft is a complex beast. It can consume massive amounts of time trying to navigate the organization, especially if you are an expansion stage company.

Below are my words of advice.

1. Understand Microsoft’s business strategy
It’s important that you do some research to understand Microsoft’s core business strategies. There is a treasure trove of information available on the web and through the analyst community. One of my favorite resources is Directions on Microsoft by Redmond Communications. It’s pricey, but well worth it given the quality of content. This was my primary resource for staying abreast of everything going on within the company. Do your homework, it will pay-off handsomely. 

2. Align with something they care about
After you have conducted some research, it’s important that you understand Microsoft’s whole product marketing strategy and how you fit in. My friend Luke Hohmann, founder and CEO of Enthiosys and senior adviser to OpenView Venture Partners calls it “Marketecture“. It embodies the complete business model, including the licensing and selling models, value propositions, technical details relevant to the customer, data sheets, competitive differentiation, brand elements, the mental model marketing is attempting to create for the customer, and the system’s specific business objectives. Really dig deeply to understand what this is about and how your product or service compliments it.  Another thing that gets Microsoft motivated is to help them beat their competitors. If your product provides the ability to “switch” a customer to the Microsoft stack or generates a sense of urgency (such as compliance that “pulls” the stack), you’re in good shape.

3. Adopt the stack
Need I say more? This means adopting the stack from end-to-end. The more products you “pull”, the better. In my mind, this is just getting your foot in the door.

4. Become a Microsoft Gold Certified Partner
Once you have your foot in the door, you need to validate this with certification. This is a prerequisite to building any level of relationship with Microsoft. IMO, Microsoft has the best partner program on the planet. One of my early colleague’s from the mid atlantic district, Allison Watson, is now corporate vice president of Microsoft’s worldwide partner group and has done an outstanding job of taking this program to the next level. Also, if you are an emerging startup, I highly recommend that you leverage Microsoft BizSpark, a program that provides software, support and visibility for software startups. My former boss, Dan’l Lewin, corporate vice president of strategic and emerging business development, launched this program a couple years ago. It has been extremely successful. If you are interested in this FREE program, OpenView Venture Partners is a Network Partner. Feel free to contact me at [email protected] for a registration code.

5. Get ahead of the curve
As you plot the course, always stay one-step ahead. Make sure you understand where Microsoft is going with its next product release. If you join the various partner programs, this will give you access to technical previews, etc. that will be useful. The last thing you want to do is to collide and become obsolete.

6. Focus
As I mentioned earlier, Microsoft is a highly complex organization. As an emerging stage company, it’s easy to get swallowed up by the machine and spin your wheels. My advice is to subscribe to Directions on Microsoft to gain access to Microsoft’s organizational chart. This is published twice a year and highly useful in navigating the organization. This chart lists general manager level and above. It really helps to understand where you are in the organization and most importantly, where to focus your time and effort. I recall a statement from a general manager that resonates with me to this day…“be brief, be bright, be gone”. I think this pretty well describes it.

7. Evangelize
My last word of advice is to take advantage of every opportunity to evangelize your company. This means attending the various Microsoft events that matter. For example, the worldwide partner conference , convergence and product development conference (PDC) are all good events to attend. This is a great way to leverage your time by meeting with people from the product groups to field organization to complimentary partners. Take advantage of it and make it a religion.

Hopefully, this information is helpful as you begin to plot your relationship with Microsoft. As an expansion stage venture capital fund, we are always looking for new ways to maximize value for our portfolio companies.

Happy selling!