How to benefit from Microsoft Partner co-sell opportunities

The co-selling opportunity for Microsoft partners is huge. In this blog, we explore how to get the best out of Microsoft’s Incentives programs in the UK.

By the time you've finished reading, you should have a good understanding of what co-selling is, the benefits it offers to Microsoft partners and how to become co-sell-ready.

So, if you are looking for options on how to accelerate the growth of your sales pipeline and improve your conversion from lead to opportunity, then read on.

What is co-selling and why should I do it?

The meaning of co-selling is to collaboratively sell a product or solution. in the Microsoft world, that means selling collaboratively with Microsoft's internal sales team or with another Microsoft partner.

Co-selling is the term given to a selling initiative that enables Microsoft and their partner network to drive joint revenue and customer success. When you work with Microsoft’s internal sales teams on an opportunity, they will be incentivised by Microsoft to sell your solution at no additional cost to you.

You may even work with other partners whose technology and expertise might be effective in your sales strategy for a particular solution or a customer. This will mean that you may have to share the commission gained on your solution – but if it is necessary to help close the deal, that’s the most important thing, right?

Whilst closing the deal on your solutions is the primary aim here, there are other benefits for both you and your customers which we’ll explore in this blog post.

A co-sell solution vs a marketplace offer

What co-sell categories are there?

• Co-sell with Microsoft sales teams: Work with one or more Microsoft sales teams to actively fulfil customer needs. That can include selling your offers, Microsoft’s offers, or both. Both you and Microsoft's sales teams can identify and share customer opportunities in which your solutions may be a good fit.

• Partner to Partner (P2P): Work with another Microsoft partner to actively solve a customer problem.

• Private deal: Share what you are independently working on with Microsoft so it’s reflected in the Microsoft reporting system for analysis and forecasting. Private deals, even though they are not truly collaborative, are included in the Co-sell opportunities tab to provide an easy path to upgrade any pipeline deal to a co-sell opportunity (before it is won/lost).

• Solution Assessment (SA): Work with partners who are vetted by the solution assessments business team to assess the technology needs of customers who are using or planning to use Microsoft technologies.

What types of commercial marketplace listings are eligible for co-sell?

The co-sell status is available for the following commercial marketplace offer types:

• Azure Application

• Azure Container

• Azure Virtual Machine

• Consulting service

• Dynamics 365 apps on Dataverse and Power Apps

• Dynamics 365 Operations Apps

• Dynamics 365 Business Central

• IoT Edge Module

• Managed Service

• Power BI App

• Software as a service (SaaS)

How do I become co-sell-ready?

To achieve co-sell-ready status and open yourself up to collaboration with Microsoft or other Microsoft partners, you need to:

We hope that this article gave you the information you needed to decide whether co-sell status is something you want to pursue. If you don’t have the time or resources to put into getting your solutions co-sell ready then please get in touch – this is where Noteworthy support shines!