B2B Leads - Get Some!

It doesn't ever change. In the 5 years I've been in partner marketing at Microsoft I've been part of over 200 one on one partner interviews, 2 needs segmentation studies, dozens of focus groups and led a worldwide partner advisory council and the answer to the question "What can Microsoft do to help your business?" is always the same - HELP ME GET MORE LEADS!

Hopefully you got your answers at Worldwide Partner Conference in Houston a couple weeks ago but if you weren't one of the 10,000 people who made it then read on.

If you're a large Reseller or OEM of Microsoft's products like Office, Vista, of any of our Server families, you've likely been on the receiving end of many leads as we invest scads of < your favorite currency symbol here > for demand gen campaigns with the sole purpose of passing those leads off to partners to close. People sometimes forget that more than 90% of Microsoft's revenue comes from the channel and not direct from end customers, so in the end partners are the sales force that funds virtually everything Microsoft and subsequently I do, including my family's annual camping trip to the Oregon coast, which helps me keep my sanity. So if you're a partner I thank you, my wife thanks you, my kids thank you, and the Oregon visitor's bureau thanks you.

But what if you're not Ingram Micro or HP? What if you're a software company selling feed management systems to pig farmers or a software product that actually competes with a Microsoft product? Thumbing through Pig International the other day I took a quick look in the advertiser section. Hmmm. No Microsoft!

Well, even though you're unlikely to see a full page ad for Microsoft partners in the next version of PI there's plenty of ways to use your Microsoft Certified or Gold Certified status to fill your pipeline. Here's a quick guide to a few of them:

Help potential customers find your solution with SEO Services . The latest stats show that over 80% of customers looking for a software solution start their product research with a search engine. While many of you have likely begun to invest in Pay Per Click campaigns with Google, Yahoo or Live Search, customers still tend to trust and therefore click on the organic results versus the paid ad by a ratio of over 8-1. So the bottom line is if you can make your way to the top of the SERPs (search engine results pages) you'll likely reap tons of benefits in the form of click throughs. SEO Services will help you get there by providing you with expert guidance on what to do increase those page rankings. Oh and by the way - we do it for all search engines, including Google.

But getting clicks is only half the battle. It’s amazing the percentage of landing pages that fail to convert. In tight times like these you simply can't leave leads on the table. Nothing frustrates a visitor more than getting to your site and being unable to understand in 3 seconds what they are suppose to do. Well if you were one of the 3500+ partners to participate in Microsoft's offer of a free 12 month subscription to Marketing Sherpa's premium marketing research you've likely taken advantage of their expert landing page guidance and case studies results. If not I've got good news. We are currently piloting a landing page optimization service that will help drive those conversions up. In most cases even the slightest of tweaks to a whitepaper or trial offer landing page can often double conversions. Stay tuned as we are expecting good pilot results and a full service offering to our partners sometime in this year.

Now, once you have some good prospects you'll want to qualify them before you send your sales team in. Nothing hurts the relationship between sales and marketing more than passing off a list of unqualified tire kickers. If you’re fortunate enough to have an inside sales team then make sure you're spending the time to qualify - but if you’re like most marketing constrained software companies don't worry. Microsoft has invested in a worldwide "on demand" telesales infrastructure exclusively for partners use. Partner Telesales Services or PTS uses skilled sales agents who work on your behalf to qualify your lists. We'll even provide you with lists from our existing PTS databases to augment your own. Many of our Business Development Reps have years of B2B software sales experience. Partner Satisfaction is off the charts with this service which supported over 1000 partner campaigns in the past 18 months and over $2 billion in partner pipeline.

These are just a few of the services that Microsoft has developed to enhance your ability to increase your opportunities. There are many more. Check them out at the ISV Opportunity Resource page. Oh and if you're a pig farmer check out Feed Management Systems a Microsoft Gold Certified Partner.

Cheers,

Chris Olson, Director Microsoft Partner Program