Use your Microsoft co-op incentives as a CSP reseller to accelerate growth
Quick Background: In Jan 2020, Microsoft started accumulating funds through the co-op program for its CSP resellers. CSP partners have been accumulating funds that can be deployed starting in July 2020.
These co-op funds can be used by Microsoft channel resellers towards qualified activities that grow their business. In addition to driving demand co-op investment funds are meant to help resellers focus on these critical areas:
- Creating and sustaining recurring revenue – greater certainty and stability.
- Maximize customer engagement – invest in relationships and become a trusted advisor, increasing engagement and adoption.
- Deliver additional services – upsell and cross-sell opportunities.
The Microsoft co-op guide directly lists various qualified activities, including demand generation activities like tradeshows and events. Neither of which are viable opportunities in a COVID-dictated 2020. Along with marketing activities, what is not always obvious is the opportunity to automate processes. Microsoft Direct resellers incur a significant burden in managing and provisioning seats and services.
Investing in a branded self-service site that allows your customers to manage their current services, while also purchasing new services, saves you time and resources and grows revenue.
Resellers with self-service portals can offload almost 80% of provisioning changes, significantly increasing customer satisfaction, and freeing up time to pursue other value-adding activities.
The guidebook explicitly states that you can use these funds for branding activities. These branded self-service portals facilitate customer engagement, demand generation, and revenue growth in five main ways:
- It’s what clients want.
- Customers want increased transparency, the ability to manage services themselves, and real-time insight into costs and billing.
- It’s a direct channel for customer collaboration and communication.
- Once implemented, these portals provide targeted information and allow your team to communicate (and market) directly to these customers when managing this portal.
- They eliminate work for your team and the customer.
- Fewer emails, less back-and-forth, more automation = less effort.
- It unlocks upsell and cross-sell opportunities.
- These portals provide additional visibility into product catalogs, and your unique offerings, facilitating more in-depth conversations around business needs.
- Payments and billing are automated.
- Add unique services, your IP, and other new products to the existing subscription account.
The good news?
Work 365 helps you accomplish all the above, and you can apply co-op funds to utilize Work 365 solutions.
How does Work 365 help:
- Work 365 enables you to build a portal for your customers to view usage data, access personalized pricing, and create a customized product catalog.
- Focus more on business needs and product value through more in-depth discussions with clients on how to grow their business.
- Have all your teams work in one system that includes all your customer data.
The Microsoft co-op program incentivizes resellers to invest in their growth using Microsoft funds. Work 365 can help you along with that journey.
To learn more about how Work 365 can help you accelerate your business growth at scale, while using co-op funds for the investment, follow the link HERE.
