Use your Microsoft co-op incentives as a CSP reseller to accelerate growth
Microsoft co-op incentives
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.
