Maximising your Microsoft incentives
Tuesday, December 15, 2020
Microsoft offers MSPs a variety of incentives for selling its various products – be it Microsoft 365, Dynamics, Azure, or any of its other platforms. However, while there’s a standard set of core incentives on offer, there are also ‘accelerator schemes’ which change every year depending on Microsoft’s priorities.
We want our partners to get the most from all of these schemes, so let’s take a look at some of the incentives offered and how MSPs can benefit.
Boosting the bottom line
One fantastic incentive for Silver or Gold partners is the increased number of licences available to them for a lower cost. This also provides a significant reduction in operational costs for MSPs. This combination of an increase in commission with a reduction in overheads improves the overall margin, making it a very attractive proposition for MSPs.
To promote further uptake of the Microsoft stack, direct support coaching – in the form of a set number of hours, depending on the MSPs partnership level – from Microsoft’s experts is available. These support hours can be used to further understanding of the various platforms available, or be used to guide customers through ways of integrating Microsoft’s services with the other systems that they’re already using.
This is a great cost saving because rather than having to seek training outside of the source, you can get one-on-one advice from the supplier itself for no additional cost.
Cyclical changes
Microsoft’s incentives can be generous, but recent interest in the Azure platform has meant that customer demand for cloud services has dominated awareness – meaning there’s a need for MSPs to focus on other aspects of their services.
To incentivise partner sales across the board, Microsoft offers financial rewards on a cyclical basis – shifting its focus from one platform to another on a fairly regular basis. However, when combined with the constant changes in product naming conventions, it becomes easy to misunderstand what’s actually on offer at a given time. Ultimately, without knowing which incentives are available, MSPs could well be missing out.
We know that while Microsoft actively supports their partners, keeping up to speed with all of the changes is a challenge. However, at Giacom we are on hand to help you through this process. This can take the form of incentive reviews or webinars to explain what’s available – at different times, across all levels of partnership.