Partners Partnering...

One of the best ways for a partner to convince a customer of the value of their service is by showing the whole picture. 

For example, if Microsoft wants to sell Exchange Server and the customer is interested in larger mailbox storage, we can talk about how Exchange 2007 can handle up to 2GB. Of course, so can the other guys.

But, we can differentiate ourselves by saying,

"hey, not only will you get bigger storage, for the short term benefits/ROI that you want, but did you know that you will now have a number of the pieces of the puzzle to enable things like Unified Messaging, Collaboration, and mobile solutions, etc.?"

Partners can do the same thing....

Yesterday, Karen from Grace-Hunt and Maria from MetroStar were in an email exchange (I was copied).

Karen sells CRM development. Maria sells SharePoint custom development.

Over the course of the email, they began to hash out an event strategy that would allow them to go to market together and tell a joint story.

Maria's customers and prospects would see how CRM could fit into their long term plans. Karen's would see how SharePoint could extend CRM.

Both sets would feel more comfortable about the upfront investment because of the downstream payoff.

This is the value of partners partnering and of, as we say at Microsoft, "selling the stack."