ISVs understand why it is so important to establish strong relationships with Microsoft reselling partners. Resellers also acknowledge that ISV relationships play a crucial role in helping add value for their clients and securing new Dynamics deals. But in the real world, ISVs face a constant struggle to encourage resellers to present and sell their value-added solutions to their clients.

Building a channel of knowledgeable, enthusiastic resellers of ISV solutions is not just beneficial; it’s absolutely critical. Sales efforts by Microsoft partners lead to successful deal closures and greater client satisfaction for both ISVs and resellers. For Dynamics partners, the value of mastering the art of selling ISV solutions cannot be overstated.

How to Sell ISV Solutions, a joint initiative from MSDW and PartnerTalks, is specifically designed to help ISVs empower more partners with the skills they need to benefit from selling ISV solutions effectively. From AP Automation to EDI to eCommerce, ISVs participating in this program will have the opportunity to educate partners on how to sell their specific solution.

The How to Sell ISV Solutions program is designed to attract Microsoft partner sales teams, practice leads, and executives. Each session will help one ISV share with partners tools and strategies for improving their messaging, product positioning, and selling skills, leading to the identification and closure of more opportunities. The educational material created by this initiative will be accessible on the MSDW website, making it a valuable resource for training both new and seasoned partners, internal staff, and Microsoft sellers.

ISVs can participate as the exclusive sponsor in one or more solution categories to demonstrate their expertise, connect with partners, and develop a stronger and more productive channel for their organization.

For more information on sponsorship opportunities for this series, please contact info@msdynamicsworld.com.

The post MSDW Launches New Series to Help Partners Learn How to Sell ISV Solutions More Effectively appeared first on MSDW Marketing.

Accompanied by a group of ISV marketer panelists, including Kelly Mazur (Manager of Marketing and Microsoft Partnership, Evenica), Sarah Lyons (Partner Marketing Manager, DynamicWeb), and Debra Pfundstein (Microsoft Global Partner Development Manager, Vertex), Marie delved into the secrets of online relationship building and data-driven marketing tactics.

With buyers becoming more informed and discerning, it’s essential to employ effective strategies that capture their attention, nurture relationships, and drive conversions. One powerful approach to achieving this is by leveraging ISV-Partner alliances. These strategic partnerships can not only enhance your solution offering but also provide a multitude of benefits throughout the sales funnel.

So, how can you build a high-performance sales funnel using effective ISV-Partner alliances? Let’s explore some key takeaways that can guide you on this journey.

1. Value Proposition: The foundation of any successful sales funnel lies in a compelling value proposition. Clearly define why a buyer should choose your solution and communicate it effectively. With ISV-Partner alliances, you can leverage the combined value of your solution and the partner’s expertise or complementary products to create an irresistible offering.
2. Consistent Content Audits: To keep your sales funnel operating at peak performance, regular content audits are essential. Assess and optimize your content to ensure it aligns with buyer preferences and drives engagement. Collaborating with partners can bring fresh perspectives and insights to your content strategy, helping you create more relevant and impactful materials.
3. Partner Enablement: Successful ISV partnerships require mutual understanding and support. As you build alliances, it’s crucial to help partners understand the value an ISV brings. Provide the necessary training, resources, and support to enable them to effectively communicate the benefits of your joint offering. This partner enablement ensures consistent messaging and helps nurture and establish successful partnerships.
4. Sales Funnel Optimization: In today’s buyer-centric world, the awareness stage has become longer, with buyers conducting their own research before engaging with sales teams. To capture their attention effectively, carefully curate content at the top of the funnel. Collaborating with partners allows you to tap into their expertise, industry knowledge, and customer insights, enabling you to create highly targeted and engaging content that resonates with your audience.
5. The Human Element in Marketing: Despite the rapid advancements in technology, it’s crucial not to overlook the importance of human interactions and relationships in driving success. In the context of ISV-Partner alliances, fostering strong relationships with your partners and customers remains vital. Encourage regular communication, collaboration, and face-to-face interactions to build trust and strengthen the bond between all parties involved.
6. Solve Customers’ Biggest Problems: A high-performance sales funnel revolves around addressing the pain points of your target customers effectively. Identify the most significant challenges your best customers face and create targeted offers that provide solutions. Collaborating with partners can help you gain a deeper understanding of your customers’ pain points and enable you to develop innovative solutions that meet their needs.

In conclusion, building a high-performance sales funnel requires a strategic approach, and effective ISV-Partner alliances can be a game-changer. By leveraging these alliances, you can enhance your value proposition, optimize your content, enable partners, curate engaging content, nurture human interactions, and solve customers’ biggest problems. Embrace the power of partnerships, and you’ll be well on your way to building a sales funnel that drives exceptional results and propels your business to new heights.

The post How to Build a High-Performance Sales Funnel Using Effective ISV-Partner Alliances appeared first on MSDW Marketing.

Key Takeaways:

1) A place to network with your peers

2) Gain insights into the latest Dynamics market trends based on proprietary data from MSDW’s new account-based marketing/data capture system .

3) Hear from experts in…

• Technology buyer persona and buying journey
• Sales and marketing alignment
• Social Platforms: LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook, Instagram & others
• Email Marketing
• Event Marketing
• Partner and End-user marketing
• Technology tools

Full Agenda:

Wednesday: May 24th

● 5:30 – 7pm: (Networking reception and dinner)

Thursday: May 25th

● 7:00 – 8:00: Breakfast

● 8:00 – 8:30: Opening remarks (MSDW and DUG)

● 8:30 – 10:00: (Expert Panel & Breakout Groups) MSDW Research Study Results: Are Dynamics Marketers and Users in Sync When it Comes to Digital Marketing?

This session will reveal the latest trends in MSDW’s ongoing research and benchmarking of which digital content and sources are most important to the Dynamics user community. It will explain how user preferences have changed over time so marketers can make best use of marketing tactics that work, and dispense with those that waste resources. An expert user and marketer panel will comment on these trends and provide us with even more insights from their own perspectives.

Marketer breakout groups will follow to discuss and analyze focused topics based on questions raised from the survey results, concluding with sharing of group findings and guidance.

Facilitator: Jason Gumpert, Co-Founder & Editorial Director, MSDynamicsWorld

● 10:00 – 10:30: Break

● 10:30 – 12:00: (Expert Panel & Breakout Groups) Building a High-Performing Marketing Sales Funnel

ISVs and partners are concerned with both top-of-the-funnel awareness tactics or bottom-of-the-funnel sales activity. But it is the middle-of-the-funnel that needs time and attention for you to get to know your audience and build trust. Join Marie Wiese of Marketing CoPilot, and a group of ISV marketer panelists, as she lays out a simple formula for boosting marketing performance and explains the role that CRM needs to play in making this a success.

In this session, Marie will also share the secret to online relationship building for Dynamics ISVs and partners, including:

• The tools you need before you start the marketing automation journey.
• The secret formula to engagement.
• How to map the right data to the right tactics in your marketing sales funnel.

Marketer breakout groups will follow to discuss how the buyer journey has changed and the gaps between how people want to buy and how they’re executing as a business.

Bonus: All attendees will receive a special workbook after the session.

Facilitator:
Marie Wiese – Founder & President, Marketing CoPilot

Panelists:
Kelly Mazur – Manager of Marketing and Microsoft Partnership, Evenica
Nicole Vesser, Senior Solutions Manager, Abel Solutions
Kirsten Jordan – Digital Marketing Manager, Canadian Partnership Against Cancer

● 12:00 – 12:45: Lunch

● 12:45 – 2:15: (Expert Panel & Breakout Groups) Dynamics Marketers Share Their Secret Sauce When it Comes to Successful Marketing Campaigns

In this session we will hear from several seasoned Dynamics marketers who have figured out successful strategies to brand their companies or produce sales leads for their organizations. Whether it be with a strong thought leadership campaign, a holistic content strategy, establishing industry expertise, leveraging social media, or a 360 lead generation campaign, they will let you in on their Best Practices.

Marketer breakout groups will follow to discuss using diverse sets of marketing vehicles to run successful integrated campaigns.

Facilitator: Adam Berezin, CEO & Co-Founder, MSDynamicsWorld

● 2:15 – 3:15: Which ISV and Partner Content Resonates Best with Users….and Which Resonates Worst

The MSDynamicsWorld (MSDW) team constantly analyzes the content consumption trends and habits of people in the Microsoft Dynamics channel—everything from which types of content are consumed the most (white papers vs. videos vs. articles, etc.), to why certain messaging and themes tend to resonate better than others. While some topics are proven winners, we have discovered that certain characteristics predict whether a piece of content will be consumed by prospective buyers.

Join Adam Berezin, MSDW’s Co-Founder and CEO, to learn:

• Which types of ISV and partner content are being consumed the most by users within each Dynamics product group
• The evolution of content consumption in the Dynamics channel
• Our outlook on the future of content preferences

Marketer breakout groups to discuss the elements of successful content campaigns.

● 3:15 – 3:45: Break

● 3:45 – 4:45: (Expert Panel & Breakout Groups) What Dynamics 365 Systems Integrators Want from Their ISV Relationships

Business Applications is one of the fastest-growing sectors of Microsoft’s commercial business. We are seeing both SMB customers and global enterprises actively moving their business applications to the Microsoft Cloud. One of the results of this wave of digital transformation is the growth of the number of ISV partners and add-on applications. The panel will provide guidance on taking advantage of the lucrative but complex relationships ISVs are forming with systems integrator (SI) partners in the Dynamics 365 and Power Platform space.

Topics will include:

• Initial contact – building the initial relationship
• Getting to know each other – understanding the SI’s business and ISV’s offering
• Getting serious – the partner agreement
• Working your first deal
• Building a long-term, high-touch, high-value relationship

Marketer breakout groups to share successful strategies for working with partners.

Facilitator: Rick McCutcheon, Microsoft Dynamics MVP, Host of PartnerTalks

● 4:45 – 5:00: Closing remarks (MSDW & DUG)

Space is limited to just 60 ISV and partner marketers, so secure your slot today! To register, please go to: https://bit.ly/3GxqBAi

The post MSDW to Launch Partner Marketing Event at DynamicsCon LIVE in May, 2023 appeared first on MSDW Marketing.

The event is free to attend, and you can register here: https://bit.ly/39Tq51x

The post MSDW to Launch the “Dynamics ISV Marketing Success Series” in June appeared first on MSDW Marketing.

In the few weeks leading up to Solution Match’s live meeting days, users and consultants can register and experience the event’s matching algorithm. Based on your registration details, the event will suggest the solution providers that best match your stated interests, along with showing you the full list of twenty-five sponsoring vendors. Attendees then decide which solution providers they want to meet with and request 20-minute informational meetings. The solution providers see those requests and choose whether to accept each meeting. The meetings take place directly within the matchmaking platform on the live event days and the experience offers what we’ve all come to expect from online meetings: simple browser-based video, voice, and text chat, as well as screen sharing.

If it all sounds a little like a dating app, it should. The MSDW events team designed Solution Match 2021 with a few goals. First, the team wanted to create an online experience with a single focus: solution research through direct meetings. That meant foregoing an expo hall and even an agenda of expert presentations. Second, they wanted to keep attendees in control of their visibility. The only way a sponsoring solution provider sees an attendee is if the provider accepts a meeting request. Third, they wanted attendees to feel like their participation in the event has real value, so the team is rewarding attendees for the meeting they participate in (more on that below).

“The goal of Solution Match is to make solution research fun, easy, efficient, and painless”, said Adam Berezin, MSDW’s CEO and co-founder. “Within the matchmaking platform, Dynamics and Power Platform users and partners have complete control of which solution providers they’ll meet with. They don’t have to worry about getting cornered by sales people or having to listen to pitches for products and services not right for them.”

Among the advantages for users and partners to participate:

• Sponsoring vendors span a range of business and industry needs in areas like financial management, marketing, training, manufacturing, distribution, and more.
• It’s time-efficient; attendees can discover multiple new solution options in an hour or less.
• There’s no travel commitment, meaning users and partners can consolidate months of meetings.
• There’s no cost to attend – in fact, users and partners are compensated for each qualified meeting.

What was that about rewards? Here’s how it works: for every successful meeting an attendee takes, MSDW will reward that attendee with USD$100 in the form of a Digital Visa Card, an Amazon gift card (in eligible locations), or as a charitable donation to one of three international charities. There’s no limit to the rewards and only a few simple rules (and you can opt out of rewards all together). You can learn more about the details on rewards and other particulars here.

For Dynamics and Power Platform customers interested in participating, register here by filling out the qualifying questionnaire. We are looking forward to seeing you at Solution Match 2021 for a new and different type of event experience.

The post Upcoming Dynamics Matchmaking Event Designed to Speed Solution Research for Users, Partners appeared first on MSDW Marketing.

That is one of the key messages from an in-depth survey by MSDynamicsWorld.com of more than 150 such organizations carried out during the last few months.  The survey inquired about questions like:

• How do Dynamics partner organizations—re-sellers and systems integrators – go about seeking out ISV organizations to collaborate with?
• Which criteria do VAR organizations prioritize when evaluating their ISV partners?
• What kind of marketing and sales information do partners most value from ISVs?
• How should sales leads that result from co-marketing programs be handled by the respective parties?

Among the key findings of the survey:

• High degree of partner selectivity. The vast majority of partners (about two-thirds) interact with fewer than ten ISVs. This suggests that the average ISV is up against significant competition in forging alliances with partners. VARs indicate some measure ISVs can take to improve their chances of capturing interest, including the development of practical co-marketing plans and supplying well-developed content to help justify the fit and opportunity.

• Trade shows take a back seat as partner/ISV meeting places. VARs and ISVs are more frequently seeking each other out via online searches and word of mouth. Trade shows rank third as places where collaborations are forged.

• The favored means for joint marketing between VARs and ISVs, by a huge margin, is via online webcasts and case studies.

• Partners like ISV-generated sales leads. The main proviso partners have: ISVs should qualify the sales lead before passing it along.

The MSDW study is continuing with exploration into specific experiences, case studies, and approaches used by VARs and ISVs to make their alliances pay off. Updated results should be available next month.

The post New MSDW Survey Finds Partners Highly Selective in Assessing ISVs for Alliances appeared first on MSDW Marketing.

There’s a huge misconception that Dynamics ISVs have when it comes to working with partners. Many ISVs believe that all they need to do is simply market their solutions to partners, and partners will be so amazed, that they’ll immediately turn around and promote those solutions to their own customer base. This…doesn’t…happen.

The main reason this strategy doesn’t work, is because partners have more urgent priorities on their minds:

1. Sell and implement the Dynamics portfolio;
2. Promote their own consulting and upgrade services;
3. Develop and promote their own ISV solutions to their existing customers;
4. If all else fails, bring in an ISV to help close a Dynamics deal, or fill the needs of an existing customer.

ISVs that want to gain access to a partner’s customer base need to find a way to move higher up on this priority list—otherwise they’ll never keep key partners actively engaged, and lots of effort and marketing dollars will be wasted.

For ISVs who want partners to resell their solutions, the best approach is to do all the heavy lifting yourself–generate sales leads for your own solutions, and then pass those leads to the partners you want to work with. This means you need to market consistently to Dynamics customer organizations, even if you don’t have a direct selling strategy.

But wait a minute, so in order to get partners interested in reselling your solutions to their own customers, you need to go out and do your own direct marketing to Dynamics customers? Absolutely! It might sound roundabout, but if you refer back to a partner’s priority list, the only way to move higher up is for you to create strong demand among Dynamics customers for your solutions.

Here’s why it makes sense to do this:

1. Dynamics customers pay the bills, even if they aren’t buying directly from you. Marketing direct to Dynamics customers will pay off, because they’ll be more comfortable with your company. Consider the following scenario:
   • A partner recommends your company, along with three of your competitors, to one of their customers who has an immediate need.
   • Unlike your three competitors, you’ve been consistently marketing through MSDynamicsWorld to Dynamics customers, and that partner’s customer has read one of your white papers and attended one of your webcasts.
   • Because of your direct marketing efforts, that customer is now much more familiar and comfortable with your company. Therefore, they’ve decided to go with you, instead of your competitors. Deal closed.
2. If partners see all the leads you’re generating, this documents strong demand in the marketplace for your solutions. Therefore, partners will be more inclined to recommend your solutions to their own customers, over your competitors.
3. They’re your leads, and the fact that you are willing to share them with partners helps you strengthen relationships with existing partners and gets you in the door with prospective partners. The more of your leads you can pass to partners you want to work with, the more likely those partners will be inclined to recommend your solutions to their own customers if the need arises. A good give-and-take relationship will be established.

So, marketing your solutions consistently to Dynamics customers will result in lots of leads, which you can then pass to partners. Partners will close those leads, and you’ll make money. It’s a numbers game, and the more leads you can pass to partners, the more likely they’ll work with you over your competitors.

The post The Best Way to a Dynamics Partner’s Heart (Hint: It’s All About Producing Sales Leads for Your Solutions!) appeared first on MSDW Marketing.

There is so much more to productive content than simply creating articles, blogs, videos and white papers. The content needs to maximize key product features. It needs to reflect the prospect’s buying stage and demographics. It needs to be effectively staged. And more.

Heather Robinson, director of marketing for Fastpath, has years of experience getting results from content marketing in the enterprise software space and understands how and why to engage and nurture prospects with appropriate messages and touch points.

In this Marketer’s Corner interview, she explains:

• The keys to breaking the content presentation process into stages;
• How to develop content marketing plans in conjunction with the sales team;
• Ways to deliver more educated content-created prospects to sales reps;
• How to determine the best followup content for new contacts;
• Maximizing the use of data to forge followup strategies for the sales team.

Previous Episodes:

• Marketer’s Corner Podcast, Episode 2: Creating a marketing toolkit
• Marketer’s Corner Podcast, Episode 1: Mary Miller

The post Marketer’s Corner Podcast, Episode 3: Maximize your content’s productivity appeared first on MSDW Marketing.

The post Marketer’s Corner Podcast, Episode 2: Creating a marketing toolkit appeared first on MSDW Marketing.

Join MSDW co-founder, Jason Gumpert, and marketing strategist, Marilou Barsam, for a dive into our most recent reader survey. We examine the data, as well as findings from one on one interviews with Dynamics partners to answer questions like:

• What makes some Dynamics customers more successful, and can ISVs play a part?
• How do VARs approach ISV solutions and partnerships?
• How do VARs like to learn about ISV solutions?
• Can ISVs help VARs close Dynamics deals?

The post What Microsoft Dynamics Partners and Users really think about ISVs appeared first on MSDW Marketing.

And almost as interesting as Paul’s excellent quiz is the response of one of our readers. A sales and marketing manager for a Microsoft Dynamics reseller, the reader manages his company’s ISV relationships and drives home the importance of Solski’s points by sharing his perspective – without mincing words.

There are several key points to the comment (it’s really more of a response article – nicely done). One that he comes back to a few times is the idea that ISVs need to demonstrate that they are making marketing and sales investments that help their resellers not only sell the add-on solution but help their reseller do more business and improve their bottom line.

“The truth is most [ISVs] want something from me…access to my customer and prospect base but have little to offer me. Oh sure…there’s some margin on sales. That’s not much of a reason for me to take on a new ISV unless I’ve got some unique selling situation that’s probably a ‘one off’ deal.”

Part of the problem with many ISVs, he says, is a lack of either awareness or recognition that resellers are motivated by incentives that help them do good business for themselves – more deals and better and more profitable projects.

“What makes you different from the other ISVs? Do you even know who your competitors are? I probably have a relationship with them so why are you better? Why the heck should I do business with you? Are you going to bring me leads? You don’t do any of your own industry Marketing, have no brand recognition and just expect partners to hand you business? You’re not adding any value to me.”

A new report by security and network hardware vendor Enterasys highlights some of the same key issues that drive partners away from selling your product (albeit these findings were from the technology hardware realm). The top five issues in their report were:

1. Lack of sales leads provided by vendors;
2. Channel conflict or over-distributed channels that lead to too much competition for too few sales;
3. Poor support.
4. Insufficient ROI/profitability
5. Lack of understanding of the partner business.

From our perspective as a provider of marketing services, one of the most common misconceptions we hear from ISVs is that they don’t think they need to have a lead generation strategy because they only sell through a partner channel. In their minds, they just need to manage their partners and incentivize them properly.

But chances are your competitors in the Dynamics space, at least the more successful ones, are winning over more resellers than you because they have invested in a consistent, ongoing source of leads that they can share with their resellers around the globe. In combination with other marketing investments to boost awareness, messaging, and thought leadership, a strong supply of leads signals to an ISV’s channel that they are making real investments in their reseller relationship, month after month. By contrast, pushing out a pile of leads a couple of times a year from trade shows may be nice, but it is not going to sustain resellers who need to close new business quarter after quarter.

The last bit from our commenter that I wanted to touch on might be best handled by a marriage counselor, but I’ll take a shot at it here:

“…your ‘all’ is never really ‘all’. I’ve still got to find the lead, nurture it, coordinate and bring it to you to demo, then propose and close. I’d argue I’m doing all the work here…you ‘show up and throw up’ in a 1 hour demo and want to get paid a big chunk! ”

You can almost feel the exasperation in these words. As much as ISVs get frustrated when their resellers fail to bring them into deals, part of the reseller’s thinking goes beyond just the immediate deals in the pipeline. Every time they have an opportunity on the table, the reseller says to himself something like, “Do I really want to bring this ISV solution into the deal? Is it just going cause me heartburn to see them take dollars off the table after all the work I’ve done?” Rightfully or not, that’s the sentiment.

If you are creating opportunities for your channel partners and doing some of the other things that Solski and our candid commenter suggest to manage your partner relationships, you’ll not only be front of mind, but you’ll be in a position of favor rather than bitterness.

The post Assessing an ISV’s channel skills: Two perspectives that may not match appeared first on MSDW Marketing.

When I’m discussing marketing strategies with ISVs, you wouldn’t believe how many of them tell me things like, “We generated so many leads at Convergence, our pipeline is full for the rest of the year”, or “We’re not focused on any specific marketing activities at the moment, because we’re trying to work more closely with partners.”

Here’s a reality check for ISVs who think this way…

1. There is no such thing as having “too much business” to handle. If you cannot focus on all of the leads you have, and at the same time, generate new ones, you need to hire additional staff—immediately.
2. Your sales pipeline can never be too full. You will never close all of the leads in your pipeline. That’s a fact. To make up for this, you need to constantly be adding new leads to your pipeline. Fresh leads invariably include prospects with a sense of urgency, who are likely to buy now. How can you do this? Marketing with a schedule of programs on a regular basis throughout the year.
3. VARs will never market effectively market your solution to their customers. Sure, your solution might be great, but there are hundreds of other ISVs out there who also have great solutions. To separate your organization from your competitors, you’ll have to do your own marketing and pass the leads off to the VARs you work with.

If you’re struggling to keep the leads coming in while keeping the nurture and qualification processes moving forward, then chances are you’re not using CRM, or not using it properly. Trust me, a lot of ISVs will privately admit to being in the same position with their CRM solution. We’ve learned this in various ways over time. For a good primer on the basics of CRM and the benefits of sales force automation, I’d recommend you check out CRM expert Rick McCutcheon’s excellent new presentation on this topic from Decisions Spring 2012.

Lead qualification and keep-warm strategies can and should be automated, bringing greater transparency and efficiency at many levels of your company. And that efficiency and visibility ought to illuminate the fact that a single burst of leads from an event or another one-time source is not going to fill your sales pipeline with warm leads for long.

The post Your Company’s Sales Pipeline has an Endless Appetite…How Well are Your Marketing Activities Feeding It? appeared first on MSDW Marketing.