Ultimate Guide to Partnering®

Ultimate Guide to Partnering®


#58 – Focus on Launching Successful Partner Business Models

July 10, 2018

For this special series of the podcast, leading up to Microsoft Inspire, I interview leaders from Microsoft's One Commercial Partner team to discuss the work that their teams are doing in this age of rapid digital transformation.

My guest for this episode is Brent Combest, the general manager of the US One Commercial Partner organization responsible for Microsoft Value-added Service Partners to build profitable practices with and through Microsoft.

Brent and I discuss the work his team does to help partners transform their businesses and build profitable and sustainable business models, his journey from the channel to Microsoft, and what's in store for partners July 15 through the 19th in Las Vegas, Nevada. And if you're coming to Inspire, please join me in the commons theater on Wednesday, July 18th at 2:30 for a special session where I'll share what they don't teach working with Microsoft.

You can listen to the podcast or view the transcript here or on iTunes, SoundCloud, Stitcher, Google Play, Player FM, other Android podcast players.

As with each of my interview and articles, I appreciate your feedback. You can reach out to me on Linked In, Twitter, Facebook and Instagram or on email at vincem@cloudwavepartners.com. You can also review this podcast by going to iTunes and searching “Ultimate Guide to Partnering” and clicking on the album art and hitting the rating link. This helps others find the podcast.

Links discussed on the interview:

aka.ms/modernpartner
Microsoft Partner Practice Development Playbooks https://partner.microsoft.com/en-US/campaigns/cloud-practice-playbooks
Automotive Book of Dreams v1

TRANSCRIPT OF INTERVIEW

Brent, welcome to the podcast.

Brent:                 Thanks for having me.

Vince:                 It is great to have you here. Thank you for taking time from your compressed schedule. You are the general manager in the One Commercial Partner team focused on helping value added service providers scale their business with and through Microsoft. I'm excited to hear from you about your organization's role and focus, how partners can maximize the results of their practice with Microsoft, your view on this amazing transformation, and what's in store for partners in Microsoft Inspire. So welcome.

Brent:                 Thank you very much. I'm happy to have this conversation. Some great topics there.

Vince:                 So first off, can you explain to our listeners, in simple terms, the role of your organization at Microsoft?

Brent:                 Sure. We reside inside of the One Commercial Partner organization here in the US and my team has 26 partner development managers inside of it and collectively, we look after about 650 partners from around the United States, some of the top partners that are driving our transformational cloud business. And our mission as a team is to help these partners develop modern practices that develop strong, sustainable growth in a very profitable way so that these partners are able to reinvest and create additional growth for the future.

Vince:                 So why is Microsoft investing in this team and at this time?

Brent:                 Well for us it all starts with our business model. Microsoft, for as long as I can remember has been a partner obsessed company. To the degree that we invest heavily in understanding our channel, what's driving success and wanting to share those best practices across the ecosystem. We invest as a company about a million dollars a year, just in research to understand what makes the best partners as great as they are. And then, from that, we take that knowledge and want to help others from across the ecosystem to flourish. And this is really the core of PDM does,