Microsoft’s US Partner Marketing Leader joins Ultimate Guide to Partnering®.

Partner Marketing plays a crucial role in the tech industry in the success of giants like Microsoft. However, many technology organizations struggle to engage effectively with this function. On the Ultimate Guide to Partnering, we were fortunate enough to have Heather Deggans, Vice President of Microsoft US Partner Go-to-market, share her insights on her organization’s mission.

Heather leads a team of diverse marketers focusing on enabling partner success by creating intelligent cloud and edge solutions that transform customer outcomes. Her main goal is to help partners capture market share and increase partner growth, supporting Microsoft’s mission of empowering every individual and organization to achieve more.

Before her current role, Heather was the Chief of Staff for the President of Microsoft, US. She aligned Microsoft’s strategic goals across various areas such as enterprise sales, public sector, marketing, services, commercial partner, and operations.

It’s essential to have experts like Heather shares their knowledge and help partner listeners better understand how to align and engage with her organization. By doing so, they can ensure the success of their businesses and contribute to Microsoft’s mission.

What you’ll learn in this episode:

• The role and mission of the Partner Go To Market Organization at Microsoft (6:15)
  
• What she sees from the best partners and why transparency and clarity are critical on both sides of the table (23:41)
  
• How to best engage and align for success in 2023 with her mission and organization. (27:06)
  

Creating Ultimate Partnerships

Let’s face it, we all have seen partnerships that look good on paper but never live up to their expected results. There are many reasons why partnerships fail, and at Ultimate Partnerships, we help you get it right by applying a proven set of best practices and frameworks. If you want to learn more, follow the link in the show notes, or visit our website.

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Transcription – by Otter.ai – Expect Typos

SUMMARY KEYWORDS

partners, microsoft, customers, organization, market, dta, role, marketing, songs, talked, people, areas, corporate, solutions, events, meetings, brand, field, connection, vince

SPEAKERS

Announcer, Heather Deggans, Vince Menzione

Heather Deggans  00:00

events you’re seeing in the market in general, and Microsoft is no exception. We’re trying to get much more targeted with that right message at the right time to the right audience.

Announcer  00:12

Welcome to The Ultimate Guide to partnering in this podcast Vince Menzione. A proven industry sales and partner executive brings together technology leaders to discuss transformational trends and to deconstruct successful strategies to thrive and survive in the rapid age of cloud transformation. And now, your host, Vince Menzione.

Vince Menzione  00:35

Welcome to or welcome back to The Ultimate Guide to partnering where technology leaders come to optimize results through successful partnering. I’m Vince Menzione, your host and my mission is to help leaders like you unlock the leadership principles and learnings of the best in the business to get partnerships right, optimize for success and deliver your greatest results. Partner marketing. It is such a critical function within tech giants like Microsoft. And I often find that technology organizations just don’t understand how to best engage within the tech giant. My next guest has recently taken the helm Microsoft’s partner go to market organization. And so I was so excited that she agreed to join us on Ultimate Guide partnering. My guests for this episode of the podcast is Heather deacons. Microsoft’s new Vice President for partner go to market in the US global partner solutions organization. Heather and I had the chance to work together at Microsoft and her partner empathy is just off the charts given her rich set of experiences over a 22 year career. I love her perspective. And I think you’ll love the great work and focus and where she’s taking this organization as they support the largest set of partners in the business. I hope you enjoy this interview as much as I enjoyed spending time with Heather Deakins. Heather, welcome to the podcast.

Heather Deggans  02:05

Hi, Vince, thanks for having me,

Vince Menzione  02:06

I am so excited to finally welcome you as a guest on Ultimate Guide to partner, we had the chance to work together at Microsoft. And you recently took the helm of Microsoft’s us partner marketing organization, and amazing role.

Heather Deggans  02:21

Thanks for having me. I’m excited to be here.

Vince Menzione  02:23

So we have a lot to unpack. And I’m really excited to have you here to share with our listeners for the few that may have not known you. Heather, can you briefly tell us about you, and the role and mission of your organization?

Heather Deggans  02:37

Sure thing. So I am currently the vice president of our go to market team within our US division of the global partner solutions organization. Wow, that is a mouthful. Essentially, what it is our partner organization, we have a go to market organization that works within that to pull together sales and marketing. I’ll get into more of that in just a moment. But I have been here for 22 years at Microsoft, I definitely believe in the company mission, or I would not have stayed for so long, it’s been a great opportunity to be able to build my career here in many areas. So throughout that 22 years have been a marketing and sales Solutions Specialist. I’ve been in partner, I’ve been a Chief of Staff for a partner organization as well as Microsoft us. So it’s been great. I’ve also gotten the lens of field positions as well as corporate positions, and then also very large enterprise organizations all the way down to our SMB, and everything in between. So it’s been a great opportunity here. And I’ve learned a lot and all of those, which I think have prepared me well for the current role. And then if we think about what the mission of my go to market organization is today, it’s really around enabling the success and empowering our partners. That is my goal. And that’s what I wake up every day thinking about is how can we help our partners market a differentiated cloud first solution? How can we drive customer transformation together? And then how can I bring those insights back to Microsoft in conjunction with our partners to drive our strategy moving forward. And so in order to make that happen, it’s a lot of collaboration. Microsoft is this huge beast. And we have partners of all different sizes and flavors and solutions to bring into this. And so it’s a lot around connecting the dots. What does Microsoft have to offer our partner ecosystem which in turn benefits our customers? And then what do our partners want to connect into in this big beast called Microsoft? And how do we identify the strengths and the needs and marry those two together to create that differentiated experience?

Vince Menzione  04:43

First of all, 22 years at Microsoft congratulations. And I also think about it like you’ve had so many roles, different roles around the organization. You’re in a perfect spot to help a lot of these partners, as you said, connect the dots within the organization, and you’ve sat on both sides of the table in partner leadership roles. You’ve been a chief of staff to both partner and to the US leadership organization, you have a set of optics that I think is really unique to this role. Just an

Heather Deggans  05:13

all transparency Chief of Staff was not on my career plan as I was going through and the opportunity presented itself. And Vince, I would not trade that experience for anything, just getting into how decisions are made, and what are the trade offs. And if we invest here, we may not be able to invest in other areas. It’s having that context, I think enables me to be a better leader, as I tried to really decipher how we execute within the field of Microsoft sales organization and marketing organization. And also with our partners, that context is super important.

Vince Menzione  05:51

You’ve worked with partners of various sizes, a lot of them struggle with how do I best engage with Microsoft, for these organizations that still struggle to work with Microsoft and to understand what partner marketing is, and its function? Can you dive in a little bit more deeply for us here? Because I know coming from my experiences at Microsoft, just how critical partner marketing is to the partner function of Microsoft, can you spend a little time here on that?

Heather Deggans  06:15

Yes. So as I mentioned, this go to market team that I have the pleasure of leading is really, I believe, a key connector between that partner ecosystem and the Microsoft team. And so I really think about it in two areas. The first is depth. So there’s a set of partners that we have a close and what I’ll call a managed relationship with, where we’re actually building plans together and targeting customers together and really going to market together. But equally as important is our breadth and scale strategy. So I am responsible for looking at the holistic partner ecosystem. And that’s tapping into all different areas and communities and things like that, to make sure we’re not hedging our bets, putting all of our eggs in one basket. But are we actually making sure that the ecosystem is healthy, holistically and bringing valuable offers and insights and resources to the broader ecosystem? When I think about how my team does that, it’s really in a couple of different areas. The first is, we have to make sure that we have the right capacity. So we can’t go to market unless we have partners that you have respective strengths in the areas that we’re also aligned to. And so when we think about it, from just the Infancy it’s really around, do we have the capacity within our ecosystem? And then how are we enabling them? And so how are we giving them the assets that they need, from technical capacity from a sales capacity, all of that, and really making sure that that’s there, then my team does have a healthy investment budget, and we partner with our worldwide counterparts, as well as us. And we really look at where can we dial up with partners? And how would we invest to make that happen? And so looking at that capacity that we have in the holistic partner ecosystem, how are we driving the right investments, and that comes through marketing, obviously, it also comes through offers and incentives and really trying to drive the priorities that we need in the market, then the third on that piece would be demand generation, how do we work with our partners to generate demand? How do we know our customers? How are we coming together? How are we providing the right value proposition to make sure that we’re generating demand in the market? And then very importantly, how are we seeing that through a nurturing that through the lead flow process, and making the right connections with that, which is a very, very complex thing as we start to look at all the tentacles, in our customer journey with both Microsoft and our partners. Finally, it’s around the engagement. And I kind of hit on this a little bit before when I talked about the holistic ecosystem, I believe in going where people are, you know, a lot of people believe in that. But we may be Microsoft or we may have a strong brand, but people aren’t always going to come to what we have, how to identify those right communities. So I amcp. I’m a huge fan of the iamcp. And that collection of Microsoft channel partners that we can really connect with and land our messages and hear from them and have that two way dialogue, SMB insider, so we have a lot of partners that work in our small and medium business, they have a community that they tap into, and so really trying to go into the places where these folks already are. And then just in general is sort of a foundation. It’s what’s our strategy, how are we aligning on what our sales plays are, what our industry plays are and where do we find that synergy with our partners?

Vince Menzione  09:47

Wow, a lot to unpack here and you had some great comments. I want to feed back a little bit to first of all, you talked about the breadth versus depth and I find two little partner empathy here. A lot of the small other partners feel like how do I connect with Microsoft? I get asked that quite a bit. You’re putting a special lens on this now that I think is somewhat new with your with your role. Is that what I’m hearing?

Heather Deggans  10:10

It is a very high priority for me to think about that scale and the breadth and the holistic ecosystem. Absolutely.

Vince Menzione  10:17

Yeah, I feel like in some respects, this is this is really great news for partners. I’ve spoken with Edie at iamcp. I, I’m a big fan of iamcp as well. I don’t feel like they’ve gotten as much love and attention in my opinion, from just from the ecosystem, they’ve I’ve looked at them and said, Why aren’t more partners part of iamcp? Why aren’t we using iamcp to be that community that really can be really great to hear about your investments there? And then you talked about some of the objectives that you have here? Are you going to use things like SMB insider and iamcp to help fuel the enablement and engagement strategy?

Heather Deggans  10:54

Absolutely. And it’s in all different areas. It’s making offerings around technical enablement, sales enablement, marketing enablement. So when I think about some of the the partners that maybe are a little bit smaller, don’t have their own necessarily marketing staff. And so how can we teach them some best practices for marketing at scale, or their particular you play in a box we can give them so it’s a super light lift for them. And just trying to be creative. And like I mentioned before events, is I want it to be a two way dialogue. I plan on being a very, very involved in these communities. And I want to not only push information, but I want to hear from them. What do they need? How should I be thinking about this new opportunity to support them?

Vince Menzione  11:41

Yeah, you reminded me about marketing and how a lot of these organizations don’t have a mature model like a Microsoft. We’ve had dux Raymond sadhaks. I mean, he’s everybody knows ducks. And

Heather Deggans  11:52

I was just in tears podcast, it was great. Yeah. And he had

Vince Menzione  11:55

a lot to share best practices for our listeners for the these technology organizations, about wrapping their arms around branding, brand storytelling, and efficient and effective marketing. So let’s talk a little bit more about where we are right now in this fiscal year. It’s, it was just talking to somebody this morning about this. Okay, it’s the beginning of q2, Microsoft is back on again, like it’s rush rush time. Again, we got now till the end of the calendar year, and you just finished DTA, which is a big partner planning kickoff event here in the United States. Were there any aha moments for you? This was your first DTA in your new role?

Heather Deggans  12:30

Yes. So DTA, for folks that don’t know, is our digital transformation Academy. So it’s a Microsoft us motion that’s been around for about four years. I will say it’s evolved quite a bit over those four years. So I’ve been involved in different degrees along the way. So it started as a readiness event. And then it transformed into more of a sales kickoff really internal. Then we said, Okay, we should include our partners, because they’re a part of our sales field, organization, virtually and dotted line, but they’re really, really important. And so it became a readiness event, not only to Microsoft, but to our partners a little bit deeper than Inspire. For those of you that are familiar with the Microsoft motions Aspire AS A worldwide, really, let’s tell you, our employees and our partners, what are the priorities for the year DTA was really created to tell Microsoft us what are our priorities? How are we taking what the company wants to do? And how are we activating against that? I will say events, we had a big shift in the purpose of DTA this year, and really transitioned it to be a incredibly large I’d say one of the largest channel cosell events in the industry. It was much much less about Microsoft pushing information out. We’re just making the assumption that people heard that and inspire. And people have heard that through all the other vehicles and really focusing on how do we cosell together. So interesting stat, which I’m very proud of. In September, when we held DTA. We had just shy of 12,000, Microsoft to partner and partner to Microsoft meetings in one week. Wow. just phenomenal. I think about being able to have that many connections in a very concerted effort. That’s just phenomenal. And it sets us up for a really strong year. So that was the end of our q1 but many of our partners is dwindling to the end of their fiscal year as most of them are on calendar year. So just really good momentum. So you asked what the aha moments there were a couple. The first one is virtual works 12,000 meetings in one week. That’s just gonna be really hard to do with with collecting people in person at a hotel or ballroom or whatever it may be. We had partner organizations that were bringing 3050 even 100 people in the larger organizations. You can’t do that when it requires getting on a plane. So I know we’re all this virtual fatigue Egon, we’ve all spent 18 months or so in this world, but in large scale where you really want to get some traction, virtual meetings scale far more, and they helped us, this helped us actually reach deeper into the sales team to drive that true peer to peer selling. It wasn’t just executive to executive talking about strategy and plans. While that’s important. The point of this was we want our sellers talking. And we want them to be very prescriptive on specific accounts. And that leads me to the second sort of learning from this is do the work ahead of time, we tend to when we get together in these, we do a lot of meet and greets, which is great, we need to have those relationships. But this was we set the precedent that meet and greets should have been done and inspire and through your fiscal year kickoff and things like that every conversation was meaningful and productive around joint accounts. And it could be accounts that the partners are involved in read or not talking to the customer about that solution, or vice versa. Or maybe we’re both super deep into it. And this is just a connection point in our rhythm of the business. But we tried to really set that tone of we’re not here to meet and greet. Well, hopefully we’ve done that, let’s talk and make it actionable. And get really sophisticated in the way that we’re looking at the data and the accounts and using our heat mapping tools to see where we have synergy. And we you aligned together. I

Vince Menzione  16:29

love that I love that. I always get around that I’d have so many meetings at a Microsoft event worldwide partner conference before it became Inspire. And I’d walk away from these great meetings. And then nothing would happen like crickets. Right? We’d had this I call it the kumbaya meeting we’d have, we’d all say all the wonderful things we could do together, we’d lay out the plans. And it wasn’t actionable. Or if it was actionable, there wasn’t the follow up that maniacal focus. So I love that what you had to say here. And now I got to ask this and put you on the spot here like 12,000 meetings, there’s got to be an awful lot of actionable items that came out of that those meetings, how are you tracking the execution of all those?

Heather Deggans  17:07

So great, great question. And point, I have been really vocal on this. Because while that when we can time was great from an activity and a connection perspective, it’s all for naught. If we don’t follow up on it, we don’t actually take the next steps. So we tried to get a little bit more sophisticated this year. And my team had a tool that actually, as I talked about sophisticated view of the data and the accounts ahead of time, in the tool partners would enter in, I want to talk about partner xy, or customer XYZ, ABC, etc, Microsoft would sort of have the same thing. And when we did that it did a heat mapping to show the overlay. And in that tool, live in the meeting, again, because we were virtual and everyone had internet connectivity in their PCs, you can actually build the action plan when you’re in there. No action plan is to call this customer to talk about this. And this is who owns it. And this is by when and so we have the action plans from not all 12,000 produced action plan, but a huge majority of them did. And so we have the opportunity to follow up on that. And the way that we’re looking at it is the partners following up for the set of accounts that they talked about. And then us as Microsoft, because we need that joint accountability. Us as Microsoft is really saying, I’m going to look at it by function. So for our customer success unit, and the people that are really focused on that consumption and usage, this is your set of accounts that were discussed. And this is the next steps that you have. And then the same thing for partner development managers, etc. So it’s all new. But we feel like this is a really good evolution of where we’re at to not have those meetings where we have the kumbaya moments, and then walk away.

Vince Menzione  18:51

So impactful. And I love the fact that you’ve matured your tools to support I always say this Microsoft is so far along in terms of understanding partner, I know you’ve been there. 22 years was better than most. And it’s good to see the evolution of the tools to support the business execution because that’s where the rubber meets the road, right?

Heather Deggans  19:10

Absolutely. And we’re not perfect, and we’re still learning but every little step forward is progress. So we’ll take it.

Vince Menzione  19:16

We talked a little bit about ducks, we talked about marketing and branding. Where do you believe most organizations missed the mark when it comes to putting the emphasis or the work that they do on partner marketing?

Heather Deggans  19:28

Yeah, and as I mentioned, I listen to the podcast with ducks and agree brand is so important. I really liked his points on, you know, how does a brand make you feel? And so that’s something we’re all striving and aspiring to is to make that feeling when somebody hears your brand be a positive one. But when I think about you just more in general, I think some partners and Microsoft to be quite frank. So let me start with the Microsoft side. We have both a blessing and curse in that we have such a breadth of offerings, that we can really truly help our customers into end. But why say that can be a curse sometimes is that requires our sellers to really know everything, and to feel this burden to have to pitch everything to a customer. And you just can’t do that or becomes diluted and watered down. I think a partner sometimes struggle with that as well. And so what we’re trying to get our partners to focus in on is, what’s the first main message or differentiator? Yep. So what is that? When they connect with you, let’s take it when they’re even just connected with a Microsoft seller. And you could say customer, you’ll I see them sometimes trying to fit in too much into their exchanges, which again, can dilute that brand, you’ll I try to encourage the partners to focus in on what is their one clear, we call it superpower. So what’s the one clear superpower or differentiator that’s going to drive that brand recognition and affinity? How do they clearly message that, and then after we’ve nailed that, we can go add more spice and we can layer on more things. But just making sure that we have that clear message so that the consumer of the information can really grasp it. We know partners are capable of multiple solutions and pivots and things like that. We just want them to maybe to look at how do we clearly articulate that to customers. And a lot of it comes from knowing our customers, events you’re seeing in the market in general, and Microsoft is no exception, we’re trying to get much more targeted with that right message at the right time to the right audience. And so maybe we can do 30 different things. But I know this customer, I know the industry there and I know what that industry is struggling with. So I’m going to fine tune my message to address that. And hopefully it hits the mark. If it does, and I’ve started a dialogue. And if that’s not a problem that they’re grappling with, you’ll I know the top three in that industry. And perhaps we can have a dialogue and what gets customers talking when you speak their lingo. And so really trying to do that. And then the last thing I’ll say, is really trying to drive outcome driven execution. I’m not a big fan of activity for the sake of activity. We all have limited time and resources and your customer certainly have limited time and resources. And we are trying to come together as partner Microsoft to serve our customers. And so how can we be outcome driven? If it were just starting the conversation? So it’s top of the funnel? Is it the customers are already really interested in working through this solution that they need? And we’re just trying to help accelerate that and help them to find value? Or is it consumption, they’ve already purchased the Microsoft solution. Now we need to really set up that partner to help the customer get the most value out of that,

Vince Menzione  23:04

I picked up two really important things you said here, one was around the one thing, the one superpower, I’ve been saying this quite a bit about standing out as a shiny quarter in a bucket of shiny quarters, because there are so many partners, and you need to need to differentiate yourself your brand back to Microsoft is equally as important as your brand to market, in my opinion. And then the other thing that you said to me that I really got loud and clear here is what is our role at Microsoft partners don’t always understand how they want to best collaborate, how they expect Microsoft to co sell and work with them. So being very prescriptive about that with the team you’re working with.

Heather Deggans  23:41

Yeah, I’m a big proponent of transparency. And we’re gonna find some areas where we want to go to the dance together, and we’re gonna find some areas that really doesn’t make sense. And so that transparency, and then I’m also a big proponent in joint accountability. So let’s lay out the roles and responsibilities. I’m going to tell you what I can do. You tell me what you can do. So we’re both clear. And then let’s both hold up our end of the bargain so that we can be successful on going to market together. And if you don’t take the time to have those discussions on the front end, I think you get frustration, because I may have made assumptions that you were you made assumptions that I was going to do something. So let’s just take the time in the beginning to have that. And then we can where I can be successful as at everything, but we can learn along the way and make tweaks as needed. So

Vince Menzione  24:27

this is the ultimate guide to partnering and I love to ask this question about what makes a best partner what attributes have you seen in the best is that what you see in the best partnerships, the transparency and how do they behave in the room?

Heather Deggans  24:40

I do believe in the transparency and the clarity and I I’m a big proponent and let’s not say we have to do everything together. Because as much as I would like every partner to be 100% of all Microsoft shop. They’re not in some cases. We’re going to work together in these areas and we’re not going to in the other side We can limit to frustration in areas where one party may want it more than the other. And we can go and amplify, really, truly amplify the things that work versus going an inch deep and a mile wide. Let’s go super deep in some areas that work for both of us.

Vince Menzione  25:15

Yeah, what I call the high probability areas. I love what you have to say here as well. It is a heterogeneous world, let’s call it what it is, right? We have three hyper scalars, two of which had the lion’s share of the market, and you work with a lot of global ISVs and other partners that work across. And there are, listen, we’re gonna trip, we’re gonna trip across each other at certain junctions, right. And we have those honest conversations about this is where we play together. This is where we don’t.

Heather Deggans  25:39

Yep. And I think in that one of the things that I would add, and I’ve heard you speak about this on some of your other podcasts, but I truly believe in again, I am CEP is a great caveat into this. But it’s that partner to partner piece. So I should never have an expectation that one partner organization is going to be able to do everything for me, they’re not and I don’t want them to necessarily from the broader set, I want them to be able to go deeper into an industry that maybe my marketers do today, or my sales folks can because that’s their niche. And that’s your area of expertise. And so I firmly believe in that transparency, and this is what we do, and we want to go to market together. If that partner doesn’t do at all, which most of the time they don’t, I can say hey, have you thought about having, I’d love to introduce you to this other partner organization. And we can come together as a triangle to say, Microsoft Partner A Partner B, let’s truly do a go to market campaign that could maybe get us all more scale and reach or depth or whatever it is that we’re trying to get to, if we do it together.

Vince Menzione  26:45

Yeah. So important, right? I look at the power in the room, as I look across your organization, right that us, you work for Tyler Bryce, and you run the marketing the go to market, but there’s also hold the different types of partners in the room that are represented by the other leaders that are your peers. And let’s talk to each other about like, hey, Partner A and Partner B should be teaming up here. So exciting times. This is even though it’s, well, we’re recording this in October, I can’t believe it’s October. But it’s really to me, it’s still the kickoff of Microsoft fiscal 22. You’re really kicking it into high gear this month. What advice do you have for partners looking to work with you and your organization?

Heather Deggans  27:24

I think we’re all trying to figure out who the world is today. We’ve been in this pandemic for a year and a half it’s wearing on people and it’s wearing on our customers. And I think we’re all feeling this digital fatigue. So things that may have worked for us early in the pandemic, like large, large web based events are kind of losing their value and interest now, and we need to be creative. And we need to look at what are the new tactics that we can deploy. To keep that engagement up. Again, I think it’s that it goes back to the creativity, where we can learn from each other from a marketing perspective connection to our sellers, I love when partners bring us sort of the voice of what they’re hearing from customers, or what they’re seeing with our competitors, as those competitors talk to our customers. So we can really be smart in the way that we’re we’re executing, I think it was that connected piece of it and making sure that we do have those connections with the partners and various aspects of Microsoft. As I mentioned earlier in the session, I see that as a true area that my team can help is that connector. So we have partners that are really strong at the marketing expertise, but they don’t have the connection to our field sales organization. And so how can my team help. And so some partners, and I think it’s just natural humans, we want to downplay where we may have some vulnerabilities or perceived weakness, maybe those connections are smart as strong. Let’s not hide that. Let’s say this is where I need help, and then bring that to us. So we really can because if you’re if you’re struggling with something, whether it’s in that depth with the approach that I talked about, for more of a breath approach, I would love to know, because there may be things in my toolbox that I already have. Or that could be great insight that I should be thinking about as we build out plans for the second half of our fiscal year. So how’s

Vince Menzione  29:25

the best way? What is the best way for partners to reach out to you enter your organization.

Heather Deggans  29:31

So in a couple of different ways to get information of what we have what we’re trying to publish to the holistic ecosystem. partner.microsoft.com is the best way that’s where we have all of our partner play in a box. That’s where we have what our industry value prop, just anything you need to know really around that engagement in Microsoft and going to market to our mutual customers. Now, that said, that’s really a us pushing information To the partner ecosystem, that doesn’t help with what I was just talking about getting that feedback, that feedback, I think through those partners that do have a managed relationship with Microsoft, you should be talking to your partner marketing manager, you should be talking to your partner development manager, and giving that feedback. But that, again, is going to reach just a small sliver of the ecosystem. The rest of it, I think, goes back to those communities. And sorry to continue to harp on this, but I think it’s important, I want to tap into the iamcp, I want to go to the different chapters, whether it’s in person someday, or it’s virtual, and really hear from folks in those the SMB insider, that’s all about scale, we’re putting a lot of resource into these scales. And so a lot of it, I think, is tapping into these communities where they’re eager to engage with partners. And I’m incredibly eager to get there, what I would call Voice of the Customer voice of the partner feedback.

Vince Menzione  30:57

I love it, I love it. And we will share this with our listeners, we’ll share links to all of this with our listeners. So as you might know, I know you’ve listened to some other episodes. And I’m really flattered by that. By the way, I am fascinated with how people got to this spot in their career. And being a VP at Microsoft is a pretty big deal. I was hoping you could share with our listeners, those many whom are earlier in career, was there a spark that set you off on your path to success? Or was there maybe a piece of advice that you received on the journey?

Heather Deggans  31:29

Yeah, I think there’s maybe two that I would hit on. One is that diversity of experience that I talked about before. So you can choose a couple of different paths you can choose, I want to be a very rounded out employee and have experience in lots of different functions, which is the path that I chose, or you can be a subject matter expert and go super deep into maybe an account exec or things like that, I think they’re both really, really strong. The one that I chose was, I want to get depth of experience, but across a lot of different functions. And so I feel like that sort of helps me to bring a broader perspective. Again, just the one of field to corporate is is a big one. So your that kind of leads me to my next The second piece is you be open to seizing the moment. But Be true to yourself at the same time.

Vince Menzione  32:26

What does that look like? Yeah,

Heather Deggans  32:27

yeah, I’ll give you an example. So I started my career for the first 1213 years at Microsoft in Dallas, Texas, doing a variety of roles. I, as you can imagine, had been approached a couple of times to come to Seattle to come to the quote unquote, mothership of where everything happens. And I had respectfully declined and said, nope, nope, I really, really enjoy living close to family and things in Dallas. So I said no, many times. And then about a decade ago, I had two different corporate vice presidents that came to me and said, Well, I really think you’ve got a lot of potential. But you have to also have that Balanced View. So I know you’ve been doing it within functions, what I think will be helpful is for you to bring all that field knowledge you have and to go into more of the corporate Microsoft piece. And so I talked to my husband about it, and we said, okay, all paths are starting to lead to Seattle for what my career aspirations were in the time was right, my kids were only four and six at the time. So we made the move, uprooted from Dallas, where I was born and raised and moved to Seattle for get this rinse the exact same job at the exact same level. There was no change in Job scope, there was no promotion, it was really what I saw as an investment in my career. But it was, I think, one of the pivotal moments in my career and that it totally changed my perspective, working for Microsoft, in the field, versus working for Microsoft, in more of the corporate headquarters is a very different experience. And I bring that perspective to all of my jobs, we can’t get trapped in the walls of corporate and not think about how this is going to land in the field. Because oftentimes, we have this rosy unicorns and rainbows view of how it’s going to land if you go talk to a seller. By the way, I have 46 things to do on my plate. And that’s not compelling. So you just spent, you know, however much money and how many weeks repairing it and I’m not gonna do anything with it. Yeah. And so I think that’s an opportunity that I seized. But I was true to myself, and that I didn’t take it before I was ready. And before the time was right. And I’m not saying that all paths have to lead to corporate or whatever it may be, but I think it is being open and not permanently closing the door looking at how you can seize the moment at different phases in your life or your career.

Vince Menzione  34:51

I’m smiling here because having spent the majority of my career at Microsoft in the field organization, I would look at some of those conversations we’d have and go For those people who’ve never been in the field, they have no idea what we’re talking about.

Heather Deggans  35:04

Is this true? Is this true? And then vice versa, I think is fantastic for people that have been at corporate to go spend time in the field, because then they get that sort of, okay, now I’m super close to the customer. I think it’s valuable for that perspective. And I think it’s valuable for field folks if they have the opportunity to come to corporate and to learn, okay, this is why they were pushing this much to us in this area. Now, again, it comes back to what I said earlier, it’s all about the context. And you can’t necessarily just have one view, necessarily, the context is helpful if you can look at it from Okay, I understand from the field. And I understand from these other aspects, potentially corporate.

Vince Menzione  35:46

Yeah. And that’s what I was saying earlier about your perspective, your set of optics, because you’ve sat in so many of those different seats before, right. I think you bring so much to that equation. I’m really excited for you in this role. Thanks. I want to have a little fun. I know you’ve listened to other episodes, you might know what this next question is, I become a big fan of Spotify, we get Ultimate Guide to partnering on Spotify. So it’s become a favorite platform of mine. And of course, I love the music aspects. And I’ve been sharing Spotify lists with our amazing guests. I’m hoping to share yours. In fact, Heather, and I was wondering if you could pick only five songs to take with you into the foreseeable future. Maybe you’re on a deserted island, but hopefully not but maybe you just don’t know you’re on a mountaintop someplace and you only have these five songs, you’re maybe out skiing or doing some something else fun. What would those five songs be? And why?

Heather Deggans  36:41

That’s such a fun question. So my I mentioned Dallas earlier. I am a Texas girl. So I have a lot of country playlist. I figured that exactly. Where I find my soothing back to my roots. So you’ll see a lot of country songs on my playlist. But what I’d say is the number one that I listened to in a collection, it’s so funny, my daughter will randomly put it into her playlist when we’re out doing stuff. And then every time it comes on, she smiles at me because she knows this one of my favorite is say something by it was a collaboration between Justin Timberlake and Chris Stapleton. If you need a sing along, this is the song to check out. It’s six and a half minutes long. So it’s a commitment. But the story goes in from websites that I’ve read Justin Timberlake, JT and Chris, they taped it in literally one setting on the first try. I don’t know how you do that with a six and a half minute song, but they did it. So it’s pretty cool. And then as I mentioned, we’re in the country perspective, really, anything by Garth Brooks and George Strait. So I’m talking sort of old school country, a little Amarillo by morning and all of that. And then one of my other favorite bands is Better Than Ezra. So I don’t know how widely known they are. They’re a band from New Orleans, Louisiana. I remember. Yeah, I met my husband in New Orleans as he was finishing up his graduate and at Tulane, and he got me hooked on him. So they have a special place in my heart. They’ve got great songs, good. desperately wanting all of those. We’ve seen him in concert. I can’t tell you how many times and then finally, if I need a good old fashioned pumped me up song before I have to go on a big stage or before I have to do a big run or something like that. You’ll Black Eyed Peas, the I got a feeling song to me is my most Okay, I need a burst of energy. I’m gonna pop down real quick, and I get pumped up pretty easily. That’s one of mine

Vince Menzione  38:36

as well. I remember. We got to see you there. We got this. Yeah, I was I was right up front at that concert that was wild. What a lot of fun. That was.

Heather Deggans  38:45

It was it was funny. They it was at one of our inspire, or ready conferences, and I had booked the red eye to go home. And they always had announced the band on the last day. And they announced there’s black eyed peas. I call my husband chained to plants. I’m coming home tomorrow and it will not be tonight because I’m going to sweat it out in Atlanta and watch this concert.

Vince Menzione  39:03

That’s right. It was Atlanta. It was outdoor. Oh, it was like 95 degrees out. Yeah, we had a lot of fun, though, didn’t we?

Heather Deggans  39:12

Yes, it was great. So Heather, this was

Vince Menzione  39:15

so much fun. You have been such an amazing guest. I am so excited. I’m excited for the Microsoft partners that are listening, that you are in this role. I think it was just a, I’m just gonna say this. It was the right decision for the company to bring you in at this level at this role. And so I’m grateful that you took the time today that you’ve been so generous with your time for our listeners, and I just want to thank you for that.

Heather Deggans  39:38

Thank you Vance. I really appreciate you inviting me to participate. As I mentioned, I’ve listened to a lot of your podcasts. So I feel honored to be included. And I really do think that we can just just knock it out of the park and the sky’s the limit if we truly can maximize how we engage our partner ecosystem. and how we can come together to mutually benefit our customers. So I am excited. This is my dream job and I’m excited to see what we can accomplish over the next one year, three year, five years.

Vince Menzione  40:11

Well, I’m excited for what’s next and I can’t wait. We’re gonna have you back again. We’ll just we’ll set the time when it makes sense. But I want to have you back again, Heather. This has been a delight. So thank you.

Heather Deggans  40:21

Thank you mints.

Vince Menzione  40:23

As with each of my episodes, I appreciate your support. Please subscribe on your favorite platform, like comment, tell your friends about Ultimate Guide to partnering and where they can find us. And I’d love your feedback. Please like the podcast and provide comments or reach out to me at Vince Menzione on LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook and Instagram. You can also like and follow Ultimate Guide to partnering on our Facebook page, or drop me a line and Vincent gesture bring dash partnerships. Happy to be where she is this episode of the podcast. Thank you sponsored by ultimate partnerships. Ultimate partnerships helps you get the most results from your partnerships. Get partnerships right, optimized for success, deliver results. For more information, go to ultimate dash partnerships.com

Announcer  41:16

Thanks so much for listening to this episode of The Ultimate Guide to partnering with your host Vince Menzione online at Ultimate Guide to partnering.com and facebook.com/ultimate Guide to partnering. We’ll catch you next time on The ultimate guide to partnering