Existing Microsoft Cloud Partners from across the world outline their experiences and satisfaction to drive synergies in the SMB market by deploying Microsoft Office 365. This paper captures the 5 best practices and recommended business models to achieve higher growth and profitability by deploying Office 365. If you're interested in becoming a Microsoft Cloud Partner, call us toll-free at 1800-102-1100. You can also write to us at indiasmb@microsoft.com or SMS MS Cloud to 56060.

1. Five Keys to Partner
Success in SMB with
Office 365®
How partners are using Microsoft®
cloud solutions to drive business results
July 3, 2013

2. Executive Summary
Information Technology (IT) is changing, with significant impact to partners selling and delivering IT solutions. Existing
business models are evolving. Some partners are embracing the cloud and transforming their businesses, increasing
revenue and profit. How are these partners transforming their sales and delivery of IT solutions? How are they changing
what they sell? How are they engaging customers differently? And how does Microsoft Office 365 fit in?
We found out. We interviewed a set of the high-performing Office 365 partners, understood their formulas for success,
and distilled them into simple, actionable guidance. The paper highlights specific best practices, recommendations,
supporting examples, and resulting economics that will allow other partners to replicate their success.
Read the paper to see how high-performing partners implement the following best practices:
① Implement a low-touch, centralized sales and service model
② Acquire new smaller customers in remote locations
③ Sell annuity-priced bundles
④ Target business decision makers for cloud services and devices opportunities
⑤ Expand the conversation to focus on selling cloud capabilities
Typical Deal Economics
500 Seat Customer
Typical Deal Economics
50 Seat Customer
$150 K
Add-ons
$9 K
Add-ons
$25 K
$36 K
$5 K
$30 K
$4 K
Services
$2 K
Services
$84 K
$10 K
$4 K
$30 K
$27 K
$27 K
POR Fees
POR fees
Licensing Deployment
& Migration
Service
Year 1 Revenue
Annual
Support
Add- on
Software
Projects
Recurring Annual Revenue
Licensing Deployment
&
& Migration
Deployment Service
Year 1 Revenue
Annual
Support
Add- on
Software
Projects
Recurring Annual Revenue
These partners report that Office 365 is great for business. Revenue opportunities extend beyond selling the initial Office
365 licenses to multiple opportunities with substantially more revenue, including deployment and migration services,
managed services, add-on software, and other related projects unlocked by Office 365.
In addition, partners report additional benefits such as the value from increased retention (lower churn), new market
growth, better marketplace perception, and increased competitiveness.
Read on to determine if you are ready to be one of the partners who embraces modern IT to grow and profit from your
Office 365 business.
Microsoft Office 365 Partner Best Practices
2

3. Introduction
The goal of this paper is to provide our partners new insight on how to grow their businesses using Office 365. If you
aren’t familiar with Office 365, below is a brief overview, or you can visit www.office.microsoft.com for more product
information.
This paper provides
Best practices: Specific
recommendations and
examples from highperforming Microsoft partners
around the world
on new practices they have
adopted to succeed and profit
from growing Office 365 sales
and related businesses.
Economics: Detail and
examples of economic
opportunities, as reported by
our partners.
Recommendations: Specific
actions, aligned by typical
partner business models.
Customer value—complete Office in the cloud
Office 365 offers business customers virtually anywhere access to the Microsoft
Office tools they already know and rely on, plus business-class IT services that are
easy to administer. The business customer value proposition for Office 365 is strong:

Easy to set up and use—it can be installed and deployed quickly, new user
accounts can be set up in seconds, and it updates automatically, so users always
have the most up-to-date tools.

Work from anywhere—Business users get virtually anywhere access on select
mobile devices, they can work on their Office files online or offline, and all their
files are automatically backed up.

Worry-free IT—Businesses stay safe with built-in anti-malware and anti-spam
protection, they can count on a guaranteed 99.9% uptime, financially backed
SLA, and their IT resources can be focused elsewhere.
Partner value—achieving your business goals
In addition to strong customer value, Office 365 helps partners in the pursuit of key
business goals.

Meeting customer expectations—Customers today expect IT providers to offer
cloud options. For many new and high-growth businesses, cloud alternatives are
the default solution. For some older businesses that would otherwise require
significant infrastructure renewal, Office 365 can be an economic necessity.

Staying competitive—Most IT resellers and service providers, including some
“born in the cloud,” are ready with Software as a Service (SaaS) offerings that
business customers want. On-premises–only providers will soon appear out of
date. In addition, some consumer and direct online providers are encroaching on
business territory with offerings that appear inexpensive, but are not truly
business-grade.

Providing exceptional service—Business customers appreciate the flexibility,
lower downtime, and faster time to value of Office 365, as well as the fact that it
is always up to date without IT intervention.

Engaging business decision makers—Because the business impact of Office
365 is so strong and the IT requirements are so light, this product offers an
opportunity to shift customer focus from IT implementers to business leaders,
opening a more strategic relationship where you can identify new solution
opportunities.

Unlocking new revenue opportunities—With this new SaaS solution, partners
are finding new related services and solution offerings to attach to their Office
365 sale. You will also be able to expand sales into smaller and more distant
markets because delivery is done remotely, with little or no onsite contact
needed.
Methodology
To determine these best
practices and the other
content in this paper,
Microsoft conducted in-depth
interviews of several highperforming partners (VAR, SI,
and LAR) from North & South
America, Europe, and Asia in
May 2013 that service the SMB
customers. Partners were
selected based on success in
selling Office 365 (including
Office 365 Midsized Business)
and innovation in the cloud
sales business model. All
examples, quotes, and
economics are based on a
composite view of multiple
partners, similar in
characteristics and type.
Microsoft Office 365 Partner Best Practices
3

4. Practice 1:
Implement a low-touch, centralized sales and service model
Some partners we surveyed were “Born in the cloud” and designed their businesses to fit the cloud sales model, but most
were successful existing partners who carved out a separate practice to focus on Office 365 and other cloud offerings.
Why separate? Partners told us that it is important to separate the cloud sales team from the mainline licensing and
product sales for two main reasons.
1. Overall differences in the offering and the audience—in the
Phenomenal growth
traditional model, Office was often “attached” to other sales, many of
Profit growth of 160% last year, 110% the
these sales were face-to-face, and the sale was often focused on
prior year
larger IT Projects or a hardware refresh. In the cloud model, Office
“A core element to sales success has been to
365 is usually the lead product, and it’s often sold to Business
create a separate cloud sales group from VL
Decision Makers (BDMs) as part of a broader bundle or offering.
sales. The economics and incentives are too
2. Significant differences in sales process and execution—including
different to have the same staff sell both. If
quotas and compensation, customer target and demand generation,
we had, they would have pushed onremote vs. on-site sales, as well as sales training to address customer
premises and only proposed cloud if onconcerns, requirements, and restrictions for cloud and Software as a
premises was unsuccessful.”
Service (SaaS) sales.
VAR based in India
One partner first incubated cloud sales as a separate practice and later
integrated these sellers as specialists in their mainline sales organization.
Many partners without significant existing software licensing revenue are able to add cloud offerings to their mix of
product recommendations by creating cloud/Office 365 leads as a subset of their sales team within their existing structure.
Call center sales
While large customers (>100 seats) still expect face-to-face meetings, Office 365 prospects (particularly small- to mediumsized businesses) are more open to buying remotely through phone-based sales combined with on-line videos/demos/etc.
Lync® meetings are also helpful in working thorough customer requirements and discussing SKU options while
simultaneously showing Office 365 in action.
Remote service delivery
Along with the move to remote sales was the shift to remote service delivery. Partners reported that there are dramatically
fewer issues overall with cloud services and very rarely do the problems require on-site support to diagnose or fix. Phonebased (or Lync and/or Remote Access) support to IT or end users was an important part of customer satisfaction, trust, and
relationship building—as well as key contributor to partner economics. For customers without internal IT, services included
managing users and basic SharePoint set-up/changes. Partners also offered remote, pro-active monitoring of servers
(particularly on-site Active Directory Federated Services) and even desktops.
Becoming a self-described
“Cloud Zealot”
Recent growth has been 18-50%
“Traditional demand gen is in-person, hightouch, but for cloud we use digital
marketing: Search Engine Optimization,
Click Through, Pay per click, Ad Words.
Sales is phone-based and centralized, and
primary support is remote.”
US Systems Integrator
Microsoft Office 365 Partner Best Practices
Digital marketing
Many partners find that providing information about cloud offerings
through webcasts (often combined with in-person seminars) is a valuable
marketing tool. Partners target their existing customers through emails
and reach new customers through both traditional local marketing and
digital marketing (extending beyond their usual geographic territory).
Partners also use new digital marketing opportunities to generate
demand for Office 365 sales. Some leverage search engine optimization
and even keyword advertising, though several comment that this was
more expensive than traditional marketing. Others partner with LARs to
access new customers, with licensing going to the LAR, and the VAR
offering accompanying services (migration, training, support, or
SharePoint configuration). Microsoft’s Pinpoint is also an important
source of referrals.
4

5. Practice 2:
Acquire new smaller customers in remote locations
Office 365 can be delivered and serviced remotely, and it can also be effectively marketed and sold that way. This makes it
possible to expand potential sales territory nationally or globally and sell profitably to much smaller customers.
Serving smaller customers profitably
Office 365 customer base has grown from 15 to 900
customers in one year
Using inbound tele-sales, responding to demand generation
(largely from Microsoft Pinpoint Partner referral program),
word of mouth, and morning breakfast briefings on cloud
technology, one VAR switched from focusing on Enterprise
customers as a SharePoint Systems Integrator to Office 365
sales to smaller customers, and increased revenue per
seat/month by 600%.
UK VAR
Show success and extend
Getting in the door without the involvement of IT
“We have had success selling to smaller groups, for example
10 seats, within large organizations, because you can often
bypass IT to get in the door. Once you show success quickly,
you can then extend the solution for even more
profitability.”
US Systems Integrator
The economics of remote selling and service are extremely compelling. One partner estimates that phone/online sales cost
1/10th of their traditional face-to-face sales model. This makes it economical and profitable to reach smaller customers
than your current focus. These partners served 25-1000 seats customers.
Partners who focus on the smallest customers encourage them to view online videos and demos to increase sales velocity
without tying up sales people. They also stress the importance of understanding what else to sell with Office 365 to make
the customer relationship economical and designing a sales model to fit the customer scale.
Because marketing and selling to customers remotely eliminates the need and expectation of travel to the customer
facility, several resellers with highly-local operations have been able to successfully expand to a national marketing and
sales model.
Microsoft Office 365 Partner Best Practices
5

6. Practice 3:
Sell annuity-priced bundles
Partners cite many opportunities to package and/or price their offerings to
fit with the cloud annuity model, as most cloud services offer fixed pricing
around a standard suite of offerings. Below are a few examples from a broad
range of creative offerings.
Fixed support contract
Many partners offer support services at a fixed price per customer, rather
than charging per hour or per incident as they had for on-premises support.
Two factors support this. First, with remote, proactive monitoring, partners
are better able to avoid disruptions that impact users. Second, with cloud
solutions requiring substantially less support than on-premises (both fewer
issues and less time to resolve them), the fixed cost is a bargain to the customer
support costs, and highly profitable to the partner.
“Productizing” support packages
Deployment services now sold for fixed
cost per seat
“By standardizing this and fixing the
scope, we avoid delays in negotiation. We
eliminate the technical discussion. Our
sales team knows how to sell this.”
US LAR
relative to their past on-premises solution
Partner of Record cloud support
Partners frequently offer some basic services in return for retaining Partner of Record status and thereby capturing that
profit stream. In some cases (particularly with SMBs), this consists of helping a customer understand and leverage the
Microsoft cloud support included with their subscription, such as helping them interpret system status, communications,
billing, and updates from Microsoft.
Office 365 Midsized Business bundled offering
One particular area where partners show great interest in bundled offerings is in the new Office 365 Midsized Business.
Because this is sold through the partner, rather than being billed directly to a customer credit card, partners are excited to
include Office 365 as a part of their overall IT service offering, particularly to small and mid-sized customers. With this
bundle, customers can make one payment to the partner (annually or monthly) in return for the partner ’s
software/templates, services, and support, and all the device and backend capabilities of Office 365. That one payment can
even include hardware and/or network services.
Attaching offerings
The partners we spoke to identified a wide range of new value-added offerings related to Office 365 that extend its
capabilities or simplify its implementation and utilization, often tailoring their solution to a particular industry or business
need.
Partners also tell us they are able to capture a larger “share of wallet” from existing customers for several reasons:
 On-site infrastructure offerings that they had not previously sold are now available as a service (e.g. storage, servers,
etc.).
 Solutions by 3rd party providers (e.g. web conferencing, online storage, backup/archive), which customers had paid
directly are now replaced by the integrated Microsoft offering through the partner.
 IT labor savings are now monetized in cloud offerings like Office, Windows Intune™, and Windows Azure™ (e.g. device
or server management).
It’s important not to think of Office 365 as replacing Office 2013 revenues. Think of it as reducing ALL of the customers’
costs associated with hosting and supporting on-site, with savings shared between the customer, the partner, and
Microsoft.
Microsoft Office 365 Partner Best Practices
6

7. Successful value-added offerings
Partners are succeeding with these add-ons:
Software templates
One partner offers industry-specific, pre-configured SharePoint® templates in the Microsoft Office Marketplace to shift
custom configuration to more of a self-service model.
SMS text messaging add-ons
Another partner created a software service for health care practices that automatically issues SMS text messages as
reminders to patients with appointments.
Deployment support
A LAR who had not previously been engaged in customer deployment has added an online repository of deployment
guidance, templates, and best practices for customers who retain them as Partner of Record.
ADFS identity management and server support
Several resellers and systems integrators now offer Active Directory Federated Services (ADFS) support either onpremises or through Azure, and several offer either their own hosted servers or support for the remaining on-site
customer servers.
Integrated Lync, Exchange, or SharePoint solutions
System Integrators (SIs) and Independent Software Vendors (ISVs) tell us that offering their custom solutions integrated
with Office 365 increases customer retention because the power of the integrated offering with Outlook® (email,
presence, and IM), SharePoint (collaboration, intranet, and storage), Lync conferencing, and cross-device access is simply
too great to be replaced with any standalone competing solution.
Microsoft Office 365 Partner Best Practices
7

8. Practice 4:
Target business decision makers for cloud services and devices opportunities
Successful Office 365 partners report that they are engaging with different roles at customer organizations. In mid-size
and larger companies, IT has traditionally, and almost exclusively, been the customer contact. Today, partners with success
in cloud offerings are marketing directly to business decision makers (BDMs), or getting them involved early and deeply in
the sales cycle.
Engaging BDMs
According to IDC, there is a strong trend toward BDMs having an
increased role in IT spending. Already, 58% of new IT projects involve
business roles, and 56% of technology decisions involve the CEO.
Generally partners with strong IT contacts engage them first to identify
and bring in BDM contacts. But increasingly, partners may market to
BDMs directly either at smaller firms with limited IT, or in larger
businesses where central IT has been less responsive. Because of the low
cloud implementation hurdle, piloting and deployment happen in weeks,
not months, so the business advantages are more immediately apparent.
Often, partners find opportunity in engaging a BDM who needs quick
solutions to problems that central/corporate IT has been unable to
address, and the BDM may only engage IT as the last step in the sale.
Partners tell us that many in IT are risk and change averse, and “the
technical team can always find a reason not to go to the cloud.” That’s
why reaching BDMs is so important. A business leader can weigh the
financial and agility advantages to decide the change is worth it.
BDMs want business value
Cloud offerings build higher-rate business
consultancy, increasing revenue
“Office 365 adds business value to customer
conversations. With on-prem, the focus is a
technical discussion with IT Admins on
configuration, settings, policies, etc. For
cloud offerings, we are also talking to
business decision makers on how they use
the tool, how it can make a difference in
their business. This gives access to more
customer business problems. Our discussion
is about ‘why’ instead of ‘how’. On-prem has
more configuration services revenue, but
cloud has us building skill in [higher-rate]
business consulting, so revenue goes up and
we are engaged in broader discussions.”
Why BDMs care
VAR based in India
BDMs are more interested in Office 365 discussions than prior version
upgrades for several reasons. Mobility, device form factor, Bring Your Own
Device (BYOD), and pervasive office connectivity from home or elsewhere create business opportunity and process
changes for many organizations. Office 365 can play a strong role in that change (for example by opening access to deskless employees). Similarly, new forms of collaboration through Lync, Presence, instant messaging, and SharePoint—
internally within and across teams and externally with customers, suppliers, or partners—are important to BDMs and can
also lead to significant business value.
In some cases, the business process change involves a line-of-business tool like Microsoft Dynamics® CRM or Microsoft
Project, and Office 365 becomes an add-on capability. In other cases, the shift to a cloud model calls for BDM input due to
the potential regulatory considerations of data being housed off-site or the financial impact of the shift from capital
expense to operating expense. Almost universally, the immediacy of implementation (and short time to implement process
change) puts Office 365 on the radar for BDMs.
Increased business opportunities
Once you begin engaging with business decision makers, the conversation shifts from IT configuration to solving business
issues, and that conversation can lead to much greater awareness of new opportunities including device sales or line-ofbusiness (LOB) applications. One partner expected services opportunities to decline as activity shifted to the cloud, but
instead is experiencing much higher demand. Without the cost, delays, and implementation barriers of on-premises IT
solutions, business customers are asking for more and more. One challenge to meeting this demand for more businessoriented strategic partnerships is the need to employ more Business Architects and fewer Infrastructure Engineers.
However, partners noted that Business Architects bill out at a higher rate, so this shift increases profitability.
Microsoft Office 365 Partner Best Practices
8

9. Practice 5:
Expand the conversation to focus on selling cloud capabilities
A key driver for engaging BDMs (and more senior IT roles) is a shift in
emphasis from discussing “how” the solution will be implemented (settings,
configuration, desktop and server requirements, and deployment) to
discussing “why” the new capabilities (e.g. mobile multi-device access, Lync
conferencing, internal and external collaboration, and SharePoint intranet) can
be used to strategic advantage. Partners selling Office 365 tell us that it’s
important to change the upgrade conversation from describing the
improvements and new features of Office to the business advantages of Office
in the cloud. Learning how to effectively conduct this new conversation is part
of the advantage of using cloud sales specialists, at least through an
incubation period, as outlined in the best practice 1.
Gateway to cloud capabilities
Back-end value without major
investment
“Office is really just the front end to a
powerful set of servers and productivity
tools—a dashboard that people are used
to—but it enables things like BI (SQL),
collaboration (SharePoint), and this backend
is very expensive and out of reach for small
and mid-sized companies. Office 365 should
not be compared to Office 2013, but to the
value of the full infrastructure delivered.
However Office 365 is very digestible, it
makes it easy to begin seeing the value
without major investment. It’s the gateway
to the whole Office ecosystem.”
Enterprise-class capabilities
One of the most powerful advantages of Office 365 is that customers without
VAR CEO
significant internal IT support and infrastructure gain enterprise-class
capabilities that were formerly well out of reach without major upfront capital
costs. Office 365 functionality including hosted Exchange and instant messaging; SharePoint for collaboration, website and
intranet; and Lync integrated conferencing can be a game changer for these customers. So the comparison is not between
Office 20XX and the “New version of Office,” but rather Office plus the back-end of Exchange, SharePoint servers, SQL
servers, unified communications, and mobile device access, plus the hardware and technical support to manage them. For
many smaller businesses, these capabilities have been unrealistically IT intensive and/or expensive. For larger
organizations, using Office 365 frees up IT staff and infrastructure to focus on more strategic opportunities instead of
managing email and upgrades.
Email is an especially potent pain point with some customers and therefore one
of the best openings to discussing cloud services. E-mail today is mission critical,
however many organizations have aging infrastructures, where storage is
squeezed, file sizes are constrained, and reliability is far below that expected of a
business critical system. The upfront cost in hardware and licensing to upgrade to
a high-availability integrated platform can be well beyond recent IT budget
levels. Office 365 offers what some customers find a “miraculous” solution with a
fully-redundant, high-SLA enterprise email, storage, and communications
infrastructure, without the significant upfront capital investment that would be
required to add even a few servers.
No more upgrading
For customers who typically resist Office upgrades because of the perceived
issues around cost, disruption, integration, and effort to implement, Office 365
can be positioned as their “last upgrade” as future capabilities are added
automatically without IT effort and user downtime. At the other end of the
spectrum, for customers who recognize the business value of having the most
advanced capabilities, Office 365 is the roadmap to access the latest features first,
at a faster refresh rate than on-premises installations can achieve without bolt-on
3rd-party solutions.
The last migration to the cloud
Upgrading to the cloud opens the door
to more cloud services
“We position Office 365 as the last
[productivity] migration customers will
need to do. This is particularly strong for
customers on Office 2003 or Office 2007.
They might as well migrate to cloud and
not have to migrate again. This gives them
the ability to always stay on the latest
technology.”
“Office 365 opens the door to more cloud
services. Customers are willing to try email
in the cloud once they see how well it
works they are open to adding SharePoint
Online. Then they look at shifting business
apps to Azure. Once customers experience
the cloud, they want to do more.”
US Systems Integrator - VP Sales
Business value
Partners who engage BDMs in this “different conversation” focus on exploring the business value of these cloud
capabilities and the new opportunities they create for their customer’s business. Customers welcome the ability to
empower their field with full in-office connectivity, to collaborate across any device, to share work space with their
customers and suppliers, and to respond faster with integrated communications. The speed with which these capabilities
are deployed (in just weeks) offers a competitive advantage and a powerful motivator to act now.
Microsoft Office 365 Partner Best Practices
9

10. Partner Revenue Opportunity
We asked the partners to provide us information about the revenue from their deals in the 25-1000 seats range. The
graphs below show partner economics for 25-100 and 250-1000 seat customers. This partners reported revenue in the
following categories, frequently described by almost all partners.
Typical Deal Economics
50 Seat Customer
$9 K
Add-ons
$25 K
$5 K
$4 K
Services
$10 K
$2 K
$4 K
POR fees
Licensing Deployment
& Migration
Service
Year 1 Revenue
Licensing advisor and deployment fees
$30 K
Add-ons
$36 K
$30 K
$84 K
$27 K
$27 K
POR Fees
Licensing Deployment
&
& Migration
Deployment Service
Year 1 Revenue
Microsoft Office 365 Partner Best Practices
Projects
Recurring Annual Revenue
$150 K
Deployment service
Partners selling Office 365 find that most customers are
looking for support in migrating from current systems (e.g.
on-premises Exchange to the hosted solution). While some
still charge for migration support services, device set-up,
training, and user change management on an hourly basis,
many offer it as a bundle with fixed pricing (especially to
smaller customers).
Add- on
Software
Typical Deal Economics
500 Seat Customer
Services
The Partner of Record (POR) receives subscription fees the
first and every year thereafter. Partners also receive a
deployment fee and seat threshold incentives. The total can
be up to 23% the first year.
With Office 365 Midsized Business, partners sell a three-year
pre-paid subscription in a model similar to Open Licensing.
Partners control the mark-up from distributor prices, and
report healthy revenue and margins.
If you are interested in learning more about partner
licensing revenues, please contact Microsoft.
Annual
Support
Annual
Support
Add- on
Software
Projects
Recurring Annual Revenue
10

11. Annual support
Partners have great success offering annual or monthly
support contracts at a fixed price, based on size of customer,
complexity of environment, and level of support. The
offering might include help desk support, new user set-up,
and perhaps ADFS directory management. There services
tend to be highly profitable because software-based service
issues are far less common with cloud solutions and
because resolution can generally be performed remotely
rather than on-site
Add-on software or services
Partners further leverage their customer relationships with
the sale of add-on software or services that go along with
the Office 365 sale. In some cases, these are internally
developed like those outlined in Practice 3, and some sell
Microsoft applications with tailored configuration such as
Microsoft Project and Microsoft Dynamics CRM. While there
is wide variation in these offerings, pricing, and customer
win rates, most of these offerings drive annuity revenue
Projects
The biggest payoff for many partners, particularly those with
a strong systems integration practice, is in project work.
Office 365 provides a means to boost customer capabilities
to the point where SharePoint services, Exchange
integration, or custom application development (often for
mobile devices) becomes a customer’s next step. You can
offer anything from “starter intranet sites” as part of Office
365 deployment then grow it into a larger project, or offer
larger department or business-capability-specific
customization and integration projects.
More profitability
Continuous income over time
“Internal calculations show Office 365 to be a
more profitable solution for us. While not as
much profit on day 1, with revenue based on
number of seats activated, now we can get paid
monthly as customers deploy a more continuous
engagement.”
Global LAR
Additional value
In addition to the revenue sources outlined here, partners expect over time to add value from other cloud services
from Microsoft (e.g. SharePoint storage) or other cloud providers. They comment that with the on-going subscription
model, they anticipate lower churn in customers who previously bid out renewal/upgrade licensing at 3-year intervals,
increased profitability from customers with long upgrade cycles, and a lower cost of sales overall. Partners are also
achieving dramatically higher growth as a result of penetrating new (often breadth) customer segments and reaching
customers in geographic areas they had not served before due to sales and service travel requirements.
Recommendations
The five best practices outlined in this paper are common among the successful partners we interviewed. But different
tactics are more appropriate for some kinds of partners than others. As you embark on expanding your sales of Office 365
and associated cloud offerings, consider these step-by-step recommendations based on the success of other partners in
these categories, and adjust your tactics as needed to suit your situation.
Microsoft Office 365 Partner Best Practices
11

12. Local broad line reseller (VAR)
If your practice consists mostly of reselling products to local customers, partner research suggests these steps to expand
into Office 365 and cloud offerings successfully.

Engage in light digital marketing to generate demand for your offerings.

Try telesales and remote support for smaller customers to increase your profitability.

Offer support package bundles of Office 365 Midsized Business plus support services.

Target business owners as your point of sales contact.

Implement enterprise capabilities for small and medium-size customers, enabling new functionality for those
businesses.
Microsoft Office 365 Partner Best Practices
12

13. Large service-oriented solution provider (Large VAR, SI, or ISV)
If you are already offering significant support services to larger organizations, these tactics can help you expand your role
as a trusted partner with existing customers, while finding profitable new ones.

Develop a separate cloud group with specialized sales, consulting, and support skills.

Conduct national marketing with digital marketing and webcasts focusing on your industry specialties, solutions, or
unique capabilities.

Create one or more software add-ons or Office templates for the cloud, which you can also sell beyond your
current customer base in the Microsoft Office Marketplace.

Engage BDMs in business architecture/consulting to deepen customer relationships and uncover business needs.

Architect solutions to meet discovered needs in areas of collaboration, business intelligence, workflows, storage,
Microsoft Dynamics, Microsoft Project, and/or Azure.
Large licensing-oriented reseller (LAR)
For LARs with a licensing business model, consider these options as you transition to cloud offerings.

Develop cloud sales specialists within your organization with a distinct compensation model, either as a separate
team or embedded in your existing team.

Leverage digital marketing to increase your reach and breadth, driving demand.

Capture Partner of Record fees by offering deployment, libraries/templates, support offerings, and other value-adds.

Work with local partners for depth implementation and support.

Engage with BDMs to map hybrid cloud requirements, maximize value, and uncover opportunities.

Extend the cloud model using Office 365 as the gateway to other online offerings that accelerate business value
(Exchange, Lync, SharePoint, Azure, business intelligence, etc.)
Next Steps
Adapting to your business
These best practices are a summary of common success tactics found among partners of many types worldwide. Every
partner is unique, so this is not a prescription, but a guide. Some practices may work better for you than others, and some
may require some modification to meet your circumstances. All have succeeded for others though, and are excellent
starting places to grow your Office 365 sales and cloud success.
For additional information
Here are some additional resources you may find helpful as you explore how best to succeed with Office 365.

Microsoft Office 365 for Business
http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/business/compare-office-365-for-business-plans

Microsoft Office solutions MPN Website
https://mspartner.microsoft.com/en/us/Pages/Solutions/microsoft-office-solutions.aspx
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Microsoft Office 365 Partner Best Practices
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