Ashleigh Vogstad: Inside the Microsoft Partner GTM with Transcends’ CEO

Chip Rodgers  0:00  
Hey, it worked. All right. Hey, welcome everybody. Chip Rodgers, we're here in see, actually we're in Redmond at we have somebody waving, oh, that's Mark. Mark Monday, waving, waving in the background. We're here at ultimate partner live with Vince menzioni Does just an amazing job at these events. And it's Thursday. We've had some great content this morning, and it's been a it's been great so far. Yeah,

Ashleigh Vogstad  0:29  
it's been fantastic. I never miss an ultimate partner, if I can help it. And it's great to be at the flagship of Microsoft here on in Redmond on the campus.

Chip Rodgers  0:39  
Yeah, right here in this beautiful conference center, Microsoft conference center in Redmond. So I am so excited to be joined by Ashley vostadt. Ashley is CEO of transcends, and transcends is a go to market consulting organization that works a lot with Microsoft, and helps partners really go to market and be successful with Microsoft. So Ashley, welcome. Thank

Ashleigh Vogstad  1:07  
you so much. Yeah, I started transcends. I can't believe it, but about seven years ago now, after some time in worldwide ISV, when it was still called ISV, I don't know if you've heard the buzz, but software development company is the term that is really trending right now. But I worked in worldwide ISV, and then transitioned to starting transcends a go to market agency, and it's been cool. Ultimate partner always brings incredible people and community together. And the gentleman I used to report to, Greg gold camp is actually speaking, speaking at the event. Yeah, full circle. Yeah,

Chip Rodgers  1:45  
that's amazing. Well, congratulations on transcends. You guys have been just growing like crazy. And do work. You're in the US, but you're in Asia as well. And right? I mean, you have customers. I see you popping up.

Ashleigh Vogstad  2:01  
We do. I actually started the business when I lived in New Zealand. We roughly do 80% of our work in the US, 20% Australia, Singapore, New Zealand. So definitely, that global footprint has served us really well.

Chip Rodgers  2:16  
That's fantastic. So tell us a little bit more about, about transcends, and the kinds of things that you're doing with customers, what's what's important, what's top of mind these days for for Microsoft partners? Well, we're

Ashleigh Vogstad  2:29  
gonna have to talk about AI. But I'll first just say we've seen tremendous growth recently in video content, particularly voice of partner, voice of customer stories and, you know, Chip you've been leading in that space for a long time, which is really cool, but we do get a lot of podcast requests right now. Is definitely a trending item. But what I really wanted to talk about today is artificial intelligence AI. And

Chip Rodgers  2:56  
you can't have a conversation without talking about AI, right? I don't think you

Ashleigh Vogstad  3:01  
can not in tech these days, anyways, so AI agents is the particular thing that's top of mind for me as a business leader. And it was interesting hearing from Nicole Deason on stage how important it is to Microsoft to be your own customer zero. And I think of transcends, and even as a small business, we were there day one of copilot licensing, the second that we could get that activated for everyone in the company. And it's been really a cool journey and inspiring to me that what you might consider a non technical team of media producers and content writers we are today building our own agents. And the difference in efficiency and productivity and even creativity that that's inspired across the business has just been a really fun and energizing time. That's

Chip Rodgers  3:54  
amazing. So building agents for go to market, for partners working with Microsoft. How does that all work?

Ashleigh Vogstad  4:01  
Well, a great example is Partner of the Year. And I'll give you the interview exclusive. Maybe what we're actually going to be announcing here at ultimate partner, when I'm on stage tomorrow, is the announcement of our award assessor agent. So the award assessor agent helps with Microsoft Partner of the Year Award submissions. We're in that time of year right now, and the award assessor acts as your judge. So if you've drafted a submission and you want to get feedback on that submission, we've ingested years of winning submissions. Our success rubric and the agent actually gives you a printout of where your submission is strong, where is it weak? Do you need more emotional story telling? Do you need more Azure impact? And that's really going to help partners with creating better, stronger submissions.

Chip Rodgers  4:52  
That's amazing. What a great idea, because it is those Partner of the Year awards are so important for. Yeah, recognition, brand recognition, both externally, but also even inside of Microsoft, right? Because then you get the attention from the field, and you get potentially brought in on deals,

Ashleigh Vogstad  5:10  
absolutely chip, you know it. And I the one that always surprises me, especially in larger companies, is when they say it's important internally, especially if you're, say, a company that is across all the hyper scalers, AWS and Google and Microsoft and internally, you want to know how important is that Microsoft Alliance, it can really help to get sales momentum when your organization knows that you're a winning partner. I

Chip Rodgers  5:37  
hadn't even thought of that, but that's, that's a great, great point, because then it gets your your own field excited about, oh my gosh, Microsoft, really, you know, values are what we're doing. How do I be a part of it?

Ashleigh Vogstad  5:51  
Sellers got to sell. Got to give them those priorities. And it's something like an award submission generates excitement. Well, that's

Chip Rodgers  5:58  
great. So what are some of the things that are really important for for part, for, you know, for partners to think about as they're wanting to work with Microsoft and be successful with Microsoft, yeah, as

Ashleigh Vogstad  6:12  
a marketer, I think a lot about your joint value proposition, or what you might call a better together story, and to really think about the audience that you're selling to. In in my world of business to business partnerships, you're not just selling to the end customer, but you're selling through a channel. In this case, we could think about selling through Microsoft. So it's really important for a partner to know and have succinct a sentence, if you can do it of why your solution is better together with Microsoft to get that interest of the Microsoft seller,

Chip Rodgers  6:48  
that's that's a great, a great point, and I think it's because you need to really be memorable and and if the seller is working with a customer, and they can remember what it is that you deliver, they're like, Oh, we got to bring these guys. Yeah,

Ashleigh Vogstad  7:06  
for anyone who's listening, who works or has worked at Microsoft, if you remember, be bright, be gone. That's what it's all about. You want to shine really bright, get attention, but be incredibly succinct and then disappear. It's

Chip Rodgers  7:21  
tough because the sellers are constantly bombarded, not only with partner solutions, but even just internally. There are constantly announcements and new solutions and things that need to be enabled on so it's a tough, tough job. It

Ashleigh Vogstad  7:35  
is, and it changes quite frequently. Definitely, we're on the cusp now of the FY 26 turnover. But even mid year there's there's changes, I think about for FY 25 AI design wins popped on the scene. And for some particular sellers within Microsoft, AI design wins really matter. And you want to know that if you're going into a conversation with someone,

Chip Rodgers  7:59  
well, that's great. So we're here at ultimate partner, what are you hoping to and I've seen you at a number of of these events, Ashley, we've we've been to these together. Tell me about what is it you're trying to achieve out of you know, today, you know today and tomorrow. Always

Ashleigh Vogstad  8:19  
Learning. Curiosity is an important mindset at trans sense, we have a moon shot to help 1 billion people not just be connected with a Wi Fi connection, but to truly feel more connected. One of our values that represents this is conscious connection in how we show up internally, with our colleagues, with our clients, with our partners, and ultimate partner has truly become like a family. I think what Vince has created here is really powerful. I think we're only at the beginning. And of all the work things I do in a week or a month or a year, this is one I genuinely enjoy.

Chip Rodgers  8:58  
Vince does an amazing job bringing so many of the right Microsoft executives together in a place that's a lot more intimate than you know. If you go to like an Ignite, you get lost in the 10,000 other people.

Ashleigh Vogstad  9:16  
Absolutely, you know, this is catching up with friends and I think the virtuous flywheel of success is that those friends end up doing and referring business together. And we really do live that philosophy of ecosystem partnerships here.

Chip Rodgers  9:33  
That's fantastic. Well, Ashley, thank you so much for taking a few minutes and sharing about transcends and about part how partners can work better with Microsoft and be successful. Yeah,

Ashleigh Vogstad  9:45  
thank you so much. Chip. Great to see you.

Chip Rodgers  9:48  
Thank you all for joining as well, and we'll see you next time. Thanks everybody. Energy.