Justin Slagle: How Microsoft Partners Scale Profitably

Chip Rodgers  0:00  
Rodgers, Hey everyone. Chip Rodgers, we are here in Seattle. And, well, we're not, actually not in Seattle. We're in Redmond, right? I think Redmond, yeah, yeah, here at the Microsoft conference center for ultimate partner, Vince and John and team have done an amazing job, once again, pulling this event together and, and gorgeous day outside and and a lot of great content this morning. Justin, great to see you, yeah, great

Justin Slagle  0:29  
to see you. Is recruiting weather. Just love what I like to call it. You know, being a SoCal guy coming up here, we have SoCal weather in Seattle, makes everybody want to move here. And that's how Microsoft and Amazon pull all these great resources, right? But you're right. This is an amazing event that Vince has pulled off again. Couple 100 people here learning about how to partner together, how to partner with one another. Really glad to be here and great to see you again.

Chip Rodgers  0:49  
Yeah. Likewise, likewise. So I am so excited to be joined by Justice Slagle and Justin. Is CEO and co founder, co founder, co founder, of the partner masters, and you guys have been doing just amazing, amazing work. Justin previously was 10 and a half years with Microsoft, and brings a lot of that Microsoft experience to partner masters and and you also were instrumental in in SoCal with I am CP and leadership roles at I am CP and really helping build that, that community up. So Justin, welcome,

Justin Slagle  1:28  
thank you. Yeah, no, you're right. I mean, my entire career has really been built around partner. So I was a Microsoft partner. I was a minority partner in a Microsoft training company, and we sold that business in 2012 I came over to Microsoft and joined the Small Business team, the small, small medium business SMB, with Cindy Bates, and was focused on partner Microsoft community connections and helping partners get involved. Moved to mid market and up into enterprise with GSIs, where you and I got to connect a little bit. Before I came over to the partner management, I wanted to start this company. But what I had seen over the time is that there are a lot of partners who as this business gets bigger, Microsoft has to make their investments, and really it's the numbers just get so large, they don't have enough people to keep up. And so one of the challenges that we had when I was at Microsoft was, how do we support all these partners out there who, really, they're betting their entire business, they're embedding their livelihoods on us, but we don't have enough people to support them, and you can't just hire infinitely. You can't and so the but one of the great things, and when I went to my leadership team about the idea that I had was, look, there's plenty of money and there's plenty of resources. And one of the great things about Microsoft is they give people, and in fact, they almost encourage people go out and do something that can continue on. I'm 100% Microsoft. A lot of people know my son's name is Maverick Bing. That's how deep into Microsoft, and we only cover Microsoft and but the idea is like we started a business to give all partners the opportunity to grow. So our business is an extension of Microsoft's mission statement. So Microsoft's mission is to empower every person and every organization on the planet to achieve more. Our mission at the partner Masters is to empower every Microsoft partner to achieve maximum profitability with their Microsoft partnership. So we do that by execution, not just advising partners and saying, Hey, go do these couple of things. We'll come back and talk to you and see how you did. But we say, Hey, you should go do these things. But we also you given up, given us access. We'll go do these things for you. And if you can't deliver on doing this certain thing, then we have resources that we can come deliver for you. If you need us to come in and help you get incentives so you can actually win the deal. Do some enterprise sales techniques to help you close more deals, whatever it takes to help a partner be more profitable. That's what we

Chip Rodgers  3:34  
do. That's fantastic, really incredible resource, both to the partners, but also to Microsoft. Well,

Justin Slagle  3:41  
that's what we love about it. In fact, we started the business thinking, hey, we're going to take this service to the non managed partners, because they get no love. There's no more email address, there's no phone number. They need these resources. But what happened was a few of the managed partners started coming to us, and when the managed partners started coming to us, their numbers started going off the charts. My old leadership team reached out to me and said, What the heck are you guys doing? Because these partners are our top performing partners. Now we'd like to learn a little bit more, so we show them a little bit of our process. And they were like, we need you working with everybody. And then we started doing some analysis, and what we saw was the average managed partner is growing their Azure consumed revenue or ACR 40% year over year. But the ones who are working with us are growing their ACR at 70% year over year. Over year. So from that point on, it was like, that's an easy return, like, and then the best part is the Microsoft Co Op dollars will pay for our services, so it's a win for everybody. Yeah, well,

Chip Rodgers  4:32  
and, and it's been very successful. You've now grown, you're only two years old, and you're now up to 30 professionals in the team?

Justin Slagle  4:41  
Yeah, exactly. So yeah, to just, just, just over two years old, 30 people on the team across like we have an operations team. We have, we call them partner profitability executives that are similar to, like a Microsoft partner development manager, who are working with and executing with the partners. We have a new division of the company called the tech Mavericks, which is our delivery arm. Firm. So we don't go direct to customers, but we work through our partners that are in our channel. And if they need a cyber security expert, if they need somebody who's need they don't have data people, and they need somebody to come in and do a fabric project, the tech Mavericks can come in and deliver on their behalf. Yeah, that's

Chip Rodgers  5:14  
fantastic. So without giving away the secret sauce, what are some tips that you can give to any partners? Microsoft partners, listening that, that they should be, you know, that they should be thinking about when, you know, to be more successful working with Microsoft, either co selling, working in the marketplace, whatever.

Justin Slagle  5:33  
Well, I think one of the things that I'm you're probably going to see a lot from me and my team, so I'll give you a little sneak preview, is in the MSIM stages. So the Microsoft customer engagement methodology, everybody forgets about the first step, or maybe they don't forget about the first step is listen and consult. Okay? And it's, I don't think everybody truly understands what that means. And so in the listen and consult stage, people just think, Okay, well, that's marketing, and we're listening to our customers, and then we move on, and we're good with assessments, and we're good with delivering, we're good with optimization, we're good with all the other stuff that goes with it. But the key to co selling with a Microsoft field person is actually in listen and consult. Because if you're a Microsoft account executive or an ATS, and I'm a partner, and I say, Hey, I have a great assessment, I have great delivery capabilities, well, that's great, but all these other partners are bringing me all these opportunities, I can't bring you into those. So if you can partner with an account executive and show them how you're really good with listening, consult and all the white space accounts that they have, and you can go to those customers, and you can deliver the workshops, and you can deliver whatever it might be to get them to be interested, then that that team can work with you. So that's one of the keys that we found, and one of the things that we're going to be really pushing with our partners, and potential other partners are out in the community. If you really get really good with listening, consult, you can unlock co selling with Microsoft.

Chip Rodgers  6:50  
That's That's fantastic. It's such a simple but really important, important first step, exactly. So

Justin Slagle  6:57  
love to partner with you on this and partner with the people who are listening today. But if you can master this step, I truly believe that it can unlock what everybody really wants is, how do I get more leads from Microsoft? It's hard to get leads from Microsoft when another partner brought them into a deal, because that's mostly what happens in Microsoft with the account teams. It's other partners who bring them into opportunities. They're already in accounts and so forth. You want to figure out, how do I partner with them on where they're not already engaged? Listen and consult. That's it.

Chip Rodgers  7:24  
Yeah, that's fantastic. So what are some of the things you're you know, here, we're all here at the ultimate partner event. What are you hoping to to achieve and get out of the, you know, today and tomorrow?

Justin Slagle  7:38  
Well, for us, it's just about engagement. So a couple 100 partners that are here trying to just expand our reach, meet, meet new people. I'm going to be talking on a panel about ecosystem tomorrow, and really, that's, that's what it is for me. So I've heard many times today that it's, it's about the like, seven seats at the table. Well, if we're working with partners who may have, you know, one or two or three seats, we've got to find who are those other partners who also have seats at a table so we can complete our offering that goes to an individual customer. So really, it's just about, you know, finding the right people that we can bring into our ecosystem, into our networks, and take it and be able to help our partners bring something of value to their customers.

Chip Rodgers  8:14  
And so would those be typically? Are they? Are they typically, you know, software providers or services, or within certain, you know, verticals or horizontal solutions, or what, what would they typically be, or all the above. It's going to

Justin Slagle  8:29  
be all the above, right? Because you need to have a licensing provider. You need to, especially right now as Microsoft, especially in the like SME and C space, where they're, they're going down level from the Enterprise Agreement down to CSP. You need to have somebody who you can have as a licensing partner have that conversation with a customer. You need to have somebody who has that industry expertise for healthcare or retail or government or whatever the space is, so they can really talk to that customer. You need to have a services partner who can be able to deliver and do the integration work. You need to have the right software vendors. Are they calling it SDC now, software development companies, right? So SDCs or ISBs to come in and have specific solutions. You need to have analysts who can help provide some some insights into this. So there's so many different facets of it, and I think that that's, that's one of the things that we're trying to help unlock for partners, is to understand you, you have to be specific. In fact, I was, I was talking with one of the partners earlier today, one of the challenges that I see for services partners is that they they try to do everything. And the difference, and he gave an example of like a manufacturing company, is it's, Hey, I've got this product, and I need to buy these things to go into my manufacturing plant, and then I can be successful. Well, an MSP or services partner, they might get a SharePoint opportunity exchange migration, and then maybe a data project and a Power BI project. And they're like, Oh, my pipeline is huge, but they can't close anything because they don't have that product. So being product focused, even as a services partner and say, This is my lane. I do cybersecurity solutions with Microsoft. I do fabric and Power BI. I do AI whatever. Those things are that becomes really important to know what is your product, and then whatever is not your product, find other partners who can come to the table and they can refer you in for what you actually do. And so then you can look at it more of like manufacturing, but I have to have that product, so have that mindset as an SDC or an ISB, even if you're a services partner. Is really, really big. I

Chip Rodgers  10:20  
love that, yeah, very specific, memorable, right? So that the fields, as you engage with the field that they there's there you've got, they you occupy a position in their sort of mental model,

Justin Slagle  10:32  
exactly. And so it takes a crew, right? And especially as you go up market, and that's also one of the ways, like we see a lot of partners, especially MSP partners, who they're working more in SMB, they want to work up a little higher into mid market and potentially into maybe majors and strategic accounts. But the way that you do that is by truly knowing your lane. We often hear people who will say, Well, if I condense too much, I'm not going to have enough opportunity. But the people who do it, what they find is, the more you condense, the more opportunity that comes about. I found the same thing in my model, right? I only work Microsoft, the more and more deep. And I've been in this world for 20 years now, and in 20 years I still it. Actually, every year I find out how much I don't know. And the nice thing about Microsoft is they change all the time. And so here we're coming up on July 1, when everything's gonna change. It's gonna change again. So it's, you know, it just makes it an ever changing model. But the great thing for partners is it also changes for customers, right? The products change. The Nicole just announced this morning that the licensing just changed for CSP, so now you can sell three year three, three year subscriptions for CSP. So what does that mean for a customer, and what are the, what are the entitlements that they might get for doing three years as opposed to one year. But Microsoft changing creates opportunity. Creates opportunity for me to help partners. It creates opportunities for partners, for their customers. There's so much goodness that comes in the model that we live

Chip Rodgers  11:49  
in. It's fantastic. Justin, thank you so much for taking some time today and and sharing your thoughts and and a lot of great knowledge and tips and and, also congrats on the success of the partner masters. You guys have done phenomenal. Thank

Unknown Speaker  12:05  
you. Thank you for having

Chip Rodgers  12:05  
me. Appreciate you reaching out all right. Well, that's that's it from day one Thursday, May 1 at ultimate partner, and we'll see you all next time. Thanks for joining you.

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