Steve Deming

I got the opportunity to attend the Worldwide Partner Conference in Los Angeles this week and between partner meetings, I even got to attend some of the breakouts. One of those breakouts was “Up Selling and Cross Selling Windows Intune and Office 365”. Although most of the information was standard messaging around Windows Intune, there was an excellent partner roundtable at the end that offered the following up and cross sell insights:

• One partner gives the POR fees right back to the customer to show a lower acquisition cost
  This partner has a 90%+ close rate and currently 80+ Intune customers
• One partner LOVES the Intune/Office 365 pay-as-you-go model
  No upfront costs – immediate dollars toward services
• One partner talked about using Intune as the prep step for Office 365
  Helps identify marginal Office 365 machines and shows IMMEDIATE value of central management with Intune
• One partner talked about Intune with MDOP wasn’t even an option - it was how they started the conversation
  They found App-V to be VERY popular with their small business customers

They also talked about potential Intune/Office 365 Blockers:

• You may need to counter mis-information, rumor, and FUD around Intune and Office 365 (see Ron Grattop’s blog entries)
• Legal and compliance concerns – what is OK in the US may not be OK in Europe – watch out for multi-national deals

Suggestions for Success:

• Lock down your demo so it’s smooth and meets YOUR sales goals
• Have a plan that if Intune/Office 365 is rejected how will you up sell to Windows 7/Office 2010
• Make sure you know potential value of Windows 7 Enterprise for THAT customer

If you’ve never had the chance to attend WPC in the past, you can always view the keynotes at www.digitalwpc.com and better yet, sign up to attend next year’s conference in person in Toronto, Canada.