Microsoft took the opportunity of its world partner conference to launch a new training initiative. Entitled Partner Skills Plus, the new programme aims to upskill existing partners in the Microsoft set of products to enable them to sell more and also to better meet customer demands and expectations.
According to Don Nelson, general manager worldwide partner sales and readiness, Microsoft has identified a need, through partner feedback, that there would be more opportunities in the market if its partners had extra staff and additional training. “We’re trying to have three separate curricula: one for sales, one for marketing and one for tech people,” said Nelson. “The further you get up that threesome, the more product specific it becomes. We’ll have three separate training initiatives: online, instructor-led, and labs.
“More often than not our partners tend to be focussed on the product and selling features, (but) what we really want them to do is to be more open to the customers’ needs and use that kind of discovery process to be more successful in delivering the solutions set.”
Nelson also said one of the main reasons for the training drive was the company’s ambition to increase the number of certifications to over 45,000 worldwide. “We’re really focusing on the new stuff such as Vista. It’s the impetus to do everything. I think the learning curve on the new products is not as steep as the learning curve on Office in its entirety. But someone else might argue that the learning curve on unified communications, which is a part of Office, is not as steep as with Vista. It depends on the solutions set. We know we have a lot of knowledge transfer to do this year.”
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