Steve Ballmer Needs To Be More In Tune With Who His Sales Force Really Is

Steve Ballmer. The charismatic Microsoft CEO was out touting the company’s latest marketing jingle last week to its end-user customers.

ROBERT FALETRA Can be reached at (781) 839-1202 or via e-mail at rfaletra@cmp.com.

“Microsoft’s steady, so get your people ready
Wait for Vista ’cause you’re stuck, Mister
Office is delayed, too, but don’t you stew
We have money, so don’t fret, honey
A little bit of marketing to help our targeting
Some creative spin ain’t no sin
If you buy this, then we get rich
If we delay that, we still get fat.”

Talk about trying to make lemonade out of lemons. The fact is Microsoft spends more money on marketing than all but a few of the world’s largest companies, and I rarely see it get the message out to the channel before it does to end users. That’s despite the heavy emphasis Microsoft places on its channel partners as the go-to-market sales outlet for the company. The marketing jingle is one thing, and all joking aside, there really is nothing wrong with it—when the message is clear. But the reality is it’s the channel that has to sell the Microsoft proposition to the paying customer in the end, and a marketing jingle that solution providers have no knowledge of or which really doesn’t mean much by itself is a waste of effort.

To me, a company with Microsoft’s resources—let’s not forget these guys are generating a wad of cash every month—should spend more time thinking about involving the channel in its marketing spin. Microsoft’s biggest mistake: The vast majority of the company doesn’t think about the channel before it rolls out these positioning statements. Microsoft is not the only big player to make this mistake. As good as it is, the software giant makes a lot of the same mistakes as companies not in its dominant position. In fact, it happens more often than not. IBM certainly made the same error before its On Demand campaign was rolled out several years ago.

	‘It’s the channel that has to sell the Microsoft proposition to the paying customer in the end, and a marketing jingle that solution providers have no knowledge of or which really doesn’t mean much by itself is a waste of effort.’

Who knows, maybe Microsoft is looking at this “People Ready” stuff as just something to bridge the gap between now and whenever the updates to the OS and Office arrive. Maybe it’s just something to keep people talking about the company. Heck, I don’t know, but what I do know is if Microsoft is serious about “People Ready” as a position on how it can help companies turn on a dime and turn ideas into actionable business plans that drive growth, then it better spend some time making sure its partners understand what it means. A marketing plan that spends dollars but targets the wrong audience—or misses a large piece of the audience—will lead to less-than-ideal results.

Call me biased for believing that the sales team needs to know what your story in the market is or it will fail. Call me ignorant for believing that in Microsoft’s case that sales force is the solution provider partners. I could be wrong on this one, but I’m not. I’m also not wrong when I tell you it won’t be the last time Microsoft, or for that matter a host of other companies, forget that the channel is its sales force. And I can assure you that all of these companies would be sure to tell their direct sales force what the position is before it is announced, so why not tell the indirect channel?

Make something happen. I can be reached at (781) 839-1202 or via e-mail at rfaletra@cmp.com.

Tweet

   

More Components & Peripherals