CRN Interview: For Microsoft's Deshaies, Field Engagement Equals Better Sales

CRN: Now that you have officially taken over the U.S. channel chief role, what will you be focusing on in the next 30 days?

DESHAIES: My next 30 days are really going to be starting my immersion. And what I've set with my team is that really it's the next 90 days of my immersion, spending a lot of time getting to understand all the underpinnings of the business. So I've been looking at the business from the outside in. There are lots and lots of details behind the scenes where I need to connect the dots. And it's really taking my experiences from the past and starting to understand how I can apply those and how we can really build that next level of field integration between the U.S. partner group as well as regional teams and figure out what that model looks like.

But first and foremost, I've got to understand all the facets of the business. I think the key thing for me is that I remain super-passionate about partners. I believe 100 percent that they are our key to success in the future, and we're going to find ways to get to the next level with them. How do we help them prepare their organizations for growth in the next best way, whether it's business planning and the way that we approach that with our partners, whether it's through the profitability model we're talking about or whether it's how we go to market with them by delivering much more at the local level through our marketing efforts and empowerment levels?

DAY: We've got fantastic general managers. The business is running very, very well. To a person, they all are saying we absolutely have an opportunity to accelerate in ways we haven't before. Whether it's the partners or the people on this team, I think people are pretty excited about the change because we are going to figure out ways to accelerate business in this SMB market space and drive growth much more quickly.

CRN: What do you mean by that?

DESHAIES: Michael [Park, corporate vice president of Microsoft's U.S. SMS&P group] already talked to you about the investments we're making and the incremental $30 million [we're spending]. The whole vision behind that is to work with partners in a way so they find most benefit and accelerate our success in the market.

So a couple of key things. We're fine-tuning what the roles do within the organization. If you look at how partner account managers (PAMs) acted yesterday vs. where they act today, they have a much clearer focus around the business development side. And they're going to spend at least 50 percent of their time on that component of the relationship. So business planning and execution. And that execution really revolves around that sales management piece and helping them build and accelerate the pipeline, as one key example.