10 Channel Advocates: Steve Ballmer, Microsoft
“It is elementary to stay in close touch,” said Wim Heijting, CEO of Watermark, a systems integrator from the Netherlands and one of three solution providers who interviewed Ballmer onstage last summer at the company’s worldwide partner conference. But what Ballmer does best is keep his team’s channel energy high, he said. “I don’t necessarily need to see Steve Ballmer, but there is sufficient attention from his staff to the channel.”
Advocate Accolade:
Directed each global subsidiary in fiscal 2005 to reallocate 35 percent of Microsoft’s marketing budget away from customer-focused activities and toward joint marketing activities with partners
With at least $1.7 billion invested in its partner business in fiscal 2005 and 3,000 employees dedicated to related program activities, Microsoft demonstrates perhaps the largest single investment in the channel each year. And it’s hard to quibble with this number: Approximately 96 percent of the Redmond, Wash.-based vendor’s U.S. sales for the first nine months of 2004 were generated by channel partners.
Allison Watson, vice president of worldwide partner sales and marketing, said Ballmer personally makes sure that the partner mind-set is “embedded” in the core thinking of Microsoft’s employees, from the executive team down to the field level. When he’s traveling, from 30 percent to 50 percent of his time is dedicated to partner conversations, with friends and foes. “Steve pulls it out of people. He doesn’t just want to meet the friends of Microsoft,” Watson said. And beware the Microsoft team member who attempts to talk strategy without having detailed knowledge of how a change could affect the smallest solution provider in a remote region of the world.
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