Create a business profile for the Microsoft commercial marketplace to get sales leads and referrals

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Appropriate roles: Business profile admin | Referrals admin

Create a business profile to get Microsoft sales leads and to help customers find you.

Microsoft engages millions of customers every year through marketing, sales, and service efforts. Most of these engagements create opportunities for us to provide referrals to our partners in the form of sales leads.

As a qualified Microsoft partner, you can create a business profile to showcase your business to customers who are looking for your unique solutions and expertise to address their business needs.

Here's how we use your business profile:

  • Through the Microsoft commercial marketplace: Your profile appears on the Connect with partners partner directory on Microsoft AppSource. Potential customers use this tool to find partners who can help them implement Microsoft products and solutions.

  • Through referrals from Microsoft sales and service employees. Potential customers interested in deploying cloud-based technology solutions contact Microsoft for help with finding professionals who can meet their business needs. Microsoft professionals can use your profile to help refer potential customers to your company.

Create a profile

  1. Sign in to Partner Center using a business profile admin account. If you don't already have a business account, see Partner Center and Create a Partner Center account.
  2. Select Referrals > Business profile.
  3. For each region that you do business in, select New profile and create a profile.

Partner Center supports multiple languages. Some elements, such as the description and free-form tags, might need to include text from different languages.

Partner information

Introduce your company, adding a logo, a brief description, a link to your website and LinkedIn profile.

The logo can be a GIF, JPG, or PNG file, with a maximum width of 300 pixels. We recommend using square or wide aspect ratios with minimum 216 x 216 px, maximum of 2 MB. Tall aspect ratios aren't recommended.

Your description can be up to 2,500 characters.

Here are some tips for a great description:

  • Be brief. Lead with what's important. The first sentence or two should be the headline that catches customers' attention. In the Connect with partners search experience, we show the first line or two in the search results preview.
  • Focus on your company's experiences with Microsoft-specific offerings. Customers searching for referrals are generally looking for partners with Microsoft-specific experience.
  • Use bullets. Break up information into bulleted lists to make it easier to scan.
  • Avoid jargon. Use simple, everyday language, naming your offerings for what they do, the business needs they address, or the task or objective they help customers accomplish.
  • Don't worry about filling the description with search keywords. The customer search tools search for keywords generated in the Partner Expertise section, not the description.
  • Keep your profile current. With each software or service release, update your profile, keeping it in sync with your company's website.
  • Don't refer to another Microsoft partner company by name unless it's a subsidiary, is otherwise affiliated with your company, or you have a current agreement with that partner company to act in partnership and/or promote each other for shared work opportunities.
  • For regions with multiple languages, consider including text from multiple languages in the description.

Partner expertise

Optimize these tags to help your profile gain visibility.

Tags you can add:

  • Industry focus tags
  • Products, limited to Microsoft products
  • Service type, for example, consulting, implementation, or managed services
  • Solutions, skills, and capabilities. These tags provide you with the ability to add search keywords that are unique to your capabilities.

Tags that can be earned:

Customer organization size

You can opt out of referrals from businesses that don't meet your target customer size.

By opting out, you'll have more time to spend on businesses that are a match for the businesses that you prefer to work with.

Locations

Locations appear when customers or Microsoft professionals search for partners by proximity.

You can add up to five of your company's top locations per country/region.

Each location you add becomes a separate profile page. When updating profile pages, make sure that you update them for each location.

Indicate locations that are official company locations and can be validated. Pick locations that are central to the markets you serve and that best represent your company's ability to fulfill.

For the Email and phone number, add the contact details of the person who should receive the referrals. Preferably, the contact should also be the Referral admin. To learn more, see Responding to referrals.

Review a profile

After you publish your profile, updates appear in the Connect with partners searches within 24 hours.

The company name displayed on a partner's business profile is taken from the name you've entered on their company's legal profile. Verify and manage your company's legal business profile name.

If your organization has earned Solution Partner designations, Azure Expert MSP or Advanced specializations, these badges appear in the business profile from Microsoft commercial marketplace page after 72 hours.

Improve the visibility of your profile

  • Respond quickly to requests. When you receive a customer referral, a faster response can lead to better results on the search pages for future customers.
  • Be selective with your tags. It's better to have fewer tags that best represent your company's offers, solutions, value propositions, and unique position for which you can consistently demonstrate success. A focused profile will pay dividends in future search results.
  • Earn Solutions Partner designations and Specializations to demonstrate your proficiency in Microsoft products.

Delete a profile

Deleting a profile is a permanent action that can't be undone.

Any existing leads from the Partner Center referral workspace that are associated with the profile remain even after the profile is deleted.

  1. Sign in to Partner Center using a business profile admin account.
  2. Select Referrals > Business profile.
  3. Select the trash bin icon next to the profile name.

The deleted profile information is removed from Partner Center immediately. However, it might take up to 24 hours before the profile is removed from the Microsoft commercial marketplace page.

Next steps