Co-sell with Microsoft sales teams and partners overview

  • Article

Appropriate roles: Co-sell solution admin

Co-selling is any collaborative engagement between Microsoft and its partner ecosystem, including:

  • Building demand
  • Sales planning
  • Sharing sales leads
  • Accelerating partner-to-partner empowered selling
  • Delivering marketplace-led commerce

When you choose to co-sell an offer, you can work directly with Microsoft sales teams and Microsoft partners on joint selling opportunities. That unlocks benefits when selling through the commercial marketplace online stores: Azure Marketplace and the Microsoft commercial marketplace.

Co-selling opportunities are the result of acting on a lead and collaborating on it with Microsoft sales teams or Microsoft partners to provide a solution for a customer need.

These solutions (also called offers) can include software built with your intellectual property (IP) and services that support Microsoft technologies.

Diagram showing how co-sell happens when sales leads for Microsoft managed customers are shared, accepted, and won.

Co-sell opportunities

A co-sell opportunity is any type of collaboration with Microsoft sales teams, Microsoft partners, or both to sell products and solutions that meet customer needs. Some of the key co-sell categories are:

  • Co-sell with Microsoft sales teams: Work with one or more Microsoft sales teams to actively fulfill customer needs. That can include selling your offers, Microsoft's offers, or both. Both you and Microsoft sales teams can identify and share customer opportunities in which your solutions might be a good fit.
  • Partner to Partner (P2P): Work with another Microsoft partner to actively solve a customer problem.
  • Private deal: Share what you are independently working on with Microsoft so it's reflected in the Microsoft reporting system for analysis and forecasting.
  • Solution Assessment (SA): Work with partners who are vetted by the solution assessments business team to assess the technology needs of customers who are using or planning to use Microsoft technologies.

Co-sell statuses

Co-sell statuses for both Azure and business applications can be applied to solutions.

  • Co-sell statuses for Azure:

    • In-market
    • Co-sell ready
    • Azure IP co-sell eligible

  • Co-sell statuses for business applications:

    • Business Applications Co-sell Incentive Standard
    • Business Applications Co-sell Incentive Premium

For details about the requirements to achieve these co-sell statuses, see Co-sell requirements.

Benefits of Co-sell statuses

  • Azure:

Co-sell-ready status exposes your solutions to Microsoft sales teams. Co-selling with Microsoft sales teams and Microsoft partners helps you reach a vast community of Microsoft-managed customers to collaborate on sales opportunities that accelerate your business growth. The Azure IP co sell eligibility allows you to submit co-sell referrals and for your offers to contribute toward customers' Microsoft Azure Consumption Commitments (MACC)

  • Co-sell eligible status:
  • Earns all the benefits of co-sell-ready status.
  • Can be eligible for more commercial marketplace benefits. The Business applications co-sell incentivized (Standard and Premium) incentivizes Microsoft sales teams to sell your offer.

To learn how to achieve co-sell-ready and Azure IP co-sell eligibility, see Co-sell-ready and co-sell eligibility requirements.

Business Applications co-sell incentive (Standard and Premium) status can be applied to these offer types:

  • Dynamics 365 apps on Dataverse and Power Apps
  • Dynamics 365 Operations Apps

Azure IP co-sell eligibility can be applied to these offer types and only applicable to IP solution type:

  • Azure Application
  • Azure Container
  • Azure Virtual Machine
  • IoT Edge module
  • Software-as-a-service (SaaS)

Offers that achieve Azure IP co-sell eligibility gain these commercial marketplace benefits:

  • Sales of your offer through commercial marketplace contribute towards customers' Microsoft Azure consumption commitments (MACC). Eligible customers see the offer marked as Azure benefit eligible in the Azure portal.

  • Offers that achieve Azure IP co-sell eligible status or are enrolled in the Microsoft Business Applications ISV Connect Program with co-sell-ready status receive a Microsoft preferred solutions badge on the offer listing page in the online stores—Azure Marketplace and AppSource.

    The Microsoft preferred solutions badge promotes an offer's quality, performance, and ability to address customer needs in an industry vertical or solution area.

    (After an offer achieves Microsoft preferred solutions status, it might take up to 30 days for the preferred solution badge to be displayed in the online store.)

To achieve IP Co-Sell eligibility, you must also achieve co-sell-ready status.

To learn how to achieve co-sell-ready and co-sell eligibility, see co-sell-requirements.

Next steps