Seamless Co-selling with the Microsoft Customer Engagement Methodology for Partners (MCEM)

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At Microsoft, we're committed to providing our partners with the tools and guidance they need to succeed. The Microsoft Customer Engagement Methodology (MCEM) is designed to help partners collaborate and co-sell effectively with us, putting our customers at the center of everything we do, showing up as a united team, balancing our customers' short-term wins and long-term vision, and using our teams and our partners to differentiate and win.

MCEM connects Microsoft Sales, Support, Industry Solutions Delivery, and partners across five sales stages. The core of our methodology lies in building trust by effectively delivering results aligned with customer objectives. Customer relationships are pivotal for driving innovation and improvement. At Microsoft, we go beyond simply making product sales. Our approach involves understanding customer needs, fostering trust, and offering continuous support to ensure we earn their business.

To assist you throughout this process, our methodology includes detailed checklists, the primary roles, supporting roles, resources, and exit criteria for the activity at each stage. While these checklists are useful, they're intended as a framework and not every activity might be needed. The focus should always be keeping the customer at the center of our relationships and customizing our actions to match their needs when possible.

We hope that this overview provides you with the insights you need to effectively understand, and co-sell with Microsoft. Together, we can achieve mutual success by solving our customers' toughest challenges and strategic goals.

To learn more and optimize your strategies, check out the aligned Solution Sales Plays at https://aka.ms/MCEMPartners.

MCEM Stage 1: Listen and Consult

Microsoft is always working to help our partners and customers succeed, which starts with a deep understanding of what our joint customers need. We know the first step on our journey with a customer is to learn about what they want to achieve.

The first stage of our Microsoft Customer Engagement Methodology for Partners is Listen & Consult. Before offering any advice or solutions, we listen to and consult together with our joint customers to fully understand their business and their desired outcomes. This stage starts even before meeting the customer. Understanding the customer's market, goals and historical performance is critical. Research the customer or opportunity and talk with colleagues about the customer. During customer meetings, we demonstrate active listening and strive to comprehend their priorities, the challenges they encounter, and the potential for addressing their requirements.

With the knowledge gained through listening and learning, we can engage in co-innovation, co-development, and commit to our customers' success. By aligning our efforts with their needs, we establish ourselves as trusted advisors capable of meeting both their immediate and future challenges through collaboratively leveraging our joint products and services to develop the most suitable solutions for our customers.

By the end of the Listen and Consult stage, the partner will be able to identify a customer referral, or their solution should be mapped to a customer need. At this stage, a Qualified Opportunity is created in Partner Center and shared with Microsoft sellers.

MCEM Stage 2: Inspire and Design

As we move into Stage 2: Inspire & Design, we look to go deeper into the customer's needs and goals in more detail while reaching a solution design.

Based on the situation and customer preference, Microsoft or our partners will take the lead in developing the solution strategy. The first step at this stage is to confirm the correct Solution Plays align to the customer's needs. These are a set of customer scenario frameworks that drive focus on specific solutions for addressing a customer's needs, which can be found at https://aka.ms/MCEMpartners.

By the end of the Inspire and Design stage, both the partner and Microsoft accounts teams should have clarity and agreement on which solution addresses the customer's need.

The overall principles for MCEM for Partners are important at this stage. In addition to putting the customer at the center, this stage requires that the team acts in unity, with Microsoft and partners collaborating through the customer journey. Further, this stage is ideal for bringing in joint teams to assess the customer's short and long-term needs more comprehensively to inform an overall strategic account plan.

MCEM Stage 3: Empower and Achieve

In the third stage, Empower and Achieve, we blend our teams, technology, and subject matter expertise to showcase the optimal solution and instill confidence in our customers. Activities encompass (1) demonstrating how the proposed solutions meet their needs and (2) commencing any relevant technical training. This might include conducting proof of concept, pilot projects, developing prototypes, or designing demos to illustrate how the solution aligns with the customer's requirements. As the technical proof is developed, the customer will also want proof that the solution delivers the desired value to the business. This is typically achieved through engagements with Microsoft, partner solution and industry experts, and other customers who have adopted similar solutions. Once the customer is confident of the technical and business proof, we move to creating a proposal and agreeing on terms.

Constructing an agreement for the customer at this point involves collaboration among various stakeholders, such as technology specialists, cloud solution architects, account executives, and industry solutions delivery and support personnel. Additionally, the customer needs to identify the key players involved in the finalization of the agreement and terms.

The Empower and Achieve stage isn't complete until we have an agreement in place that has been signed by all parties.

MCEM Stage 4: Realize Value

The Realize Value stage is crucial in our co-sell journey, where Microsoft and our partners drive a successful implementation and deliver exceptional outcomes to our valued clients.

We understand that our customers have put their trust in our joint solution, and here's where this confidence pays off as we work hand in hand with our Customer Success Managers and Solution Architects, collaborating with the customer and various teams to bring the production design to life and provide the necessary training and support for successful implementation.

We have two essential goals during the Realize Value stage: (1) achieve the highest customer satisfaction and (2) ensure seamless alignment and implementation of the project with our partners.

Throughout the delivery and deployment process, our teams stay vigilant, making sure any technical issues are swiftly addressed and mitigated, consistently validating the solution architecture, and recognizing and addressing any potential emerging risks.

Our top priority is validating that the customer's confidence in our solution is well-founded. When we're confident that all technical and operational preparations are complete, we present the production solution design to the customer for their feedback. It's imperative that the solution meets their needs, functions impeccably, is ready to be handed over for productive use, and appropriate metrics are in place to confirm success.

As we reach the end of the Realize Value stage, the customer should be satisfied with partner implementation, and both the partner and Microsoft project outcomes should be met with metrics in place.

The Realize Value stage isn't limited to implementation. Together with our partner teams, we actively look for other ways to serve our joint customer. As the solution takes shape, new opportunities might arise, and we encourage our account team to be involved in identifying avenues for expansion based on the customer's evolving needs.

MCEM Stage 5: Manage and Optimize

In the final stage, Manage and Optimize, we aim to ensure our joint customer remains satisfied with the deployed solution and evaluate whether the expected business value is being achieved. This includes comparing the solution's actual performance results with the customer's previously established key performance indicators. We actively monitor the overall health of the customer's solution to identify and resolve any unforeseen issues. Additionally, we proactively assess whether a customer's solution requires rightsizing or if legacy systems need to be transitioned off, further enhancing the business value for the customer.

New opportunities based on discussions with a customer might also come up. These might be related to expansion, incremental business objectives, or value the customer is trying to achieve. In these cases, the partner and Microsoft account teams should engage to further explore with the customer – which brings us to stage one of a new customer decision cycle in this engagement methodology. Partners can benefit either by providing solution health and optimization solutions and services or through incremental solutions for the customer. Overall, the activities are designed to keep building on our long-term customer relationships based on trust. Based on this established credibility with the customer, partners have a significant opportunity to grow their business by driving realization of business value through increased solution consumption, as well as customer need discovery and engagement.

While this stage is the final one, our Microsoft Customer Engagement Methodology for Partners is cyclical. Each successful deployment acts as force multiplier, initializing one or more Listen and Consult stages across multiple departments in the enterprise.