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Joint Planning leads in Partner Center

Appropriate roles: Referrals admin | Referrals user

Joint Planning is Microsoft’s always-on approach for aligning Microsoft Small Medium Enterprises & Channel (SME&C) sellers with partners earlier in the sales cycle to collaborate on customer territory planning and drive co-selling success. This engagement model ensures a seamless integration between MSX-CRM portfolio plans and the Partner Center Referrals workspace, enabling real-time collaboration on shared customer accounts and digitally enabling co-sell.

Partners receive curated, high-quality leads directly in Partner Center, giving them early visibility into leads that can be quickly qualified and converted. By engaging directly with Microsoft SME&C sellers, partners can collaborate on high propensity Joint Planning leads across their shared customer base and contribute to the success of their customers. The SME&C Territory & Partner Planning (TPP) process is accelerated through partner Joint Planning enablement, as partners play a critical role in driving mutual success.

To get started, review this article and take advantage of the on-demand partner training in the Joint Planning enablement collection.

Important

New substages Qualify and Evaluate are introduced to complete before marking leads as Won or Convert to Opportunity.

Note

Leads must be accepted within 14 days to remain active. Partners have 60 days to act on accepted leads, after which they automatically close as lost.

Joint Planning offers a range of benefits to partners

  • Access to quality leads - Focusing sales engagements on top, high-quality leads reduces partner planning time and effort.
  • Accelerated deal velocity - Direct collaboration and pre-engagement with SME&C sellers accelerates lead progression.
  • Increase sales & profit - Deal details are pre-populated and help partners stay attuned to customer needs to boost profitability.
  • Real-time insights - Tracking real-time updates to the lead allows for proactive issue resolution and tailored customer engagement.
  • Digitally enabled co-sell - Joint Planning leads converted to opportunities bypass qualification by the Co-sell Operation Service and are routed directly back to the SME&C seller who initially sent the lead.

What Joint Planning is and isn’t

What it is:

  • A seller-led SME&C motion for customer planning
  • A way for Microsoft sellers to engage partners where opportunity exists
  • A seamless workflow between Microsoft CRM {Microsoft Sales Experience (MSX)} and Partner Center
  • Real-time co-sell collaboration on shared accounts

What it isn’t:

  • Not for all customer segments - specific to SME&C
  • Not a guarantee of leads
  • Not a substitute for partner effort or co-sell readiness
  • Not a binding commitment - all leads require partner validation

Partner Center setup to enable Joint Planning lead management

There are multiple ways partners can choose to organize Joint Planning lead management: central lead management or direct partner seller management. Partners should pick the approach that fits their operations and ensure clear ownership, so all incoming Microsoft leads are actioned in a timely manner.

Note

Working in Partner Center is role-based. Each organization’s User Management Admin or Account Admin can manage user access and role assignment.

Central lead management: In this model, a designated referrals admin receives all Joint Planning leads and is accountable for updating the status as each lead progresses.

  • Required role: Referrals admin
  • Action: Assign the referrals admin role to one or more team members responsible for managing and assigning leads.

Direct partner seller management: In this model, partner sellers directly manage the Joint Planning leads they’re tagged on for the customers they support, while a referrals admin handles any remaining leads.

  • Required roles: Referrals user and referrals admin
  • Action: Assign the referrals user role to each partner seller and ensure they're familiar with Partner Center. Assign the referrals admin role to one or more team members responsible for managing unassigned leads.

For detailed instructions about user setup, review Module 2 in the Joint Planning partner enablement collection.

Where to access Joint Planning leads

Important

User membership on your organization’s tenant is required to access Partner Center. If you can't log in to Partner Center, contact your User Management Admin or Account Admin for assistance.

  1. Sign in to Partner Center, then navigate to the Referrals workspace > Leads section. All Joint Planning leads are available under the Joint Planning leads tab.
  2. View the lead status to see where you need to engage. Remember, leads must be accepted or declined within 14 days to prevent expiration
  3. Select the blue hyperlink to manage and action each individual lead
  4. After acceptance, all leads must be actioned within 60 days or they'll automatically be closed as lost

Note: The Joint Planning leads tab is available as of January 2026. If this hasn’t yet rolled out to your org, then Joint Planning leads will be visible in the Sales & Marketing tab.

Joint Planning lead flow and step-by-step guidance

Flow chart showing joint partner planning lead steps.

Note

How your organization chooses to manage Joint Planning leads affects which users are notified when new leads are received.

  1. Joint Planning is initiated by Microsoft seller
    • Microsoft seller reviews and aligns their plan priorities in MSX
    • Microsoft seller optimally pre-engages with the partner to gauge interest in the deal.
    • A Joint Planning lead is sent to the partner.
  2. Partner is notified of a new Joint Planning lead
    • Email is sent to the referrals admin and any other users specifically associated with the lead.
    • Email contains a summary of the deal details and a link to act on the lead in Partner Center.
    • Accept leads within 14 days to prevent them from expiring.
  3. Accepting the lead
    • To accept the lead, you need to provide the name and contact info of the partner seller responsible for progressing the lead by adding them as a team member.
    • If the lead was sent directly to the partner seller, they would be automatically added.
    • Verify the lead details and update all required fields before saving the record.
  4. Customer engagement
    • Connect with the Microsoft seller as needed to determine whether the lead should be jointly qualified or if the partner should qualify.
    • Once you have strategized how to engage with the customer, update the lead status by selecting “mark as complete” on each substage:
      1. Qualify: Confirm customer interest and engagement
      2. Evaluate: Assess customer’s needs and align a solution (BANT)
    • Qualified leads can be converted into a co-sell opportunity, which creates an active co-sell referral that is routed to the Microsoft seller and counts toward your Microsoft sales pipeline.
  5. Progressing & updating the lead
    • If choosing to convert to opportunity, the intention is to BANT qualify the lead before converting to opportunity to share back with the Microsoft seller.
    • If Microsoft seller engagement isn't needed, you can mark the lead as won or lost, or close in error.
    • Leads must be won / lost / converted to opportunity within 60 days of acceptance, or they'll automatically be marked as lost.
  6. Converting to opportunity
    • After confirming you want to convert the lead, you'll be taken to the Referral creation experience.
    • To speed up the conversion process, all deal details are auto populated. If any section displays an error, select the heading and make necessary modifications.
    • Review all details for accuracy, check the box to confirm you have appropriate consent to share, and select Create deal.

Note

The Help from Microsoft section commonly triggers an error because it requires customer contact information. Be mindful of the selection you make, as changing the default option can affect referral visibility to the Microsoft seller.

Recommended selection: Choose a type of help that will trigger an active co-sell referral, such as the default option “General or other.” This routes the referral back to the Microsoft seller.

Review* Module 3 in the Joint Planning enablement collection for a demo of this experience with screenshots.

Benefits to converting leads to co-sell opportunities

Joint Planning leads converted to opportunities bypasses qualification by the Co-sell Operation Service, speeding up the path to co-sell, as there's no back-and-forth between Microsoft and the partner to get the referral accepted.

Some benefits of converting leads to co-sell opportunities include:

  • Streamlining the partner experience for faster sales execution with automatic referral acceptance
  • Accelerating revenue growth via Marketplace and co-sell motion
  • Reinforcing partner value with Microsoft sellers by driving pipeline visibility and quota impact

Additional partner-facing enablement

For more partner-facing training content about the Joint Planning motion, visit our Joint Planning enablement collection. This collection includes on-demand training videos demonstrating the value of Joint Planning to digitally enable co-sell, user setup in Partner Center, a step-by-step demo of the partner experience, and FAQs. If you have feedback about this process or any training documents, you can submit a feedback form.

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