On Partnerships

There's been a lot of scuttlebutt over the last year or so regarding Microsoft's position with their partner community. Most of that has resulted in a general consensus in the SMB community that Microsoft is trying to cut their partner relationships and go direct to your clients. Several people have blogged their opinions about this, but I'm not going to dispute or confirm any of those other posts. The intelligent human being will take in a wide variety of information and make up their own mind about how they're going to deal with any actions they may see in their own sphere of influence.

But one thing I've found out that many Microsoft partners in the SMB space did not know was that there is a group within Microsoft that is actively trying to hook up with Microsoft partners and help promote their businesses in their local communities. No, this is not part of the SBSC program and the TPAMs that may or may not be helpful, this is an entirely different and independent group - the Local Engagement Team.

There are two public facing sites for this team. The first is the MSLocalBiz site (http://www.mslocalbiz.com) which is aimed at consumers. The other is MSLocalPartner (http://www.mslocalpartner.com) which is aimed at MS partners. The goal of this organization is to connect local partners with other local organizations to help promote Microsoft products to help solve issues faced in the small business community.

For more information about what the Local Engagement Team is all about, listen to eOnCall this Thursday, April 9, at 10am and 1pm Central time at the AirTunZ Rock station. I interview one of the Local Engagement reps, Michael Murphy, about the Local Engagement Team and what they're trying to accomplish with the local community. Each episode is only 15 minutes, so it's not a huge time commitment on your part, and you may find out that the Local Engagement Team could be a big boost to you in your local community. [The show in podcast format will be posted next week, and I'll update this blog with the URLs for the shows if you can't listen during the broadcast on Thursday.]

Listen to the show, then check out the MSLocalPartner and MSLocalBiz sites and see how working with the Local Engagement Team could help your business.

Disclaimer: The Local Engagement Team is sponsoring the eOnCall program and has been since March 1. However, my working relationship with Michael Murphy started well over 6 months ago, and the sponsorship of the program grew out of our efforts to help EON Consulting get more involved in the Denton area. But, by sharing information about the Local Engagement Team with other partners, I'm actually reducing the cut of their budget I could be getting to help grow that business locally, so I'm certainly not gaining anything by sharing this information with the rest of you. :)