Build and Grow Your SharePoint Enterprise Search Practice

1. Build and Grow Your SharePoint Enterprise Search Practice

2. Introduction • Ken Thoreson - Acumen Management Group, LTD • Jemima Herman – Product Manager • Seema Gangadhara – SharePoint Product Manager • Nicole Noel – Project Manager

3. Agenda • Introduction to the workshop and purpose • The business opportunity of a Microsoft SharePoint® Enterprise Search practice • Overview of playbook and how to use it • Building your SharePoint Enterprise Search practice workshop activity • Business Builder workshop summary, action plan

4. Purpose of workshop To provide partners who are planning to or have an existing Microsoft SharePoint practice with: • Ideas, concepts, and tools to help increase the growth and profitability of their practice • A playbook for building sales and profits, promoting commitment, and retaining the sustainability of the workshop

5. Why Create a Playbook? • To learn best practices for growing a new or existing practice • To learn new principles and techniques for business management, sales planning, and marketing • To understand resources from Microsoft to assist you • To apply these insights and techniques through the Playbook exercises

6. Why Business Builder for SharePoint enterprise Search The Microsoft goal is to assist partner community in building a sustaining business model: • Develop and strengthen profitable customer relationships • Increase the volume of business • Increase existing customer penetration ratios • Adding increased levels of net-new customers • Implement innovative products/solutions and services • Increase market penetration • Improve operations and reduce costs • Build high-value connections with partners and suppliers

7. Market Dynamics • Complex IT systems • Increasing security threats and economic challenges • Increasingly mobile workforce • Regulatory requirements • Geographically and organizationally dispersed project teams

8. Market Dynamics • Low employee productivity • Need for increased levels of communication • Need for better key performance indicators (KPIs) and dashboard metrics • Economic justification

9. Business Builder Playbook for SharePoint A working playbook • Tailored to your practice needs • Microsoft products integrated with Acumen Management best business practices • Microsoft resources integrated with product focus • Partner-focused for ongoing, long-term utilization

10. Play One: Perform Business Assessment and Business Planning Evaluate your business, your practice, and the elements that should be included in your business plan: • Perform a Business Assessment • Evaluate Your Practice • Case Studies for Strategy Development • Developing Your Vision for the Next Two Years • Building a Management Dashboard • Learning and Development Plan • Building Your Practice Statement

11. Play Two: Market Assessment and Marketing Plan Creation Analyze your market and create a six-month marketing plan: • Perform Market Assessment • Develop a Marketing and Sales Funnel • Determine Your Ideal Client and Market Focus • Craft Your Message • Position Your Practice • Develop a Marketing Plan • Ready-to-Go Marketing

12. Play ThRee: Develop and Analyze Your Sales Strategy Build a SharePoint Search solutions-based sales team: • Review, Develop, and Analyze Your Sales Strategy • Create Sales Training and Development Plans • Microsoft Incentives

13. Developing a Practice Assessment and Business Plan

14. Business Planning Business Planning must consider: • The environment of the market and your company • Overall and Microsoft resources available to you • Your personnel • Your marketing capability • Training programs • Banking relationships • Hiring projections • Growth considerations

15. Business Planning A process to establish the goals and objectives to achieve business success: • Typically annual • Frequently financially focused • The basis for functional plans • Focused on outcome, not process • Rarely detailed enough for individual or department action

16. Business Planning Questions • What are some of the specific factors you will be facing in 2010? • What assumptions are you making about the market in 2010? • What assumptions did you make about your product offerings in 2009? Still true? • What assumptions did you make about your company capability in 2009? Still true?

17. Business planning Questions • What went well in the past year? • What did not go well? • What are the key drivers? • What are the key metrics? • What are the risks? • What are the opportunities?

18. Key Business Drivers • Existing products and services to current customers • New products and services to current customers • Existing products and services to new customers • New products and services to new customers

19. Playbook Exercise • Evaluate Your Practice • Case Studies for Strategy Development • Develop Your Vision for the Next Two Years • Build a Management Scorecard

20. Group Exercise • Rate Your Overall Sales/Marketing/Technical Proficiency in Each Category • Rate Management, Sales, Marketing, Consulting and Score Your Results • Complete Current and Planned %’s of Revenue • Review Pertinent Case Studies • White Papers

21. Playbook Exercise Sample Practice Statement • Statement: We provide our business expertise, services and Microsoft solutions to increase collaboration and communication. • Strategy to Uncover: Our focus is in the Professional Services market segment. • Unique Business Opportunity: We offer our clients industry expertise, a client and industry advisory board along with twice annual client User Group events. • Related Practice Areas: UC, Office • 5 Questions to Ask

22. Playbook Exercise • Review Learning and Development Plans • Develop Your Practice Statement

23. Microsoft Training and Development Follow these steps: • Go to www.microsoftlearningplans.com • Select “Search for Training Packages” • Search by product—Microsoft SharePoint 2007, Microsoft SharePoint 2010, Microsoft SQL Server 2008 • Search by competency—Search

24. Market Assessment and Marketing Plan Creation

25. Product Marketing Campaign Must understand the following to build a campaign: • Dollars required to attain monthly budget/quota • Dollars required to enter pipeline at the beginning of each month • Number of leads required to achieve pipeline value • Defined lead sources and average order size • Number of months in the sales cycle or velocity • Win/loss ratio on proposal deliveries • Marketing funnel vs. sales funnel

26. Sharepoint enterprise search Marketing Campaign Determine what marketing activities are required to drive demand: • Understand vendor tool sets • Ready-to-Go Campaigns • Newsletters, Emails, Direct Mail, Marketing Programs • Prepare tracking systems • Estimate potential costs • Define for rolling 12 months • Determine average order size • Determine priority of events • Determine your goals per event

27. Sales & Marketing Funnel Measure Dispassionately Glass pipeline — overall company Opportunity — EFFORT — RESULTS Ideal Profile Universe Segment Campaign Execution Leads Req Proposal Stage 3 Stage 4 Stage 5 Stage 6 Win

28. Review Playbook • Determine Top Lead Sources • Estimate Marketing and Sales Funnels

29. Defining Market Coverage Strategy Goal: Determine sales and market coverage strategy • A, B, C analysis of account potential • Clustering of opportunity • Territory definition • Target accounts • Products and services • Telesales, inside, and outside organization

30. Defining Ideal Client • A, B, C client base • 15% of clients = 65% of sales/profits • 20% of clients = 20% of sales/profits • 65% of clients = 15% of sales/profits • A, B, C prospect base • Call frequency determination into Microsoft Dynamics® CRM and measure • Lifetime value ratio

31. Ideal Clients For SharePoint • Owner of company • C-level management • IT may be secondary entry (and could help facilitate discussion with executive target) Wants to: • Reduce IT costs and capital expenses • Have Exchange services, including calendaring, global address list, and mobile access • Upgrade to Exchange/Outlook®, but does not have the expertise to deploy or manage, and believes it is too expensive to upgrade • Centralize data now stored in several places • Interested in SharePoint

32. Ideal Potential Prospects • This can be the CIO/CEO/CTO. This individual holds the final authority to sign off on the purchase process and if there is any IT resources they typically report up to this individual. This individual is likely to accept partner/trusted advisor recommendation and is very cost sensitive. • Buyers include businesses using a home-grown collaboration or portal solution or using Microsoft Windows SharePoint Services (WSS). These businesses regard calendar, intranet, and file share as must have’s. As you are trying to upsell customers from WSS to SharePoint focus on what is important to the customer and not available in WSS.

33. Ideal Potential Prospects • Good prospects are customers with an Open License and no annuity agreement, or an annuity agreement that expires within the next six months. • It’s also good to target Microsoft Office 2003 and 2007 customers. The SharePoint story provides them a way to extend their Microsoft Office investment and control and manage their document chaos.

34. Customer Targeting • Identify bottlenecks in finding and re-using company information • Focus on how users find information—does it take them more time to find what they need than to do their work • Discuss integration with Microsoft Office Applications • Productivity enhancements • Identify areas where there is a requirement to search on documents • Sales and Marketing • Research and Development • Human Resources • Intellectual Property

35. Potential Questions You May Ask Personal and team productivity • Do employees work in teams? • Is work based around projects? • What document based business processes are currently in place? Organizational productivity • Is enterprise knowledge locked up in the heads of individuals? • How well is knowledge re-used? • Do employees have a need to work together with others outside the organization?

36. Potential Questions You May Ask Infrastructure Productivity • Is there information in any existing project sites, databases, systems or LOB applications that need to be made available to employees? • Have file shares proliferated throughout the organization? • Does data storage needs to be expanded to accommodate growing demands on email due in large part to document sharing? Security • How is security managed at the document level? • Are there sensitive documents that need to be protected?

37. Ideal Client Profile: SharePoint Enterprise search • This segment (Collaboration Solutions) is growing faster than the rest of the IT market. Organizations are realizing that collaboration solutions are not a luxury but a key requirement for remaining competitive. • Within SMB (Small Medium Business) are goal is to target the BDM (Business Decision Maker).

38. Marketing Ideas • Executive Forum • Business Breakfasts • Lunch & Learns • Seminars based upon Business Challenges • Networking/Partnering • Social Media • Microsoft Resources • Use Live Meeting as a Sales Tool

39. Search Quickly connect people with the right information COLLABORATE Simplify how people work together, and help them more effectively apply information to their needs SHARE Convert insight into organizational knowledge • Improve organizational effectiveness, make better business decisions, be more productive, and achieve greater business success: EXAMPLE: “Product” Messaging

40. Business Challenges Addressed by Enterprise Search • Volume of content is exploding and there are too many information silos • Frustration finding content—poor results quality • Inability to explore—poor visualization and interactivity • Difficulty finding and connecting to people and expertise • Need to search in multiple places (no single search box) • Search not integrated into the rest of my work • Ever-growing content volumes and capability demands • Content and applications very siloed; integration is complex

41. Group Exercise List business challenges SharePoint Enterprise Search would solve.

42. Components of a Good Value Proposition • The implicit promise a company makes to its customers to deliver a combination of values, such as price, quality, performance, selection, and convenience • The words that describe the compelling reason to buy • Includes Partner and Microsoft messaging

43. Ready-to-Go Campaign Take advantage of the rich resources to show prospects: • How to help their organization increase the value of their information assets • How to get the right information to the right people • How to make better-informed decisions • How to provide IT Pros with a single, extendible platform The most common partner wins map to three basic deal types: • Solving search needs • Helping customers get more value out of existing intranet or portal solutions • Building broader projects spanning collaborative business applications, enterprise content management, business intelligence, and even e-commerce sites

44. SharePoint RTG Campaigns •  Microsoft SharePoint 2010 • http://www.mspartnerdirect.com/action/microsoft/site/library/CampaignView?campaignID=379 • You will also find Case Studies, White Papers, Partner information, Data Sheets and a variety of marketing tools and information to create the demand you need for building a successful marketing campaign.

45. Introducing the Marketing Desk Specialists Your free, one-stop resource for marketing consultations and best-practice guidance Schedule your FREE marketing consultation today! • https://partner.microsoft.com/US/40015071

46. Playbook review • Exercise: Craft Your Message—Review Acumen Value Proposition Tool • Review RTG Campaign • GOAL: Create Six-Month Marketing Plan

47. Developing and Analyzing Your Sales Strategy

48. The Rigors of Cadence

49. Business Drivers and Pipeline Metrics Volume, source, and conversion percent Lead to prospect ` Generate interest Prospect to opportunity Volume, pipeline dollars, and conversion percent Convert interest Opportunity to proposal Mix percent and conversion percent Prove and convince Close Proposalto win Win percent Cycle time Avg. $ sale Deliver

50. Key Business Sales Drivers Sales driver examples: • Average dollars per sales transaction • Number of required sales transactions per month • Win rate percentage of decisions • Forecast accuracy percentage • Sales cycle time in months • Required pipeline value • Sales milestones to win • Sales activity to win: cold calls, first visits, proof of concept or demo, proposals