How to create your own Superpower!

If you have not yet guessed I have been spending time with my nephews and during the time with them we have conversations about superheroes, superpowers and what we will all be when we grow up.

This got me to thinking everyone has some kind of superpower. Indulge me for a moment, think about your team mates and what makes them different. Do you have a person on your team who seems to always be able to anticipate the customer’s next move or maybe you have someone who always sees opportunities when the rest of us see problems. I am lucky to be part of a team filled with these types of superheroes.

Connecting to your superpowers is a lifelong journey, so I am discovering. Unlike the super heroes in comic books, in real life, we all have to work on our superpowers. I am told if you dedicate yourself to the pursuit of learning all you can, then your superpower will become more powerful. To help you be the best superhero in your customer’s eyes I would like to tell you about the final day at Australia Partner Conference.

Thursday September 3rd on this day we have brought together Microsoft’s Superheroes, who I think are the absolute best at what they do and have a real passion for you, our Partners. At the moment they are currently all really busy working together, building off each other’s’ strengths, to ensure we help you create or discover your own very own superpower. 

SUPERPOWER 1: MAKE YOUR CUSTOMER FEEL VALUED

Thursday 10am – 15pm: Education Kick-off, Education is everybody’s business – with Ray Flaming, Microsoft Education Industry Manager. When the Australian Government recently added up their annual ICT spend as $5 billion, they forgot to include the education organisation in Australia that spend another $3 billion a year on ICT. Does your business plan include this significant sector? Should it? The education marketplace in 2016 will be significantly different from the past, with shifting procurement processes and investment priorities across the school, TAFE and university sectors. The changing decision making processes, with increasingly devolved budgets and self-standing institutions, will lead to new opportunities for partners, and we will examine the business implications and strategy options for you to grow faster, and more profitably, in the future. Our goal is to fully detail our growth investment strategy in sales, marketing and partnering resources within the education market, and ensure we establish a clear co-selling strategy for the year ahead. Book your seat now.

Thursday 10am – 15pm: Cloud & Partner & SMB How to stay ahead and ensure that you have the plan to capture this huge market opportunity – with Emma Tomlin Microsoft Channel Executive. In this session we will be providing partners with an in-depth overview of the Australian SMB market opportunity and sharing key market trends for the buying behaviours of SMBs in 2015/2016. We will highlight the key business challenges within this segment and provide tangible insights as to how you as a partner can stay ahead and take advantage in this transforming ecosystem. We will walk you through the Cloud Solution Provider (CSP) Programme now with Azure, and demonstrate how this is the key to your success as a Managed Services Provider (MSP). Partners will walk away knowing how they can best take advantage of the SMB opportunity by leveraging best practice marketing strategies which we will showcase as well as key programmes like MPN and SureStep.

SUPERPOWER 2: SUPRISE AND DELIGHT YOUR CUSTOMER

Thursday 10am – 12pm: Winning over competitive solutions with the Microsoft Enterprise Mobility Suite – with Jason Flynn, Microsoft Product Manager. Enterprise mobility is a competitive space, but Microsoft is the only vendor with a complete vision and strategy on enterprise mobility across users, devices, apps and information protection. With an unmatched solution for managing corporate assets and data and native integration and support for Office, these strengths are key to winning deals.

Thursday 10am – 12pm: How to Make Money with Windows 10 – with Alex Snelson, Microsoft Product Manager. Understand the Windows 10 value proposition for Enterprise and SMB and how to position it with your customers. Discover the new opportunities and how you can make money with Windows 10.

Thursday 1pm – 3pm: Mobilise your business with Lumia and Microsoft Cloud – with Jacqueline Lipman, Microsoft Product Manager. Come and get hands-on with the latest Lumia portfolio. Learn how these devices are designed to work effortlessly with Microsoft cloud services like Office 365 / EMS and how existing Microsoft Lumia customers are using their devices across many different business scenarios.

SUPERPOWER 4: AS YOUR BUSINESS GROWS KEEP SERVICE AT HEART

Thursday 10am – 12pm: Deep Dive Session: Reinvent Office 365 Revenue: Your path to growth – with Scott Ward from Digital Infusions. The modern workplace has seen a shift in power and spend back to the business and it’s critical that you know how to unlock new revenue opportunities beyond email.  This is a practical session where we will cover everything from securing the meeting with the key decision makers, to identifying the business outcomes without talking about the product and then how to link desired outcomes back to revenue scenarios. 

Thursday 10am – 12pm: Build new, recurring cloud revenue streams by adding Microsoft Dynamics CRM Online to your practice – with Scott Lewis, Microsoft Business Development Manager. Leverage your Microsoft Office 365 capabilities to capitalize on new channel opportunities through the CRM Online Sales Productivity solution. Partners have built profitable service portfolios by selling, implementing and creating value added services for Office 365. The Microsoft Dynamics CRM Online sales productivity solution brings together Office 365, CRM Online and Power BI and is another opportunity for you to automate business processes and elevate productivity for your customers. Join us to learn how you can expand your value added services offering and increase your revenue through CRM Online.

SUPERPOWER 5: LOOK AFTER THE LITTLE THINGS

Thursday 1pm – 3pm: Microsoft Partner Network; Your unfair cloud advantage – with Jack Pilon & Katlyn Raphael, Microsoft Partner Marketing Managers. Looking to learn more about your opportunities as a Microsoft partner? The MPN sessions help you better understand our investments in you as a partner, what’s coming in the future, and how Microsoft supports your Cloud business transformation. We offer updates on benefits, technical support, competencies and more—all to help you make the most of your MPN membership.

No matter what superpower you are trying to discover, I am sure you will agree with me that with all this knowledge we have to share the only problem you will have is working out which session to attend.

I would hate for you to miss joining us August 31 – September 4, so if you have not registered yet, you are still in time! Just go ahead and register here.

I too will be helping you develop your superpower in my session on Thursday morning at 9am Learning at Cloud Speed.

I look forward to seeing you on the Gold Coast

Sarah.