He's got 300,000 customers. How many do you have? 5 Questions with Will Knight...
Today, we are talking with Will Knight, Director of Mid-Market Marketing, based in Redmond. Continuing our series of interviews (see here, here, and here)
Will is responsible for marketing to 300,000 customers ranging from 50-2000 employees across the United States. He has been doing this for 4 years, is a Circle of Excellence Award winner (Microsoft's highest award), and brings a unique perspective on what works and doesn't work both for Microsoft and for partners in terms of generating new business.
Will, welcome to the show...
So, in your 4 years, you've run a boatload of campaigns aimed at this market. In sum, what's working for us and what's not?
Holy shit! What a question. Wait, don't write that on the blog!
Seriously, I think what continues to work better and better for us is we're figuring out more and more of how to work better with partners. We've started to put resources out of Redmond and the more we can do in the field, the more impact we can have.
Where we can improve is that we have a good/better/best scenario around many of the challenges that mid-market customers face.
Let's take search for instance. If you run an individual web search, we've got Windows Live. On the desktop, we've got Vista Search. You want Enterprise Search? Go with Office Sharepoint Server. It truly is good, better, best, but we're having a hard time telling that story.
The challenges that our mid-market customers face are very similar, but we (and our partners) need to do a much better job of telling the story about our solutions. Our solutions, right now, are better than the stories about them.
The key is, for all of us, to tell the story well.
OK, sounds fair. I've spent a lot of time telling partners that stories are key (see here and here). But, how do we do that? How do we improve Microsoft's and our partner's ability to tell that story?
Honestly, and this could be a bit inflammatory. I expect our partners to push us more on this one…and this will help us get better. Too often, the questions that partners ask us are about products, features, and product roadmaps. That's a critical component, but remember we're a partner-driven org here. I would ask the partners to come to us and say, "hey, Microsoft, what's the whole mid-market customer story?"
Those guys see the customers every day and should be demanding from us that we have a crisp, clear answer to that question.
The partners can share the issues and challenges with us and we will respond, but this is part of the relationship. If they push us, they will get a good answer.
Obviously, it's partially our responsibility, but it's a two-way street.
You mentioned before about working better with partners. Can you give me some examples of how that's happened from a corporate-wide perspective?
Let me tell you a story.
I was driving to work the other day and heard a radio ad about Albertson's (a grocery story) and their new, fresh Angus beef). Not 3 minutes later, I passed a store and saw a HUGE banner in front advertising the same beef. The next day, I saw a tractor trailer that had the Angus Beef advertised on the side of it.
Now, think about logistical nightmare involved in coordinating the radio ad buy with the store banner with the painting of the truck to coincide so that I would see these three impressions within 48 hours and it would 'stick in my head' (Note: see Made to Stick)
Now, take a look at the Ready to Go campaigns. This is a GREAT way for partners to leverage the investments that Microsoft is making in terms of campaigns and messages. A partner can ride our coattails that way and help deliver an integrated message to the customer, but more importantly, reinforce what Microsoft is already doing in the market.
One other good example, and one I am proud of, is that we took an inventory of all the partner-ready decks on www.microsoftpartnerevents.com
We had 77 different decks! That's nuts. 30% were outdated and irrelevant. Another 50% were incomplete. 20% were in good shape. Only 15 of them were truly valuable. What we found was that the content we were laying out was just garbage, for the most part.
We reduced it to 30 that were most relevant and had a complete bill of materials for partners to leverage. We made the information much more partner-centric.
One of the challenges that companies (those not named MIcrosoft at least) have a hard time getting customers' attention, limited budget, and deciding which vehicle to use...
One example from when I was a partner 10 years ago is how I used tradeshows. First, I purchased a booth. Then I bought an ad, and then, I offered myself as an expert to write stories for the magazine which sponsored the show. Since I had given them $, they were willing to give me (after I pestered them a bit) a chance at a column.
By the time I got to the tradeshow, I was a credible expert and readers of the magazine (and attendees) wanted to talk with me. Then, I followed up with a personal email afterwards.
And I did it all for $7k.
The people who attend a tradeshow are somewhat qualified. Then, the key is to just keep in touch and keep your data clean, both on the person and the organization.
Is the person still in role? Is there someone new? Always ask and find out who is doing what, where within the organization. If there's someone who is new in a role and you don't have a relationship, that's great, because new people want to do new things.
Instead of database cleanliness at the individual level, I'd rather have a clean company database any day. Of course, I'd like to have both, but hey...
(Note: for more tradeshow tactics, check out what Seth Godin just did)
If you've ever spoken to our partners who have used our list (either individuals or companies), you will know that upwards of 50% of the info is just flat out wrong. You've got 300,000 customers, some partners would question how effectively you are managing Microsoft's database?
We don't sell anything directly to customers, so how can we have solid customer data? We sell through partners and it's a business model decision that we made. The downside is that we have poor customer data quality. We can improve our customer data, but then we're in the direct sales business. I'd rather be partner-centric with poor data than direct with great data.
Man, Will can spin anything! :-)
