Ouch!
http://www.vladville.com/2008/03/ouch-the-death-of-sbsc.html
As a Microsoft Partner who is an SBSC…
As a VAR who eats the dogfood and drinks the kul-ade…
Please know and understand Vlad's Pronouncement…The fact is we do need to do better for our community, we do need to do more for each other, and we do need to work together. Very recently, against my better thoughts, it became real to me, that Microsoft, makes far more money on the top 1% of all the customers (enterprise) than the rest of all their business…so when it gets right down to it…the rest of us, are just for fun…and if they make some money or not, well kool, whatever, if you don't like us, go somewhere else.
So, I cannot fault them for this position, but I will call out 1 thing Vlad said in the post above…use your tPAM, love your tPAM, feed your tPAM. Our tPAM is fantastic. He works very hard for us, and has helped us develop a better business. He gets sh!t done for us, and expects the same for us. His ask of us is to keep him informed of our deals and our opportunities. And I gotta say, the value proposition of having a tPAM has been phenomenal. We worked hard to gain an advocate in Microsoft. And he is great for us!!!
And in case you have not worked in big business, guess what…EVERYONE HAS TO JUSTIFY THEIR EXITENCE EVERY MINUTE OF THE DAY, EVERY DAY OF THE WEEK, EVERY WEEK OF THE YEAR!!! So if my tPAM, who has worked tremendously hard for us, and brought us tremendous value, needs my help, I am going to give it him.
And working with other vendors, I will say that for all their faults, Microsoft does a great job of working with us and for us, and SBSCs. So If Vlad's prediction is right, there is time for us as SBSCs, collectively, to save the SBSC. And this is important for my business, and for the business of my partners, locally and regionally. So take some time to USE your resources at Microsoft. Make it a KPI in your organization, a simple count, how many interactions per day, per week, or per month that EACH AND EVERY MEMBER OF YOUR ORGANIZATION has with Microsoft. The more they know how much you use the resources and the more you contribute to their reportable bottom line, the more likely they will be to keep the resources and heaven forbid, maybe expand the resources available to SBSC. The bottom line is if it is not valuable to you to be an SBSC, ie you are not using the resources available to you, get out of the way for the rest of us, or for another Small Business Consultant to step up.