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Ultimate Guide to Partnering Exclusive with Sharon Schoenborn

Unlock the secrets of successful partnerships with Microsoft’s Corporate VP of Americas SMC, Sharon Schoenborn, on Ultimate Guide to Partnering®. Join us as she shares strategic insights into SMC business segments, AI investments, growth strategies, and leadership tips. With over 20 years of global experience, Sharon empowers businesses to transform and thrive in the Microsoft ecosystem digitally.

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Transcription – by Otter.ai – Expect Many Typos

SUMMARY KEYWORDS

partners, customers, microsoft, smc, organisations, business, smb, market, capabilities, conversation, differentiating, leaning, ai, talk, sharon, corporate, drive, solution, vince, sellers

Vince Menzione 0:02

This is the ultimate guide to partnering the top partnership podcast. In this podcast Vince Minzy own a proven partner sales executive shares his mission to help leaders like you achieve your greatest results through successful partnering. And now your host, Vince Menzione. 

Vince Menzione 0:28

Welcome to The Ultimate Guide to Partnering for a special session shot here at reven at Microsoft Studios. I’m excited and delighted to be joined by Sharon Schoen born Microsoft’s corporate vice president for the Americas SMC small, medium and corporate business. Sharon, so excited to have you here today.

Sharon Schoenborn 0:46

It’s wonderful to be here. Good to see you.

Vince Menzione 0:48

So good to see you again. You know, it seems just like yesterday, but it’s been a couple of months since we were together in Dallas, Texas, for our live event, which we co hosted alongside your town hall. So much excitement in the room from partners. I was hoping we could sort of ground here for now and talk a little bit more about that excitement and what you’ve been seeing

Sharon Schoenborn 1:08

you bet. Well, first of all, Vince, thank you for your time in Dallas and also the standing room only event that you ran with us. Yes. You know, it’s SMC is really one of the main growth engines for Microsoft. And it’s such a diverse and dynamic segment. And I have the pleasure of leading our America’s business and partners are really at the core to our success in the way that we deliver growth and we help to realise the value of their investment with our customers.

Vince Menzione 1:32

You know, I’ve been talking about this acre of diamonds, my own quote, but Russell Conwell, who was a minister and founder at Temple University coined this phrase many, many years ago. But I believe the SMC businesses may be misunderstood, in many respects, or were helping to help partners better understand it right. A lot of these organisations tend to cluster towards the large enterprise and SMC sounds like SMB to a lot of folks. And then also the organisation of that was sort of it’s evolving, right, it was hoping you could help our viewers and listeners better understand how it’s

Sharon Schoenborn 2:11

evolved. Yeah, it’s a great question, because we have changed a lot over times. And I must admit, we can become complex as well. The best way to really think about SMC is the fact that it’s two distinct segments. Okay. So yes, as you say, the true kind of core SMB business, which very much is part of why we say about 80% of our revenue for the SMB business, typically customers, 300 employees or lower is really what we consider SMB. And then above that corporate is everything under the top enterprise, commercial and public sector customers. So within the Americas, we have roughly around 14,000 managed corporate customers in the millions, obviously within the SMB space, Sharon,

Vince Menzione 2:55

such a massive amount of business within the SMC sectors, the two sectors, I was hoping maybe we could double click on the two segments and how you go to market and each of them? Yes

Sharon Schoenborn 3:06

we’ll do well, I always start with the corporate business. And over the last number of years, we’ve really standardised the way that we engage with our corporate or manage customers across the globe. You might recall from your days back at Microsoft, it was probably sometimes a bit unique by country and some of the things that we’ve done in our corporate business is to structure our sales team in pods. So typically, a pod would have around 300 customers within it. And what we do is we we rally our account executives, and our specialist and technical sellers to align to that set a 300 customers per pod. And with that it gives us it gives us a centre of gravity to engage into team and especially to be able to make sure that we’re optimising the, the platform opportunity with each of our customers. And what we do now also is having standard marketing strategies and solution plays. So when we think about each of our clouds across Azure monomeric, and business applications, we have standard solution plays that we go to market on. And that really is the standard socket that we want our partners to snap into right in terms of their offerings and go to market strategy. So we have, we have go to marketplace for those across corporates, and the ability to then drive Account Based Marketing interests within those then catch by our field sellers. And obviously, together with our partners,

Vince Menzione 4:27

you know, strikes me as you’re talking here is thinking about the conversations we had at your town hall and our event. And just this massive opportunity and the opportunity for your teams to double click in fact, I believe I heard you say to your team, you can’t get to the customer alone. You need to work directly with a work very closely with the partners. I was hoping, you know, we talked about the opportunity and doubling down and double clicking with partners this year. Can you talk more about your commitment within the SMC business to partners?

Sharon Schoenborn 4:58

Yeah, boy. I could go on here for a little while, Vince, I think if I, if I go back to the corporate segment for just a moment, and then I’ll speak to SMB, because they’re their two unique operating models, I would say in the corporate business, you know, I really do see our channel as an extension of our sales force. Right? And so, but the art is, how do we best align to be able to optimise an engagement with each other? Because that can be a really hard thing? And you know, there’s far more sellers in the channel than I have within my team. And then how do we how do we get that interconnect at the right point in time, I think a couple things, one, going back to the solution plays, that becomes a really critical alignment point for how our sellers are going to market and when we’re looking for really highly specialised partners to be able to help drive that demand and ultimately realise value for customers. I would also say that the the opportunity for us to align on acquisition, and upsell within the within the the base boy, our upsell, opportunity is massive acquisition is huge. upsell is massive, especially in markets, like the US or even Canada, where we have a high penetration across the business. So we really need our partners, oftentimes, our CSP partners who are leading those engagements with customers to be thinking about, how are we operationalizing, the customer lifecycle management cycle within the existing base of customers to be able to help realise the value across the platform? Yeah,

Vince Menzione 6:27

and there’s a huge opportunity here for these partners to double down here, and we’ll talk a little bit more about some of the announcements that have been coming around AI and other areas. But as I think about it, it’s moving away from just the transaction, and you say, UPS upselling, into the organisation, but adding additional capabilities to drive that. And yes, and what I think your I hear you saying to the partners is, it’s time to double down yourselves, build your competencies aligned to our solution areas, specifically. And then also, when you’re working with your account teams better identify where you make a difference. Yes,

Sharon Schoenborn 7:04

you know, if I had a magic formula with our partners, and especially when we’re investing as businesses, in alignment with those solution plays, obviously, starting with deep skilling, and that’s an area that we’re investing in quite significantly, but really asking our partners to drive those certifications and the advanced certifications in differentiating themselves, then with a differentiated go to market offering, as it relates to that, ultimately, our channel incentives are probably one of the areas that we invest the most to be able to help recognise our partners and be able to invest in their businesses and be able to then help optimise what that transformation can look like, within our partner organisations, we realise that’s a big shift. It’s a big shift for us. You know, it really has been five years ago, Vince, we could have been sitting here and you know, would have been a very different conversation about the go to market solutions. And so our partners have done an amazing job to really lean in. But we need more partners to be able to think about how am I going to differentiate in the market with the specific certifications and specialisation and being great at that. And being great at that. And that’s what I think one of the most critical things of being able to partner really closely is differentiating the market around a, a solutionary that that partner is able to excel in. We’re 

Vince Menzione 8:23

at this moment, right? I mean, Satya was just recognised as the CEO of the Year, I mean, just an amazing job that he’s done in his nine or 10 years as CEO of Microsoft. But the investments, these massive investments in AI, right, I mean, this, this last year has been astounding, and what it says to me and to all of us, I remember Kevin being up on stage at our event talking about this, like take the time to learn every day, because it’s changing every day, right AI, is infusing is being infused into all of the Microsoft products and families. And the opportunity is massive for partners. And what I hear now that’s different when I talk to Microsoft sellers, is we’re having different conversations than we’ve ever had with those organisations. We’re now in the C suite. And we’re having transformation conversations. And what I think I hear you saying, in fact, is partners need to lean into this transformation in a big way. What else would you say about that? Yeah,

Sharon Schoenborn 9:20

at first, I would reinforce the point about learning. You know, Boy, I’ve been at Microsoft for a little while now. And I would say every day, I have to force myself to make sure that I’m taking one step ahead in terms of my own learning, because if I’m not that I’m falling behind, and I think that’s the same for our partners, right? And so, the opportunity we have is now you know, when you think about what our customers are aiming to achieve, typically it’s around some level of operational efficiency or being able to adapt their business models are really improving their customer engagement strategy. Our customers are leaning into this moment because they also know that if they aren’t thinking strategically about how AI is infused in the way that they operate, they can be left behind Now, one of the things that I’m most excited about is that when we have a platform opportunity at Microsoft, as you say, we’re really infusing AI across our solution set. And I’m especially excited about the fact that we now have co pilot for Microsoft 365, that is going to be available to our CSP partners and through our, to our customers to our CSP partners. But what that means is, it really opens up the ability for our smallest customers in the market, to have access to enterprise grade AI capabilities embedded in the solutions that they use every day. I mean, just think about that for a moment. That’s incredible. And the opportunity that we kind of have to, you know, really increase the productivity of our customers, and help them to innovate in ways they’ve never been able to. It’s incredibly exciting. I just can’t wait to see what our customers do with it.

Vince Menzione 10:47

I mean, this is exciting. This, the excitement around this announcement is just I think, well, first of all, I’m an SMB ultimate partner is a small and medium business. And so now I’m able, because I feel like the haves and the have nots, I’ve had all these conversations with Microsoft, people like yourself about all the tools that you’re able to utilise, right that are infused within Microsoft 365. And I’ve been on the outside of that, right I’ve had, I’ve had to use more of the pedestrian tools that haven’t been infused into the platform for me. So as an SMB, I’m excited about that. Also, as a partner partners are also smaller organisations that maybe haven’t been able to take advantage of these capabilities. I think first of all the they become evangelists because become users. And what Microsoft is doing, as well as this democratisation of the technology, right? It’s not only for the very large enterprise organisations no longer

Sharon Schoenborn 11:39

it is, I mean, let’s just talk about our small and medium business customers for a moment you’re spot on. And it gives us opportunity to really open up capabilities, that that I hope will will stimulate innovation in the market, over 90% of our customers are small and medium businesses, right. And, you know, our channel would understand this intimately. MSPs really are the IT department for so many of our SMBs, right? Oftentimes, our SMEs do not have internal IT, it’s their partner that are going to market with and looking for guidance. And so I’m really excited about what this opportunity means for our customers, and for our partners to be able to really activate this innovation and you know, but of course, as you say, you know, internalising it and being able to be best practice leaders in the use of AI. So you know, I would say this today, with co pilot for Microsoft 365, I challenge myself every day to try something different and see how I’m getting value out of it, because that’s the best way for us to demo to our customers, right? You

Vince Menzione 12:39

talked about partners quite a bit here. And I, I’d be remiss, this is the ultimate guide to partnering. What do you see from the best partners you work with?

Sharon Schoenborn 12:48

Well, I think back to the point of creating a differentiated capability and ultimately go to market offer. And being really, really great at that. Because I think that, especially when we talk about the the Manage space, being able to be really precise about how you’re differentiating in the market. Because we need our partners to really lead and drive growth there and not always have to be in hand to hand combat with our sellers, I’ve got a much, much smaller sales force then then the market demands. And so I think differentiating in the market off the back of that leveraging the skilling resources, and then really importantly, leveraging partner centre as a way to connect into Microsoft. And then of course, marketplace,

Vince Menzione 13:34

yes, we’d be remiss to if we didn’t bring up marketplace, right, this huge opportunity area. And I, you know, we at that event, we brought all the partners together. So we bought some of the ISVs had been the creators of platforms, as well as the selling partners into the room. And I’ll be candid here and say that some of those selling partners have been kicking and screaming away in a way and saying, you know, they’ve been they’ve been slow to adopt marketplace. But I’ve seen a change, and maybe it’s just in the last couple of months now. I believe a lot of them are now leaning in on marketplace. Would you agree there?

Sharon Schoenborn 14:10

I would I think it’s still early days. And I think the ability to have private offers in marketplace is going to be a really important opportunity for our partners to to accelerate growth for sure.

Vince Menzione 14:19

And I also think about it you know, Microsoft has always talked about partner to partner. And this accomplishes quite a bit on the partner to partner side because now you are able to take multiple solutions. And I’ll use the term stitching them together, right, because the customer is not buying one thing. In fact, they’re not talking to one organisation and not just talking to Microsoft. They’re not just talking to a partner. They’re looking at several different areas rather than be security or some line of business application or multiple line of business applications. And they have a transactional partner that they’re working with. Marketplace just offers that opportunity that private offer to pull it all together for the customer lead

Sharon Schoenborn 14:59

by the amazing capabilities within our channel, right in terms of in terms of making it real through projects, and also activation with each customer.

Vince Menzione 15:11

So we are kicking into 2024 in a big way. For Microsoft, it’s the second half, it’s h2, right? I was hoping maybe you could spend a moment here maybe any great advice for these organisations on what they should be doing differently now that we are in the throes of 2024 that we’re in the throes of Microsoft’s h2. What would you say to those partners to do better or differently than we’ve seen before?

Sharon Schoenborn 15:38

Well, a few a few areas, one, back to the point of learning, with all the innovation that’s coming to market, really leaning in role modelling that every single day and making sure that across our teams, we’re building the capability to have those differentiated offers, again, I come back to leveraging the partner centre to be able to be the surface area engagement to connect into Microsoft, I would also say, really pressure test, really pressure test your growth strategy. And ask yourself, are we really betting in areas where we can differentiate and be amazing and as we then think about more and more solutions, really make sure that that comes together? In the overall customer value proposition? I think sometimes we can get a little broad. And then then that runs the risk of not not differentiating as much in the market. It’s like those are those are really key areas. But at the same time get energised. Like, I don’t know that that takes much doing these days, because it’s such an incredible moment in our industry.

Vince Menzione 16:43

I’m energy. Are you energised, I’m energised. So, you know, you mentioned something to about getting very specific about what your superpower is, I like to talk about the being the shiny quarter in the bucket full of shiny quarters, there are so many Microsoft partners. Some struggle with the differentiation but lean in or niche down to where your real strengths are and focus there versus trying to go broad, right, the partner that tells me, I’ve got 250 competencies and capabilities, I lose focus, I lose, they lose my attention. Yeah,

Sharon Schoenborn 17:16

I think it’s I think it’s a an important thing to recalibrate and reinforce. And at the same time, we have some partners who can do it all right, in terms of like us. And so that’s really important thing in terms of looking at the unique partner communities across the market. Because depending on the profile, whether we have global system integrators, national system, integrator, services partners, CSPs, or our MSPs, really, again, it comes down to where we come together and drive the greatest. Good

Vince Menzione 17:53

point. Good point. You know, Sharon, I’d love to pivot. I have many listeners and viewers that are earlier in their career in their career journey. So I would love for you to spend a moment here. Was there a spark? Was there a pivot? Was there a mentor, in fact, that helped you get to this? I mean, CVP at Microsoft is a big deal, right, corporate vice president. Tell us a little bit more about that journey.

Sharon Schoenborn 18:16

Wow, um, do you know what I’ve been fortunate? I’ve been fortunate to have found myself in tech in the 90s and have am a person who enjoys change, I actually relish in and embrace change. I think if there was one thing that grounded me the most early in my career, I had an opportunity early in my career to work in mergers and acquisitions. But more on the people side, on the integration of acquisitions, and working with leadership teams right after an announcement was made to come together. And I studied and even got my grad degree in leadership development. And the the one skill that I feel has served me throughout my career, especially as I’ve moved on, and leadership is around change leadership. It’s about the EQ side of engaging and leading a business. And ultimately, all of us, as leaders, all of us together with our channel are leading change every single day, not just strategically, but certainly with our people. And so I think, having really gone deep into the principles of change leadership, at an early stage of my career that has been a pivotal asset for me. Ever since that point, and something that I greatly value, I’m still working on it, by the way, but at the end of the day, it’s my job to be a great leader for my people as we lead change and ultimately deliver business results. And I encourage anyone who’s earlier in their career to actually really get curious about the principles of leading change in some of the fundamentals, I think will serve you really well

Vince Menzione 19:59

fundamentals. To end principles right before my heart in terms of driving that, in fact, I would love to know if there was a book was it was there a book that has been a favourite of yours on transformation change or principles?

Sharon Schoenborn 20:13

Boy, there’s a lot like one that I think is really practical. And what I would definitely recommend to our channel leaders is adaptive leadership, adaptive leadership, it really speaks to the difference between solving technical challenges from adaptive leadership challenges and technical challenges are those that will probably deal with every single day as sales leaders, as business leaders, adapt to challenges are those that are really addressing longer term systemic changes that really require a level of deep and thoughtful stakeholder engagement to really get to an outcome that’s going to deliver meaningful change for the business. And again, so much of it does come back to the softer side around change leadership, but especially in organisations that might be a bit larger that have broader stakeholder groups, it really is more about how do you create that common shared vision, and really find a way to be able to enable that together and making some hard decisions as well.

Vince Menzione 21:16

I love everything you’ve said had to say here because we are driving a transformation like no other I believe, during this time. And what an amazing leader to believing that now at Microsoft within this very large segment of the business. I have a fun question, I love to ask every guest. So Sharon, you are hosting a dinner party, and you can host this dinner party in anywhere in the world. But you can only invite three guests to this dinner party from the present, or the past, to this amazing dinner party that you’re going to host. I’d also love to know where you want to host it. We’ll talk about that a little bit more. You’ve lived all around the world. Who would you invite to this party? And why?

Sharon Schoenborn 21:56

I love this question so much. Can I Can I take a little bit of liberty with answering how I would do this?

Vince Menzione 22:02

You know, it’s early in the day, I’d love? Absolutely, I’d have

Sharon Schoenborn 22:07

three dinner parties, three dinner parties. And I’d want to go to their space independently because I feel that each conversation is unique in its own. And I’m probably more of an introvert. So I like the one on one engagement versus so the first I would say is my team would know I’m biggest Peter Gabriel fan. So I love Peter Gabriel think he’s amazing human and I love what he stands for and his music back to the 80s Today, I’ve been known to fly from Sydney to Chicago just for a concert. Wow. Wow. So I think I would love to go to his farm where he has written many of his lyrics and just spend a very casual kind of picnic there having a good conversation with Peter Gabriel to understand a little bit more about what’s driven his mission. Because I think he’s a great human. Secondly, I would say my family came originally, like my great grandparents came from Germany and from Czechoslovakia years ago. And so and they, they landed in the Midwest, you know, ultimately in Minnesota, and had some pretty amazing experience, you know, finding their way and ultimately landing in their spot in northern Minnesota waggon trains, you know, bringing, you know, babies along in the below zero weather. So yeah, staying living in a tent in the middle of winter, while trying to build a very simple house. Like, I would just love to sit with my great grandparents. And listen and learn from what their experience was, I think it’s terribly humbling and inspiring and speaks to incredible level of resilience. And then a third, I would say, I’d love to go to Nepal. And I would love to spend some time with the Sherpas in there, you know, maybe two or three in someone’s home. And, and really I’m just understand a little bit more about what drives their spirit and energy and incredible capability. I think the Sherpas are the heroes of Everest. I think they’re the heroes of any major mountain climbing expedition. And I just think that having a conversation to understand where that spirit and energy and spectacular capability is driven from fascinating,

Vince Menzione 24:40

so fascinating. I might follow you around I might have fun. Where’s Peter live? Where’s this farm?

Sharon Schoenborn 24:46

Up in England? Yep.

Vince Menzione 24:48

All right. Well, the pile sounds fantastic. Yeah. Have you have you? Have you been a climber?

Sharon Schoenborn 24:55

Oh God, no, no.

Vince Menzione 24:56

We had a guest to climb Mount Everest. So that’s I have a special that is. It’s amazing, especially. Sharon, you have been incredible. Everything that I hope to have you having you here today. Really, I really enjoyed this conversation. Such an incredible leader, such an incredible time in your business for our partners listening and viewing today. Just an incredible time to be working with Microsoft and Sharon’s SMC, America’s business. Again, one last one last time here for our viewers, and for our listeners, any last words of advice? Or maybe not advice, but just go do’s in terms of how we need to think about this year? Great.

Sharon Schoenborn 25:34

Well, hey, first, Vince, thanks for having me. It really is a pleasure. And I want to say thank you for all the work that you’re doing with our partners, we really appreciate it again, standing room only event in Dallas a few months back, we really appreciate the the the the effort and the engagement. And for all of our partners, I just want to say huge, thank you. Thank you for everything you’ve done. Thanks for all that you will do. Thanks for leaning into this opportunity that we have right now to help service our customers in incredible ways to innovate with this era of AI and look forward to really moving the dial together in the SMC business, not just in the next six months, but certainly in the years to come. So thank you very much, Sharon.

Vince Menzione 26:15

Thank you again. Thanks, Vince. Thanks so much for listening to this episode of The Ultimate Guide to Partnering online at Ultimate Guide to partnering.com or the ultimate partner.com. If you liked this episode, I’d be thrilled if you left us up to a five-star review on either Apple or Spotify. And please subscribe to our new YouTube channel, ultimate partner. We’ll catch you next time on The Ultimate Guide to partnering