Turn one business case doc into multiple MSFT intro meetings

Morning!!

I've learned a lot about leading both the Marketing and Sales sides of the coin.

For example, learning how to write short, punchy, compelling copy that fits your organization's brand...on a 5x7 card.

We're heading to a conference in a few weeks and want to hand out a 5x7 card with information about a product we're selling.

I think I spent over 5 hours trying to figure out the words we wanted to put on there and where to place them on the card (that was even with the help of Copilot)

I learned that simple is the best and keep your prospect focused on the call to action.

Sounds easy - harder to do when you're responsible for it.

Lost my first sales opportunity at Echelix as well, which ended up being positive because the same project sponsor would like to build an AI roadmap with us later this year.

We went after an opportunity that maybe wasn't the best fit for us but was going to get our foot in the door.

We still got the foot in the door without taking on work that was not a core competency. It was completely deliver-able but just wasn't the most "exciting" project.

In the Microsoft world, I've been doing deep dives with my contacts to understand their accounts, goals for the year, new responsibilities, industry opportunities and most compelling: discovering several new ways to generate net new client conversations.

In one meeting, just by pulling up a business case I wrote for an account I'm targeting with a specific Microsoft rep, I was able to demonstrate the depth of my research and commitment to enabling co-sell opportunities, which then triggered a rep I had never met before or worked with to send a client introductory email within the hour.

In another similar instance, I put together an executive level briefing for a client I did deep research on and the AE & Specialist forwarded the document to the CTO so that we can get introduced. Hopeful this will drive a meeting as a result.

In my personal Microsoft consulting business, here's the approach I've taken with 2 CROs to drive meetings / personal relationship / proposals:

1. did deep research on their orgs
   1. solution focus areas
   2. sales team makeup
   3. alliance manager or no
   4. location
   5. revenue
   6. partner status / strategy
   7. LinkedIn content from executives
2. added them to a lead list in Sales Nav
3. engaged with their content (or comments they have posted on someone else's posts)
4. reached out with an extremely custom DM (1 was a video DM and the other was text)
5. this led to meetings, calls and now I have proposal reviews next week to the tune of $8600/mo to help them build pipeline with Microsoft.

One other key I'll leave you with is to think about how you can repurpose content vs creating everything from scratch every single time...I was reminded by this by Justin Welsh this weekend.

A LinkedIn post can serve as a barometer for what you should write an email about.

Bits and pieces of emails can serve as future content you want to post about.

etc etc.

Less time racking your brain on new stuff - more time spent on content that your audience loves.

Anyway, I hope this has been helpful and if you need support building Microsoft pipeline, I'm a reply away.

Matt Barron