Microsoft APC Day 3 highlights: Actionable results

The Microsoft Australia Partner Conference Day 3 focused on being genuine, being a conversation partner, being adaptive and responsive to change.

"Anything you do in culture and anything you do in brand can't be artificially manufactured. It's not about coming up with the words to get them laminated and placed on the wall, they need to be representative of what is or what we are truly moving toward," comments Jack Delosa, founder of The Entourage.

Donna Adam, Ingram Micro business manager, when asked what is the one actionable thing she will put in place after APC, says, "For Ingram Micro it's about reaching out to our partners and helping them to simplify their success in the cloud".

Belinda Jurisic, Citrix channel sales manager, says, "So far, we've actually got an amazing amount of leads. A lot of new partners that we've never had conversations with before are actually coming over and talking to us at the stand".

Nick Verykios, Distribution Central CEO, talked about how new features were a direct result of feedback:

"So the first thing we're going to do is start working on the development of the platform; we've got some new features that we have to put into the platform because we've got some tremendous feedback from the delegates so we can actually give them the better solution."

Rachel Bondi, Microsoft marketing and operations director, found that it's about value and stories.

"The things that I've been chatting with partners about when it talks about their own digital transformation is, it's certainly about 'what's your unique value proposition?' The second thing I've been telling people is 'share with us your stories', not just the stories around the customer, but how much it's improving efficiencies," she says.

"My advice is that it is obviously if you quit, you won't ever succeed, but it's equally damaging to persevere with your head in the sand. So lift your head up, look around at what's happening in the world, have a good hard honest look at yourself. Is your proposed solution really the most useful? And if it's not, change it," explains Andre Eikmeier, Vinomofo CEO and co-founder.

Finally's it's all about proactive approaches for Rebekah Tucker, Sandler Training CEO.

"What's actually happening is that we're needing to change the way that we sell in order to adapt to that, so in a place at 65% of buyers that have their decision before they go to market then you need to be proactive in your sales approach, not be reactive and wait for your customer to come to you," she concludes.