Took the plunge about 3 weeks ago to leave corporate and go out on my own. I never would have done this without the support of my wife ans family. Now being I am working a bit more getting established I had a question for the community. I have been getting customers wanting M365 is the only way to resale is through one of the mammoth Premier Microsoft Partners? I am all about relationships and partnering just seeing if this is the only way. Thanks in advanced hope to be as successful as my peers on this forum.
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Congrats on your new venture and yes, if the goal is to have them buy Office365 subscriptions through you then you need to become a partner.
Morning Tom I am well on Action Pack Cloud Partner level and can’t seem to find it. Their new ui is well… fun. You helped inspire this journey and it’s already very rewarding.
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Good luck all the best for your success. Let us know how you are doing in a few months.
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Thanks so much for the support!! Will do!
Microsoft to my knowledge raised the price of the partner program and put lots of road blocks in place, effectively making it near impossible for independent operators to get access to the partner program.
I spent 2hrs looking last night, i would have to agree.
When it comes to reselling Microsoft licenses (or any license), I guess the focus should be in the value you may add to the product/service rather than the direct margin you get from the resale. Otherwise, your business is at the mercy of the reseller pricing decisions.
Many people don’t know how to use some of the services they get or don’t even know all the options. Training and consulting is much more rewarding in this case. And an opportunity for cross-selling and up-selling.
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I’m also at the Microsoft Action Pack basic level partner tier and have been since I went out on my own in 2007, so no special tier necessary. At the time I was able to resell directly through Microsoft, but getting credit for my sales was a nightmare and then they abandoned that program. Since whenever that was, I moved over to reselling M365 through Tech Data. They’re an easy to get along with distributor, the website isn’t complicated once you read a little bit about how their “Digital Locker” works and creating subscriptions, adding and removing licenses is quick and easy any synchronizes with your customers in the Microsoft Partner portal within a minute or two. As long as you have a resale license, you can get an account with Tech Data pretty quickly from what I remember, and there aren’t any minimum commitments to have an account with them, even with NET30 terms.
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I’m a MS Partner in Canada and what JVComputers said is correct. You will need to work with a distributor such as Tech Data (I work with Ingram Micro, but it is similar). When purchasing MS licenses as a CSP (Cloud Service Provider) for your clients, the licenses show up in their Microsoft tenant (usually in less than five minutes), then you can assign them to the users in that tenant. As a MS Partner, you should add yourself at the Partner of Record to your client’s tenant which will allow you to manage the client through your MS Partner account. Congrats and good luck to you going out on your own.
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Thanks, good to know!
I use Ingram Micro for my MS licensing as well.