I had another of my favorite type of interactions with a stranger from Microsoft (or a contractor thereof) this morning. “Rachel from Microsoft” called me to tell me of many exciting opportuntities surrounding the launch of Vista, Office 2007, and Exchange Server 2007. We get such calls every week or two, which is fine — sometimes we learn of good opportunities for training, or opportunities to participate in Microsoft events of one sort or another, and so on.
But my favorite part of this call was when Rachel informed me of a new “single source for all information regarding…” and I didn’t even hear the rest I was laughing so hard. I believe I now have over a dozen humans at Microsoft who are my “single point of contact” for X, and a dozen or more URLs (past and present) that are my “single source for all information” about Y.
It’s tempting to blame Microsoft for this, but they’re just trying to be responsive to a chorus of lazy partners.
I hear Microsoft partners whine (and yes, I’ve done it myself) about how big and confusing (and confused!) Microsoft is, and Microsoft hears this and thinks “well, what can we do about it?” Throughout the organization, well-meaning individuals and teams think “Ah ha! We’ll just give our poor partners a Single Point of Contact to help them navigate the many options we offer, and that will help them out. That will make us more accessible. That will make us more partner-friendly. That will make them happy!”
Come on. Digipede is a fairly small company, yet I bet we have over 200 non-trivial personal relationships with Microsoft. While the idea of a single point of contact may be appealing to some people (hell, if Microsoft wants to give me a full-time administrative assistant who works on the Redmond campus, who am I to argue?), it’s also unrealistic — and inefficient.
Far better is to talk to people you know and trust, meet more people, figure out which ones have interests in common, see whom you can help and who can help you, and repeat. In the rest of the world, this is just called “networking,” and it’s not viewed as some painful burden — it’s a way to build worthwhile relationships, in business and in life. If you’re not good at it — don’t take it out on Microsoft.
So Microsoft (are you listening, Allison Watson?), don’t give us any more single points of contact. First, you can’t — you’ve proven that over and over. Second, we don’t want them. Give us good networking tools, so we can discover the people and resources that can improve our relationship — to your benefit and ours. Microsoft is brilliant at this in person (e.g. at events like the Microsoft Worldwide Partner Conference, or better yet at Channel Builder events), and inexplicably inept at this online (e.g. at partners.microsoft.com, or worse yet at the online Channel Builder). And yes, if anyone’s listening, I’d be happy to make (many) suggestions.
Tags: Allison-Watson, Digipede, Launch, Microsoft, Office, Office-2007, Office-2007-launch, Partnering with Microsoft, Vista, Vista-Launch
