Using the Azure Sponsorship Benefit

I see a lot of praise on the forum for the Azure Sponsorship benefit available through Marketplace Rewards. It's a fantastic benefit that every eligible partner should be familiar with and use. Sharing some of my experiences to help others activate.

What it is:  Azure Sponsorship is Azure consumption credit - think general compute or storage - that can be used a variety of ways: build out a customer facing trial environment, use for product development costs or my favorite, extend to joint customers to help sweeten and close deals. 

We find we get the highest return attaching Azure Sponsorship credits to customer deals. Any customer with an Microsoft EA and who is transacting ISV licenses through the Azure marketplace is eligible (as of now) to receive 10% of year one contract value in Azure Credits. Here are some steps I've taken to operationalize: 

Communication - I've built a detail communication deck covering what the program is and isn't, eligibility requirements and overall process. It describes step by step how to use the program and includes pass through email boilerplate helping account teams communicate to end customers. 

Targeting - Maybe you'd be surprised at how hard it can be to give away free benefits. I've worked with sales team to identify marketplace deals in the pipeline that need an extra nudge to close. I follow up directly with those account teams to explain and get them comfortable with the benefit and applying to those customers.  

Processing - Microsoft's form to request Azure Sponsorship credits isn't long, but expect to do some follow up work to capture all the customer details. Don't hesitate to work with the Microsoft Account Exec involved to capture, the ones I've worked with have always been supportive. Also be sure to keep your operations team managing Marketplace transactions in the loop.

Now that we've run several customers through the process, our sales team is feeling more confident and we're seeing the number of deals we can influence with this credit grow.

Wishing you equal success with this benefit.