I had a delightful interview with Stephanie Martin, who leads Microsoft's Partner Seller or "P-Seller" Program for the United States business.

This episode should be of particular interest to those partners looking to better engage with Microsoft's US business in the field. The P-Seller program has gained significant momentum at Microsoft these last several years as Microsoft Sales leaders have focused greater emphasis on the importance of partners to help Microsoft customers along the digital transformation journey.

"Partner Sellers" come in various forms and sizes from small SI's or System Integrators helping Microsoft customers deploy Microsoft Software as a Service (SAAS) Solutions such as Office 365 and Dynamics to Independent Software Vendors (ISVs) who have migrated their solutions to Microsoft's Azure Cloud and are delivering these cloud based offerings to specific vertical or point solution areas.

In our discussion we dive in on the attributes of the program, recent changes, what makes a great "P-Seller" and how to engage with Stephanie and Microsoft's US Field Organization.

Active Microsoft Partner Network (MPN) partners can access more details regarding the program here: https://partner.microsoft.com/en-us/membership/partner-seller/about-the-program

In each of my podcasts I spend a portion of the time discussing "the professional journey" and Stephanie's story should be particularly interesting to those earlier in career professionals.

Stephanie is a 32 year old who joined Microsoft as a full time employee or FTE only after a five or six year journey working for vendors of Microsoft in various capacities. Stephanie's career journey is a great example of how one might enter a technology leader like Microsoft as a vendor and in her personal example "do great work, be recognized and be hired".

I also wanted to note that Stephanie was part of a program at Microsoft for employees recognized for their potential - called "Next Steps" - and its where I got to better know Stephanie, her capabilities, capacity to grow and what really drives her.

In addition, we discuss Stephanie's passions including her current mission to establish a Denver chapter of the International Association of Microsoft Channel Partners (IAMCP) Women in Technology segment. As I promised, here is the link to IAMCP and Women in Technology in this organization.

Stephanie's Favorite Quote - "Play Hard, Work Hard, Dream Big!"

And one of Stephanie's favorite books, "Your a Badass", by Jen Sincero.

Stephanie can be reached at [email protected]. You can follow her on Twitter at: @MeetStepma and on Instagram at: stephaniem2

I hope you enjoy this episode.  You can rate and review this podcast by going to iTunes and searching "Ultimate Guide to Partnering" You can also follow me on Facebook and Twitter. 

Thank you for listening.