Microsoft Responds on Financing - Sort Of

There has been quite a buzz over the story of Microsoft moving the goal posts on financing (see Microsoft Destroys Their Financing Program as Recovery Looms.

Another article on this in Redmond Channel Partner:
http://rcpmag.com/Blogs/Scott-Bekker/2009/06/Other-Shoe-Drops-on-Microsoft-Financing.aspx.

Microsoft says that the change only affects 10% of all deals. Okay, that's fine.

But 9.99% of those are us - they're the SMB customers and partners.

So now they need to get word to the marketing department to stop telling SMB consultants that Microsoft Financing is the first and best choice for financing.

I thought it was funny when I got a recent Certified Partner Newsletter. The lead - in the subject line - was "The Facts About Microsoft Financing." Cool.

Except the actual email said nothing except the standard marketing stuff. And the link for downloading the information pamphlet just went to the same old licensing/financing web site. So the email had nothing new, but they had a great tease to increase the "open" rate.

I did talk to someone at MS Financing about this. Apparently, the only complaints they're getting is from the small consultants who have only used the program once or twice.

But Microsoft needs to understand that those small clients will do zero future deals with a 35% threshold.

As I mentioned before, the basic move (requiring a reasonable amount of MS licensing in each deal) makes perfect sense. But 35% is too high. 20% is more reasonable.

And stop pushing this as a program for SMBs. There's no shame in having a program geared to licensing houses and Dynamics dealers.

:-)

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