Or how to suck up to Microsoft. Depends on your perspective.
My friend Peter H. Schmidt sent a link to a fascinating story in Redmond Channel Partner about how to do business with Microsoft. The title of the article is “Minding Your Microsoft Manners.” Depending on how you feel about Microsoft (love ’em or hate ’em), you’ll either find this article helpful or nauseating. Either way, it’s good reading.
Here are some of my favorite pieces of advice from the article:
- Don’t talk about the music you listened to on your iPod on the trip to Redmond or to a field office….
- It’s especially important to avoid anything involving Google Inc….
- The best thing [small partner companies] can do is dedicate themselves completely to Microsoft and look as loyal as possible to the Microsoft platform….
- Make sure you bring your laptop to every meeting because everybody else will have theirs and will be doing e-mails during the meeting. They want you to send information to them in the meeting….
- [I]t’s wise for partners to not to follow the leads of their Microsoft counterparts and start reading outside e-mails and checking mobile devices during meetings. As partners move up Redmond’s food chain, she says, Microsoft people will pay more attention to them. But at the outset, partners will just have to contend with distractions….
- Make sure you use plenty of three-letter acronyms. Make up some as you go along and see what they say….
- [I]t’s important to talk up Microsoft products — which, of course, partners should be using — as much as possible….
The article’s comments are also telling.
