The Azure world may be awash in training resources, but all too few of those are pitched to the technical seller. Listen in as Cloud Solutions Architect Jose Arias introduces us to one of the best (if all too rare!) technical sales training programs for Azure sellers: The "Northeast Technical Sales Cross-Training Sales Program". Yes, it a bit of a mouthful, but well worth the listen.
BIO: Jose is a Cloud Solution Architect that has been at Microsoft for 3 years and before that working at HPE/DXC for close to 8 years. His background is Database Administration for SQL Server and Oracle as well as Account Delivery Management. Jose has a BA in Computer Engineering and MA in Economic Development and Social Responsibility, he was also an Executive Director of a non profit organization from 2010-2015 in Costa Rica.
LINKS: Please feel free to email Jose at Arias.Jose@microsoft.com, and if you're a Microsoft employee, be sure to ask him to send you a link to the "CSAs and Specialists (Cross-functional) Group" SharePoint site.
CREDITS: Louis Berman (Host); Jose Arias (Guest); Dan Phillipson / PremiumBeat (Music); Anne Lamb (Intro/Outro); East Coast Studio (Editing)
MORE: visit https://azure-success.com for additional episodes, plus transcripts, and more ways to listen to the show. As to your comments and suggestions, please feel free to email your host, Louis Berman, at lberman@microsoft.com
The Azure world may be awash in training resources, but all too few of those are pitched to the technical seller. Listen in as Cloud Solutions Architect Jose Arias introduces us to one of the best (if all too rare!) technical sales training programs for Azure sellers: The "Northeast Technical Sales Cross-Training Sales Program". Yes, it a bit of a mouthful, but well worth the listen.
BIO: Jose is a Cloud Solution Architect that has been at Microsoft for 3 years and before that working at HPE/DXC for close to 8 years. His background is Database Administration for SQL Server and Oracle as well as Account Delivery Management. Jose has a BA in Computer Engineering and MA in Economic Development and Social Responsibility, he was also an Executive Director of a non profit organization from 2010-2015 in Costa Rica.
LINKS: Please feel free to email Jose at Arias.Jose@microsoft.com, and if you're a Microsoft employee, be sure to ask him to send you a link to the "CSAs and Specialists (Cross-functional) Group" SharePoint site.
CREDITS: Louis Berman (Host); Jose Arias (Guest); Dan Phillipson / PremiumBeat (Music); Anne Lamb (Intro/Outro); East Coast Studio (Editing)
MORE: visit https://azure-success.com for additional episodes, plus transcripts, and more ways to listen to the show. As to your comments and suggestions, please feel free to email your host, Louis Berman, at lberman@microsoft.com
Specialists will feel more comfortable around the products and how to position it and how to sell it. And it went to TSA. I think CSA is that are more connected to the sales motion, to the business objectives of the customer to drive in value, and also knowing how to leverage sales tools and things that might not have been known without the program.
Speaker 2:You're listening to Azure success, the podcast by and for Azure professionals listen in, and you'll be sure to speak to your customers March into the cloud. And now your host Lois Berman.
Speaker 1:Welcome to a special episode of Azure success. The podcast buying for Azure professionals today, I'm very pleased to have my colleague Jose res on with me. He's an AI cloud solutions architect out of New Jersey. He's been here at Microsoft for three years, and it's really important to know, even though Jose is my guest here today, I'm sort of here because he wrote me into a project which we're going to talk about today. So Jose, why don't you say hi, firstly, and then we'll talk about the project and I'm like stowing myself. Chris has a long and difficult title, so I'm sure I'll be able to say it without flips. So Jose Arias folks say, hi, hello. How could you be with everyone here? He sounds so cheery. So little he know I'm going to keep poking him with questions. So the program we're talking about is called the Northeast technical sales cross training program, a bit of a mouthful, but the very idea is as CFAs, as very technical people, we tend to be in our own little bubble and we learn a lot of stuff that are technical skills, but we work with others, primarily Azure sellers specialists, account executives, account technology specialists, and so forth who are perhaps are not as technical as we are, but we are here to help them work with us and work with our customers better. So why don't you tell our people, what is the cross training program? Yes. So the Northeast technical sales cross training program, God, you're, you're the guy and you're having problems with it. We have to have like a meeting to come up with a shorter name. It's a program about helping cloud solution architects. And now that we have a customer engineers to in the CSU, I think we want to include them to become better sellers. And so we would have a specialist train and help CSA and C's to become better sellers to think about not only this is the product feature and this is what it does, and this is how you use it. But what is the value that it brings to you? How does it help you specifically in your position of CIO or CTO or developer or data person and taking into account all those selling points of view and strategies that need to be considered. So that for the CSA and for the specialist is a program that will also help them understand and go deeper at technical level, understand how to better sell a product. If I understand the technical features of it, how to better position it, what are some techniques that you can use? And some product features that you can present first to make it more attractive or how to connect it with other products, things like that.
Speaker 3:Now this has been in process for a while, right? I've come to the program within the last month, but yeah, you guys kick this off some months ago, right? So you've already done trainings and stuff. Can you talk about what that has been and how it's been accepted and where it's going?
Speaker 1:So we started Familia, I would say four to five months ago with three ATU.
Speaker 3:What is an ATU? That's Lewis has pedantic voice in case you haven't guessed,
Speaker 1:Actually, I don't know what the letters stand for.
Speaker 3:It's account technology unit. It's basically that counterpart to, you know, the raw Azure sales unit, the Stu the sales technology. So I've been at Microsoft for five years. And if you're a listener, if you have no other thing that you take away from Microsoft is we love acronyms. NASA has nothing on us. We'll just Bumble along with what we know. So please continue.
Speaker 1:So we started with three eight or verticals in this case, manufacturing and retail. And I think the other was the other one was professional services. And so we, I forgot to say also that the program is also about taking CSS and technical people into a deeper level of understanding of our product. So if you want, for example, this queue, we, if you want to go deeper in, let's say machine learning or[inaudible] service or web app or logic apps or something like that, then we would have an expert take you through a lab or an explanation compete scenario frequently asked questions by customers at a deeper level. So you can be better and more than technical CSA too. So going back to that, like I said, we started like four or five months ago and we started getting very good feedback from our trainings and what we were doing. We saw that before starting the training, people had a, for example, a certain knowledge of a product of maybe five to six. And then by the end of the training, it was close to seven to eight. That was really good feedback. People were feeling surveys to ask for more training. And so after a while, management asked us to expand the program to the whole Northeast. And we did that probably I think it was two months ago or so now we're relaunching the program again, this new fiscal year. Yeah, cool.
Speaker 3:So we certainly need to work together and to understand how to better work together, to serve our customers. You know, I keep looking at the sheet that I've put together doing this stuff, and I keep coming back to the word Piscataway. So you live in Piscataway, right? So there's a very famous folk singer. Who's unfortunately deceased at this point, this guy, Dave Vaughan rock. And he has a song called the garden state stomp. And, you know, he basically, the swung is literally towns in New Jersey, nothing, but, and one of my favorite towns, he says Piscataway in his singing. And then, so I love that place I've been, but it's much more Epic in title. So anyway, he's a great, by the way, a great, great folk singer. So why should I think this is important, right? You know, I'm a seller. Why do I care? You know, there's hundreds of programs in Microsoft to help us do our work, get on with our lives better. Why should I care about this particular one?
Speaker 1:What I would say, I want to tackle this from two perspectives, right? The first, the perspective of a specialist or a seller, maybe an account executive too, and then the perspective of a technical person. So I'll start with the seller perspective. Most sellers are bored to death with online trainings, and even if they make and mode of training or do a hands on training or things like that. And they, a lot of them don't want to go through online training or if they have to do things like, for example, TSI, they don't want to do it by themselves and things like that. So yeah,
Speaker 3:Nicole skills initiative,
Speaker 1:Technical skills initiative. Thank you. So a lot of CSS will self learners, but not sellers, at least not most of them. And so this is a great opportunity to show up in a one hour and a half, two hour meeting and on a basic level, explain how to better position a product and the product features. And I think two key questions for everyone, not just the sellers, but for everyone are what are the most frequently asked questions by customers when I'm trying to position this product and what is my compete scenario? What is the market scenario? How is this product positioned compared to the rest of the products that do the same thing or similar things in the market? And I think those, especially those two last questions are questions that you won't find in any online training. And so I think that's a very good feedback and knowledge and understanding that a seller can get from the CSA perspective. We don't necessarily receive often seller training. And I think there's a lot of good feedback that sellers can give us after going through opportunities and engagements. You shouldn't have said that, or these are some tools that you can use to sell better, but things like that. So it helps us see us become better sellers too. So, and the last one is if you want to go deeper at a technical level, you also have that opportunity with level 400 training or CSS too.
Speaker 3:Great. And we're starting in the Northeast, but the hope is if this is successful, this will be a thing that will grow further. I think it's very interesting that one of our colleagues he is, and I don't know where he is from, but she is stuck in Asia due to the COVID epidemic right now. So definitely this is the sort of stuff I think that'd be applicable to anyone at Microsoft. And indeed, I sorta think it's applicable to anyone who is technical sales around the Azure cloud in any organization. Isn't that true?
Speaker 1:Yes. Yes. Agreed.
Speaker 3:So you have a bit of history of this, by the way, you know, just helping people out to Excel and exceed themselves. I mean, I mean, you didn't start out working at Microsoft, right? Didn't you have a nonprofit, you cofounded and it was something about leadership development and outreach communities. What was that?
Speaker 1:Yes. I'm originally from Costa Rica. And I think ever since I was six
Speaker 3:Costa Rica say beautiful Costa Rica. Yeah. My father's friend, Jerry always, you know, he came from Costa Rico. Is that beautiful Costa Rica like that? Yeah.
Speaker 1:It is a beautiful country, the happiest country in the world it's down in 2015 or something that came out like that. But going back to that, I think ever since I was 20, I started getting involved in volunteering. And so after a while of doing that, I helped a friend found an organization in Costa Rica that would help risk and use that lived in low income neighborhoods. So get them help a better education, same school, do sports leadership and mentoring relationships. And then finally I got out of it as I was doing that and did that full time for five years, the executive director. And then I thought I was going to do that with the rest of my life. And so I got a master's on economic development and responsible management and sustainability. And then after a while I think has happened and I got back to it and Microsoft, I think for that, but I there's, there's another part of me that does that yet.
Speaker 3:So you're one of those annoying guys who make guys like me, who basically spent their twenties partying look bad, your man, definitely your fault. So getting back to the initiative. So we have trainings coming forward. I know, I think there was a mailing that went out to everyone at Microsoft in the Northeast, certainly went out widely. So what's the ambition of this what's coming in the next couple of months.
Speaker 1:So for the month of July next week, actually we have a natural current ladies training level 200. So this is going to be mostly for specialists. But if you have CSA that are starting or don't know much about HKS, they can definitely join that. That's going to be one, two, three. You can send me an email@joriaatmicrosoft.com. If you don't have the invite, I did send it out to everyone. We also have a sales training coming up for CSS of the first days of August. And we also have a machine learning training level 200, again for specialists for mid August to the last thing that I will say that it's coming out for this program is we also have a three strategy or a we're going to go ahead and look at the program again, based on the new fiscal year and the fiscal year priorities to see some of the things that we could change to make it fit more Microsoft objectives and things that flaws. We're also announcing this podcast as part of who the program reaches also as a resource of learning. Got it, got it. So if you were a year from now and looking at gone by what would you consider hallmarks of success of this? I mean, what would the specialist and CSS who were learning have gotten from this? If they stick with it and utilize the resources, I would say specialists can position products better with their customers, especially there's that conversation that you have with your customer when the CSA is not necessarily there. Like everybody knows that, right. Sometimes specialists are out there and the CSA is not always there. And there, the customer might say one or two things that might trigger something in the specialist's mind where they can say, okay, this is an ideal situation for this product, right? But this is one of the features that I looked into that training that I know I can position this product here, or, you know, with frequently asked questions with competed scenario. So specialist that will feel more comfortable around the product and how to position it and how to sell it. And the way the TSA is I think CSA is that are more connected to the sales motion, to the business objectives of the customer to drive in value, to knowing how to work as a team with the specialist and also knowing how to leverage sales tools and things that might not have been known without the program. Okay, cool. So say your email once again, if anyone hasn't gotten this no spam, please. My email. Yes. So you can do an easy way to put it in Arias dot jose@microsoft.com even better, even better. Well, thank you so much for letting us in on this. Again. Jose Arias, Dan AI specialist at data and AI CSA, I should say at Microsoft is leading their Northeast tech sales training, cross program, cross training program. Some other thing, so many valuable, slightly collected podcasts, but of course all the good stuff will come from Jose. Anyway, you've been listening to Azure success, the podcast by and for Azure professionals, please listen in and you'll learn more about the cloud and Microsoft and who knows what else. And any other words that can come tripled. Thank you. Thank you, Louis. Happy to have been here. Bye. Bye.
Speaker 2:You've been listening to Azure success, the podcast by and for Azure professionals, you can visit our website, asher-success.com for show notes, helpful links and other episodes, but also to leave your questions, comments, and suggestions. Thank you for listening.