​How do Partners connect with eligible customers?

There are several ways to go about proactively identifying customer opportunities and verifying customer entitlement to the Packaged Services benefit to help create your qualified customer list.

1. Joint Account Planning with Your Partner Account Manager to Create a Qualified Customer List
• Partners can contact their Partner Account Manager (PAM) and request to joint account plan to find entitled customers in the partner’s region
• Partners provide a list of current customers for whom they are the current partner of record to their PAM to have the PAM cross-check for customer benefit entitlement
• Partners can ask their PAM to coordinate working with a local Microsoft account team to help identify entitled customers in region interested in deployment
  
  
2. Working with LARs
• Some Large Account Resellers (LAR) will share their list of entitled customers who purchased Software Assurance benefits with their license. If a partner is a System Integrators (SIs) they may be able to partner with a Large Account Reseller to identify potential SA eligible customers.
  
  
3. Offer Deployment Planning to all Customers Regardless of Eligibility
• As a best practice, Microsoft recommends offering deployment planning to all customers; Deployment increases the rate of Enterprise Agreement renewals, which promotes future systems deployment and follow-on services for the partner. Regardless of customer eligibility, you can use the Planning Services' structured and pre-defined materials, best practices and intellectual property developed by Microsoft Services as a supplement to your deployment planning consulting you would typically offer to your customer.
  
  
4. Working with Customers to Determine Eligibility
• If you are unable to have your PAM, a Microsoft sales or customer account contact help you determine customer entitlement, there are ways to work with your customer to do so
• Once you know your customer has Software Assurance benefits, see the specifics on Calculating Customer Benefits (#7) in the Top 15 FAQs list below to understand how many planning “days” they are entitled to.