Microsoft CoPilot Available For Resale Via MSP Partners

On January 15th Microsoft announced Copilots availability to the broader business landscape. It released initially for enterprise customers back in November, but is now available via Microsoft 365 subscriptions to the broader small business landscape. Microsoft’s Copilot bring generative AI to it’s suite of office apps including Teams, Word, Outlook, PowerPoint, Excel, and other Microsoft 365 apps. Copilot can help small businesses with productivity and presents a sales and marketing opportunity for it’s MSP partners to add incremental revenue.

Copilot GA: A Quiet Release, A Massive Opportunity

The release has been surprisingly quiet for such a huge opportunity to both add that incremental revenue, but more so position MSPs as thought leaders and trusted advisors by bringing this cutting edge technology quickly to their customers and enabling them to extract business value and enhanced productivity for their staff. In a time where so many businesses are thinking about efficiency, how to cut costs and streamline operations, copilot is more than a great excuse to capture market share and take your MSP to the next level.

How MSPs Can Take Advantage Of The Copilot Opportunity

For such technically savvy organizations, you’d be surprised how many MSPs don’t have one simple thing – a way to send their existing customers bulk marketing emails. I’m always encouraging my customers to both get a CRM ASAP and get an existing customer list together. It’s the first stop, the easiest thing to pull together in a CRM, and probably the highest value list you’ll keep within it, yet it’s often overlooked at the expense of trying to source new contacts to put in it.

Email Your Existing Customers

If you’re one of the more mature MSPs who actually has the capability to send your existing customers bulk marketing emails, that should be your first stop. Let them know that Copilot has been released and is available as an add on to Microsoft 365 licenses and ask them to reach out if they would like to inquire about upgrading their licenses with the add on for their staff in whole or in part. My suggestion is that you have a landing page created on your website that acts as a pitch for the product with the ability for your customers to reach out via a contact form, but worst case you can use this Copilot description page of Microsoft’s. Use either the landing page or the MS Copilot page as the primary CTA in your email and track which customers are clicking that link and tag them as potentially interested in that product line for the future.

Create Copilot Tutorials

Aside from the direct and immediate approach of asking for the sale from the early adopters, I think it’s also a great time to pivot your content marketing and go all in on copilot tips and tricks to help your customers effectively use copilot. Generate demand for the product from your customer base by educating your customers on what they are missing out on by not talking to you about a license upgrade. There are hundreds of searches each month for GitHub Copilot tips and tricks, and the search engine impression inventory will expand for the Microsoft 365 version of Copilot rapidly over 2024.

One of the best ways to capture search engine traffic and boost your SEO game is to be early to the game before people are searching and before the SERPs are flooded with competition. Early posters get the benefit of attracting a ton of backlinks.

Final Thoughts

Don’t let this opportunity pass you by. It’s not every day that such a great leap forward is brought to the MSP space from a technological advancement perspective, and definitely not one that can be perceived as a value driver for businesses like generative AI. I’m already hearing reports from existing MSP customers that Copilot licenses are selling, but I haven’t yet seen the tips and tricks flooding feeds on social media or other channels. I’m sure they are out there, but there’s still a window of time where you can be early to the game and capitalize in a way that laggards will not see the benefit of. If you’ve been looking for that way to take your MSP to the next level in 2024 – this is it.