A lot of people want to talk with Microsoft with the hopes of establishing a business relationship. Most of these engagements go nowhere because people don’t know how to have that conversation. I thought I would provide some insight into why these discussions fail and what you need to do to maximize your chances of success. While the advice I provide is critical for any dealings with Microsoft (at least my part of Microsoft), I think it is a best practice and applicable to any business engagement.

The most important thing to understand when dealing with people from Microsoft is this:

We all have ten jobs and our only true job is to figure out which nine we can fail at and not get fired.