Use private offers for the Microsoft commercial marketplace to create, track, and manage conditional proposals you want to send to your buyers. Once these offers are accepted, it can lead to sales, increasing your bottom line. Private offers are used to recognize sales through a marketplace by processing a sale and creating a subscription. Recognizing that the process may vary from marketplace to marketplace is important. Tackle helps simplify and streamline that process for you.
How Microsoft commercial marketplace offers work
There are several types of private offers depending on what your business goals are: direct to buyer, partner resale, and amended offers. Regardless of which you choose, in Tackle, you can track these offers in every stage of the acceptance and activation process. Additionally, you can set up notifications for your buyers and partners to let them know where they are in the process.
Once you have a listing in a limited preview or a published state in Tackle, you can:
View and track all your existing offers in one place
Create private offers based on your business needs
Edit offers before they’re accepted, specifically booking data, registration information, or contract metadata to receive bookable artifacts
Clone offers to create new ones instantly based on existing listings, pricing, and terms
Track existing marketplace offers by associating them with Tackle
Types of private offers
Direct to buyer
Through a direct-to-buyer private offer, you can extend a custom offer that includes specific pricing and structure details that meet the specialized needs of you and your buyers. Once a private offer is accepted, you can view progress and receive notifications and invoicing details to keep you and your buyers updated. This includes receiving bookable artifacts to help meet your finance team’s booking requirements.
You can draft, send, edit, clone, and track any single private offer in Tackle at any time.
Note: Direct private offers are between you and a buyer and do not include a third party channel partner or distributor.
Partner resale
This is a custom offer that an independent software vendor (ISV) extends to a channel partner (reseller), generally with discounted pricing that the partner uses to create an offer with marked-up pricing and extends to a buyer.
Benefits:
Allow third parties to sell your products on your behalf
Formalize agreements and terms between you and your partners for resell
Extend custom private offers at negotiated prices and terms not standard with a public marketplace listing
Update them when you need as agreements change
Clone them to create new offers instantly
Amended offers
Amended offers are accepted offers that you've revised to update the original terms of an existing agreement or renew an agreement without having to collect or enter the same information. You can take a previously accepted offer and use that as a base to create a new private offer for a buyer who wants to renew or upgrade a product.
Leverage amended offers to:
Upsell or expand existing contracts
Simplify the updating process, making your business more efficient
Speed up the opportunity to close by amending an offer within hours rather than days
Amend an offer when you:
Have an existing agreement with a buyer and the buyer wants to renew or upgrade the product
Can't create a separate agreement for the same buyer and product combination. For example, if the buyer is purchasing a separate product listing, you would create a new private offer. If it's for the same product, you would amend an existing agreement to renew.
Sales order process
Get an overview of the sales order process for private and public offers when transacting on the Microsoft commercial marketplace.
Public order overview
Microsoft public orders are available at the list price under the public EULA set on your listing. A buyer can subscribe directly from the listing and complete their registration with no sales interaction or negotiation.
Here's how the public order process works:
The buyer goes to your marketplace listing and clicks Subscribe.
The buyer accepts the public terms.
If the buyer completes registration:
You will receive a New Azure Order email notification.
the buyer will receive a welcome email with the email/URL you put in the Product Support section of your Tackle Listing Template.
The order is booked/revenue recognized.
If the buyer does not complete registration:
you will receive an Incomplete Azure Order email notification with a link to register the order.
Billing will not initiate and the subscription will not start until the order is registered.
The order is booked/revenue recognized.
You provision the product to the buyer.
Depending on the buyer's payment terms with Microsoft, they will either have it added to their next monthly bill or be charged immediately.
Once they pay Microsoft for the order, Microsoft will disburse those funds to you.
You reconcile the disbursement to the order.
Direct and amendment private offers overview
Private Offers enable you to create and extend a unique offer based on specialized needs such as negotiated pricing and custom contract terms.
Note
Since Microsoft allows you to have multiple active subscriptions with your buyer, the process for creating direct and amendment private offers is the same. Whenever you need to renew or upgrade the subscription, just extend a new private offer.
Here's how the the direct private offer process works:
You come to an agreement with your buyer on what they will be purchasing and gather the billing account ID & tenant ID that they will be using to purchase.
Send purchase instructions to the buyer using Tackle Offers.
The buyer accepts the private offer.
If the buyer completes registration:
You will receive a New Azure Order email notification with Tackle Offers metadata.
The buyer will receive a welcome email with the email/URL you put in the Product Support section of your Tackle Listing template.
The order is booked/revenue recognized.
If the buyer does not complete registration:
If you used Tackle Offers for this order, Tackle will wait an hour and then use the information from Tackle Offers to register the order.
you will receive a New Azure Order email notification with Tackle Offers metadata.
The buyer will receive a welcome email with the email/URL you put in the Product Support section of your Tackle Listing template.
The order is booked/revenue recognized.
You provision the product to the buyer.
Depending on the buyer's payment terms with Microsoft, they will either have it added to their next monthly bill or be charged immediately.
Once they pay Microsoft for the order, Microsoft will disburse those funds to you.
You reconcile the disbursement to the order.
Direct private plan overview
Private plans are used whenever you need to sell a product that isn’t listed on the public listing SKUs. It allows you to create a custom SKU for the transaction as well as custom additional usage SKUs.
Note
Private plans use the EULA from the public listing.
Here's how the direct private plan process works:
You come to an agreement with your buyer on what they will be purchasing and gather the tenant ID that they will be using to purchase.
Create the plan in Partner Center and Publish the listing.
Send purchase instructions to the buyer using Tackle Offers.
The buyer accepts the terms of the private plan.
If the buyer completes registration:
You will receive a New Azure Order email notification with Tackle Offers metadata.
The buyer will receive a welcome email with the email/URL you put in the Product Support section of your Tackle Listing Template.
The order is booked/revenue recognized.
If the buyer does not complete registration:
If you used Tackle Offers for this order, Tackle will wait an hour and then use the information from Tackle Offers to register the order.
You will receive a New Azure Order email notification with Tackle Offers metadata.
The buyer will receive a welcome email with the email/URL you put in the Product Support section of your Tackle Listing Template.
The order is booked/revenue recognized.
You provision the product to the buyer.
Depending on the buyer's payment terms with Microsoft, they will either have it added to their next monthly bill or be charged immediately.
Once they pay Microsoft for the order, Microsoft will disburse those funds to you.
You reconcile the disbursement to the order.
Cloud Solution Provider (CSP) partner private offer overview
CSP private offers are used when you need to create a deal with a Cloud Solution Provider as a partner on the deal.
Here's how the CSP Private Offer process works:
Important
"Customer-led" CSP offers where the buyer has owner permission to accept the offer without directly involving the CSP follow the standard private offer flow.
You come to an agreement with your buyer/partner on what they will be purchasing and gather the tenant ID that they will be using to purchase.
Create the Private Offer in Partner Center.
Inform the CSP that the offer is live.
The CSP navigates to the customer module, selects your product, and clicks Buy.
You will receive an Incomplete Azure Order email notification with a link to complete the order.
You register the order to complete the transaction.
You will receive a New Azure Order email.
The order is booked/revenue recognized.
You provision the product to the buyer.
Depending on the CSP's payment terms with Microsoft, they will either have it added to their next monthly bill or be charged immediately.
The CSP charges the end customer outside of marketplace.
Once they pay Microsoft for the order, Microsoft will disburse those funds to you.
You reconcile the disbursement to the order.
For more information on CSP Private Offers check out the Partner Center docs🔗.
Multi-party private offer (MPPO) overview
Multi-party private offers are offers that allow you create offers that include your reseller partners.
Here's how the MPPO private offer process works:
You come to an agreement with your buyer/partner on what they will be purchasing and gather the billing account ID and tenant ID that they will be using to purchase. You will also need the Seller ID of the Partner.
The Partner adds their percent markup to the pricing in Partner Center and sends the offer to the end buyer.
The buyer accepts the terms of the private offer.
If the buyer completes registration:
You will receive a New Azure Order email notification with Tackle Offers metadata.
The buyer will receive a welcome email with the email/URL you put in the Product Support section of your Tackle Listing Template.
The order is booked/revenue recognized.
If the buyer does not complete registration:
If you used Tackle Offers for this order, Tackle will wait an hour and then use the information from Tackle Offers to register the order.
you will receive a New Azure Order email notification with Tackle Offers metadata.
The buyer will receive a welcome email with the email/URL you put in the Product Support section of your Tackle Listing template.
The order is booked/revenue recognized.
You provision the product to the buyer.
Depending on the buyer's payment terms with Microsoft, they will either have it added to their next monthly bill or be charged immediately.
Once they pay Microsoft for the order, Microsoft will disburse those funds to you & partner.
You reconcile the disbursement to the order.