In the room at the recent IAMCP event in London, Microsoft told Partners what to sell next: and it’s not features or “why AI matters,” but the fixes to the four problems that stall almost every Copilot rollout. Cost, skills, pricing and fear. For MSPs, those four should underpin your content strategy.
Microsoft’s market intelligence lead across EMEA, Ferdi Van Huffel, named the four biggest blockers to Copilot rollouts: cost attribution, skills, vendor pricing and risk. He suggests you pick one, build your service programme around it, and aim it at the people who now sign off the spend (hint: not just IT). Your content strategy should follow suit. Show you understand the challenges, publish case studies that prove you can fix them, and package your services around them.
The market has moved from “why AI” to “why is my rollout is stuck”
You no longer need to convince anyone that AI matters. That argument is over, and content still making it is late to a conversation that has moved on.
“The appetite is proven,” said Van Huffel. “The operating model is not. They want to do it, they just don’t know how.”
That is the gap where your content should sit. Your buyer already believes in Copilot. What they can’t see is how to get a stuck rollout moving. And the reasons rollouts stall are no mystery. Microsoft surveyed it, and the same four came back every time.
The four challenges your content should tackle
Cost attribution. Buyers can’t see, forecast or attribute the spend before they commit. In Van Huffel’s words, the question is simply, “How much is this going to cost?”
Skills. Organisations don’t feel equipped to do this themselves. They say, “We don’t have the right skills, we don’t know what we’re doing.”
Pricing. Separate from cost, and buyers find Microsoft’s model baffling: licence cost, consumption, credits, tokens. Van Huffel voiced it as “what the heck am I paying for?”
Risk and reputation. Fear, and rational fear. “What if it goes wrong? What happens if we lose our reputation?”
Van Huffel’s point was that none of these is a reason to walk away, because “every one of these is fixable,” he said. “Not with more products. By services, by the experience that you have.” These are the things you already handle in delivery, on live projects, without writing them down. Which is the problem. As he put it, “You’re probably already doing this. You just need to package it up a bit nicer.”
Packaging it up is our job. Here is what it looks like.
What a content programme for one challenge could look like
If we take pricing as an example, because it’s the one almost nobody publishes good content about. A buyer stuck on “what am I paying for?” needs a Partner who can make sense of it all, and your content has to prove you’re that Partner. One blog won’t do it. A programme will, and it’s built from the people in your team who already know the answer.
It starts with an explainer, written from an interview we do with your consultant on the team who untangles Copilot pricing for your clients every week. This wouldn’t be Microsoft’s licensing page rewritten, but your person explaining which product fits which need and where to watch out for token consumption. That’s the piece that earns a stuck buyer’s attention, because it sounds like someone who has done this before.
Next, we could do a Q&A with one of your customer-facing people, the account manager or delivery lead who’s been discussing the pricing question firsthand. We’ll tease out the questions your prospects are actually asking, and uncover and record the answers. This is content an LLM reaches for when a buyer types in who can help them, because it mirrors exactly what and how they ask.
Then for the proof: we’ll create the case study, built from interviewing your customer, showing what they were stuck on and how you helped, with a named process, a real before and after, and importantly, an outcome measured in money or capacity rather than just hours saved. We’ve set out what to include in a Copilot case study in full; this is where it slots in.
Around those three we’ll create a services landing page that anchors the programme in one place, a set of LinkedIn posts drawn from the content, which we can turn into a paid for ad campaign on LinkedIn or Google, and/or pay to boost high performing organic socials (which satisfies the paid-media element FY27 Co-op rules now requires).
That’s one challenge, one programme. You can swap pricing for cost attribution, or skills, or governance, and the shape holds. The method is the same every time: we interview your experts, your customer-facing colleagues and your customers, and piece together the story you’re too busy delivering to tell.
Aim Copilot content at the fusion team
One more thing Van Huffel was firm about: who signs off on AI spend has changed. Business leaders now control around three quarters of AI services spend, and most of the decision-makers sit outside IT.
The framing he used was “the fusion team”, business and IT deciding together, with the CIO brought in as a partner in the outcome rather than a gate to get past. The research he cited put numbers on why that matters: deal quality runs about 1.6 times higher when the CIO is accountable, and satisfaction about 2.2 times higher when the CIO is on the team delivering it.
So the Copilot content works hardest when it speaks to both the business outcome and the CIO’s control at once. We’ve written in more detail about who your Copilot content is really for, and why IT alone can’t give you licence growth, in selling Copilot: offer help, not features.
Pick one challenge, start small
You don’t have to own all four challenges. Van Huffel’s advice was to “pick one” and go deep, and there’s a strong case for choosing the challenge you can prove best from real delivery work.
Keep the first engagement you’re selling into small, too. He cited Gartner research showing a series of smaller assignments outperforms one big one, grinned and said, “Sounds like a land and expand strategy to me.” Content that pitches modest, provable first fixes will out-convert content that asks a nervous buyer to bet the business.
Following on from Microsoft’s advice: pick one of the four challenges to focus on. Let us interview the people in your team who are solving it for you and your customers, and we’ll build the content programme as one campaign your Co-op will fund.
FAQs
What content should a Microsoft Partner create to sell Copilot?
Content built around the known problems that stop rollouts, not the features of the product. For each challenge you want to own, that means an explainer showing you understand it, a Q&A answering the questions your prospects actually ask, and a customer case study proving you fixed it, with a real before and after focused on tangible outcomes. Plan those as one campaign around a single audience and message, with a paid element, and it becomes claimable under Microsoft’s FY27 Co-op rules.
How do I sell Copilot to my existing managed services clients?
Lead with the problem they’re stuck on, not with Copilot. Buyers are strongly loyal to a provider who has delivered well, so as the incumbent you’re the one to beat, but “trusted for managed services” doesn’t automatically read as “trusted for AI.” Tell your existing clients, in their language, that you can get their stalled rollout moving, and aim it at their business leaders as well as IT, since the business now controls most of the AI spend.
How do I explain Copilot pricing to customers?
Separate what Copilot costs from what Microsoft charges for it. The first is a cost-attribution question, which team uses what and what it adds up to. The second is the pricing model, licence versus consumption versus credits, and which product fits which need. Most confusion comes from mixing the two. The most credible explanation comes from the consultant on your team who untangles it for clients every week, which is why it’s worth writing up as content rather than leaving it in their head.
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The fix to your client’s stalled Copilot rollout is in your delivery team’s heads. Getting it onto the page is our job.
Pick one of the four challenges, and we’ll build the campaign that sells it, funded by your Co-op.
