"With Azure, you've won an empty bucket... and the right to fill it with gold." - James Marshall, Azure Partner Success Manager, Microsoft

"With Azure, you've won an empty bucket... and the right to fill it with gold."

That line from James Marshall stuck with me.

Because it perfectly sums up how different selling Azure is compared to traditional IT services.

In the old model? You won a deal, delivered the solution, and moved on.

In Azure? Winning the deal is just the start. You’ve won the right to go deeper — to fill that bucket with value, consumption, and impact.

💡 But here’s the catch: most partners are only filling that bucket a quarter full.

They do the first migration… maybe a DR plan… and stop there. Then it’s on to the next shiny new customer.

James and I dug into:

• Why partners stall after the first project

• The mindset shift from acquisition to expansion

• How the best are using specialization, standardization, and data to scale

• The “Rule of 78” and why Q1 is way more important than Q4

• Why GenAI will follow the same journey infra engineers did with Azure

🔁 This episode was packed with insight for Microsoft Partners — especially those growing Azure practices in CSP.

If you’re building buckets and wondering how to fill them — or how to stop losing revenue through the holes — this one’s for you.