Selling digital transformation in Lego bricks instead of one big project | James Crossland

FormusPro is a leading UK Microsoft solutions partner helping organizations connect the systems, data, and people behind their work, built around Dynamics 365, the Power Platform, and Microsoft's data and AI stack.

In a recent episode of Marketers of Technology, we sat down with James Crossland, Head of Marketing at FormusPro, to learn why he treats sales and marketing as one job, and why he wants FormusPro's customers to eventually need FormusPro less.

Topics Discussed:

• How an unplanned promotion at a Christmas party turned a career salesperson into a marketer
• Why James treats sales and marketing as the same function and distrusts vanity metrics
• What FormusPro actually does as a Microsoft partner built on Dynamics 365 and the Power Platform
• Why FormusPro delivers transformation projects in small, reinvestable pieces instead of one large rollout
• Why James treats staff adoption as a "hearts and minds" problem, not just an implementation problem
• Why FormusPro's marketing gives expertise away for free and puts consultants' names on it
• Why FormusPro deliberately teaches clients to use tools like Copilot Studio to need it less over time
• Why James started optimizing for generative engines within months of ChatGPT's launch, and how he gets LLMs to describe FormusPro the way he wants

GTM & Technology Adoption Lessons:

• Measure marketing in revenue, not vanity metrics: James, who came from a sales background, said he judges marketing activity by whether it moved the bottom line: did it convert into a lead, did that lead turn into money, did that money turn into repeatable revenue. He treats sales and marketing as a single function rather than two departments that blame each other.

• Sell transformation in small, reinvestable pieces: James said Microsoft's technology works "almost as Lego," letting FormusPro implement a small piece of a project first, generate fast ROI, and reinvest those savings into the next phase, instead of asking a client to fund a multi-million-pound, three-year rollout upfront.

• Treat adoption as a hearts and minds problem, not just an implementation problem: James said most digital transformations fail because staff were never brought along, so FormusPro budgets time to upskill and train the people who will actually use a new system, so a CFO's investment doesn't end with someone quietly reverting to their old spreadsheet.

• Give the expertise away for free, and put consultants' names on it: James described FormusPro's marketing as thought-leadership-first, spotlighting individual consultants and helping them build their own LinkedIn presence, because most prospects only know they have a problem, not which product solves it.

• Empower customers to eventually need you less: James said FormusPro deliberately teaches clients to use tools like Copilot Studio to build and improve their own solutions over time, because a customer relationship built on genuine empowerment, not lock-in, is the one that lasts and gets referred to others.

• Optimize for what LLMs already say about you: James said FormusPro started its generative engine optimization strategy in January 2023, within months of ChatGPT's release, and his concrete tactic is making sure the exact phrase he uses on his own LinkedIn profile, describing FormusPro as one of the UK's leading Microsoft partners, gets echoed back when an LLM answers a question about the company, since these models learn from what other sources already say.

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