Customer Zero Advisory Contact

For MSPs, VARs, ISVs and distributors

Your team first. Then your customers.

Customer Zero Advisory helps Microsoft partners grow their business and turn AI from a pilot into daily work, by running it on their own team before they sell it.

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Proof, from a global distributor's Microsoft business

Results from running it ourselves first

Before advising partners, I took a team of 50-plus channel managers, solution specialists and architects through the full path.

27% → 7–8%
Forecast miss down to monthly accuracy
1 → 22
Daily agent users in a few months
~90%
Of agent work on the Copilot base license
1994
In the Microsoft ecosystem since

The Customer Zero path

Five stages, in the order your team will hit them

Each stage solves the last one's problem and exposes the next. Knowing the order is what keeps a rollout from stalling.

  1. Prompt

    Save every person 10 minutes a day.

  2. Share

    Pass the good prompts around, and meet the versioning wall.

  3. Skill

    A scored, deduped, human-reviewed library.

  4. Agent

    One interface. People ask for outcomes, not data.

  5. Scale

    Base license for the many, consumption for the builders.

The wall most rollouts hit sits between stages three and four. Engineers love the tooling. Everyday users decide whether it sticks.

Services

Three ways I help

Fixed-scope work with a clear finish line, sized to your team.

Customer Zero AI adoption

Take your own team from first prompt to agents people use every day, before you sell AI to a customer.

  • Offsite and prompt workshop
  • Governed skill library with a quality gate
  • Agent design on Copilot Studio

Channel strategy and programs

Partner program design, co-sell, marketplace, and the move from SKU and margin selling to use-case solution selling.

  • Rebates, promos and designations already on the table
  • Partner business plans built on Partner Center data

Fractional channel leadership

A senior partner leader for companies who need one now and aren't ready for a full-time hire.

  • Partner team leadership
  • Microsoft field alignment

What it looks like at stage four

Outcomes in, partner plan out

A channel manager types one sentence, such as "help partner X build a security practice and grow profit." The agent pulls forecast, partner health, incentives and designation data, then builds the plan and a branded deck.

Architecture: people ask a top-level Business Manager agent in Teams, which calls six agents (Forecast, Partner Health, Programs and Incentives, Designations, Storyteller, Coaching) over a shared data layer, fed by a governed skill library with human review.
Built on Copilot Studio and Power Automate. The same pattern applies on Claude, ChatGPT or Gemini.

Who you work with

Tom Harshbarger

Channel and partner leader in the Microsoft ecosystem since 1994, with experience across Microsoft, AWS, distribution and ISV partner motions.

Most recently I led a distributor's North America Microsoft business and took its team through every stage on this page, mistakes included. I'm sharing the full story on LinkedIn twice a week.

Stuck between AI pilot and payoff?

Send a note with where your team is today.

tom@customerzeroadvisory.io