Accelerate SaaS Sales on AWS Marketplace with a Common Language
Hi, it’s Roman from Partner Insight. Welcome back to my newsletter, where I deconstruct winning Cloud GTM strategies and the latest trends in tech partnerships.
Today, we’re diving into a crucial component of a successful Cloud GTM strategy: how software companies can unlock growth on cloud marketplaces by integrating marketplace processes into their sales methodology.
Marketplaces: Growing Beyond $45 Billion Opportunity
To truly unlock growth on cloud marketplaces, software companies need to normalize cosell with hyperscalers and marketplaces within their sales culture, at scale. This may sound simple, but in reality it’s one of the most important but the least understood areas in Cloud GTM.
Rick Buijserd, Senior AWS Marketplace Development Manager EMEA, speaking in our Cloud GTM Leader course leveraged his extensive experience to explain how to convert AWS Marketplace benefits into a familiar seller language, turning sellers into adopters and advocates.
Under Rick’s guidance, many strategic ISVs across EMEA have gone from initial launches to now thriving in the AWS Marketplace, achieving rapid growth in both reach and revenue.
Cloud marketplaces are not just a major driving force in the tech market, they are growing much faster than previously forecasted. Canalys earlier predicted 86% growth (CAGR) setting marketplace adoption to a massive $45 billion market by 2025. However, Jay McBain in one of our recent events shared that even this milestone was too conservative and may be reached as early as the end of 2024.
This acceleration of using the AWS Marketplace is evident both across Independent Software Vendors (ISVs), Channel Partners and AWS customers who use the marketplace. It reflects a broader procurement transformation where organizations modernize their IT infrastructures and integrate software vendor purchases into their single cloud bill.
This underscores the urgency for alliance leaders to align their go-to-market strategies with cloud marketplaces to capture this growing demand. Before jumping into integrating marketplaces into sales, a few key metrics on where marketplaces make a big difference.
Efficiency, Standardization & Leveraging Commits: The Customer Perspective
For customers, the key advantages of cloud marketplaces is in efficiency and standardization:
When using AWS marketplace, their customers reported:
75% reduction in onboarding efforts (Forrester TEI Study here)
66% time saving due to more efficient procurement (Forrester TEI Study here)
Customers prioritize quick and easy transactions. One of the primary appeals of the AWS Marketplace lies in the streamlined procurement process that is offered. Every transaction appears on the AWS invoice, simplifying the billing and payments. This uniformity saves time and builds trust, as customers know they are purchasing from a catalog they can rely on.
Another major benefit of marketplaces is customer ability to utilize their cloud commitments to procure seamlessly through the marketplace (as we talked before in this newsletter). However, it's important to note that cloud budgets are just one part of a marketplace value proposition. Focusing solely on commits can limit the perceived benefits of a marketplace by customers.
Higher Deal Sizes and Faster Sales: The ISV Advantage
For software companies, using AWS Marketplace opens broad benefits:
Commitments: Customers benefiting from leveraging their cloud commitments leads to larger deal sizes and higher win rates.
Faster Procurement: Standard marketplace processes streamline procurement, eliminating the need for extensive onboarding. AWS handles invoicing, simplifying the process.
Aligning with AWS Teams in co-sell: AWS teams are incentivized to collaborate with ISVs and transact through the AWS Marketplace, fostering a supportive co-sell environment.
By integrating AWS Marketplace, ISVs can achieve:
80% richer deal sizes
40% faster sales cycles
27% higher win rates,
all while providing significant value to their customers. (Forrester Study Here)
Bridging the Gap: Translating Value into Common Sales Language
While these benefits of cloud marketplaces are significant, integrating Cloud GTM into the sales team process requires deliberate, nuanced and consistent efforts.
Typically internal presentations of cloud marketplace advantages to sales teams generate initial enthusiasm, but only few elite sellers usually grasp the full benefits immediately. These sellers understand the benefits of deal acceleration via marketplaces and advantages of co-selling with clouds, but the majority of sales force need more time.
Many sellers already feel overwhelmed by the numerous details they need to keep in mind when selling to customers, such as product specifics, various pricing options, etc. Adding the collaboration of a hyperscaler marketplace transactions may feel like further complicating their workload.
Many of the well known ISVs use the MEDDIC (or any of its variations like MEDDICC or MEDDPICC) sales language. By translating the AWS co-sell value and AWS Marketplace value into their core language, sellers can more easily qualify and close deals without feeling like they are straying into unknown territory.
Adopting a common MEDDIC (or any of its variations like MEDDICC or MEDDPICC) language simplifies the process for all sellers, making it easier to leverage the AWS Marketplace and co-sell effectively. Industry expert and thought leader Andy Whyte from meddicc.com co-build this language to strike the right balance between sales, co-sell and AWS Marketplace leading to this common language approach.
Connecting the Dots: From Economic Buyer to Decision Process
Here is an example on how cosell and AWS Marketplace processes could be integrated into the sales language, native to sellers.
1️⃣ Metrics
Quantify the potential economic benefit or measurable results the prospect can expect from your solution. This helps justify the investment and build a strong business case.
Highlight the quantifiable impact on growing revenue and efficiency, or decreasing risk, from combining value of ISV and AWS co-selling and leveraging the AWS Marketplace.
2️⃣ Economic Buyer
Identify the key decision-maker who controls the budget and has the ultimate authority to approve the purchase.
Get insights on buyer commercial strategy with AWS, budget impact, and additional discretionary funds. AWS’s extensive reach across organizational levels, including CIOs and CTOs, helps identify the economic buyer who controls the cloud budget. This connectivity is crucial for aligning deals with strategic financial approvals.
3️⃣Decision Criteria
Establish Decision Criteria: determine the formal process the prospect follows to review, build a shortlist, and finalize their purchase decision, including any paperwork or legal reviews required. Collaborate with AWS to ensure the decision criteria align with customer needs and marketplace benefits.
4️⃣ Decision Process
Map Out the Decision Process: Determine the formal process the prospect follows to review, build a shortlist, and finalize their purchase decision, including any paperwork or legal reviews required.
Work with AWS to understand the decision process and shorten the time to close a deal.
AWS can help you understand the approval hierarchy, ensuring all necessary stakeholders are identified and engaged. AWS teams may not have the bandwidth to fully grasp every ISV solution’s details. However, their extensive experience with customer purchasing patterns allows them to guide sellers through the company's decision-making maze effectively.
5️⃣ Paper Process
Optimize the Paper Process: Gain clarity on any administrative, legal or procurement processes that need to be completed before the deal can close, and the typical timeline for these processes.
Streamline vendor onboarding and procurement with marketplace digital workflows. Access permissions by using private offers and sending it to buyers who can accept it.
The typical delays in obtaining signatures can be mitigated by utilizing AWS Marketplace. This integration accelerates the deal-making process, making the benefit of marketplace transactions more tangible for sellers.
6️⃣Identify Pain
Identify and Address Pain Points: Uncover the key challenges, problems or "pains" the prospect is experiencing that your solution can address. This builds a compelling need for your offering.
Collaborate with AWS to identify and work backwards from the customer’s objectives and mutual pain points, e.g. to accelerate modernization velocity and cloud migration.
7️⃣Champion
Develop a Champion within the Customer’s Organization: Identify an internal advocate or "champion" within the prospect's organization who can support your efforts and influence the decision in your favor. Use AWS's help to map stakeholders for areas like applications, cloud transformation, security, and procurement. This will help to faster develop a champion within the customer’s organization.
8️⃣Competition
Understand and Navigate Competition: Competition in a sales cycle can be around time, resources and funds. Understanding what projects are top of mind for the customer which could potentially compete with the same resources, time, and funds is a crucial step in the qualification process.
AWS provides sellers with insights into customer operations and procurement processes. This includes knowing who needs to sign off on deals, understanding the necessary approval levels, and navigating potential bureaucratic hurdles.
Alliance leaders should train their sales teams to integrate cosell with hyperscalers including the marketplace processes into their existing sales methodologies. This involves understanding what to discuss, the benefits to highlight, and the metrics to focus on.
Turning AWS Collaboration into Sales Success: Practical Steps
Collaborating with AWS peers allows sellers to faster gain insights into customer challenges and the decision-making process, identifying key players like the economic buyer and potential internal champions.
Free Information Access:
AWS can provide valuable information that can help to accelerate sales. However, ISV sellers need to actively reach out to AWS to learn these insights, and not make the mistake of waiting while cloud teams do that for them. The main goal of cloud teams is to help both parties grow.
Engage Early:
Registering opportunities with AWS and connecting sales teams facilitates easier deal qualification. AWS peers can provide insights on the economic buyer, customer behavior, cloud budget availability, and relevance of positioning. Give AWS the time to help you.
Safe Environment to gain Insights:
Engaging with AWS peers in a safe environment allows sellers to gather critical information before approaching the actual customer, making the subsequent discussions more informed and effective.
Effective Engagement: When and How to Connect with Cloud Sellers
Key Takeaways on Effective Sales Engagement
Avoid Fishing Expeditions
AWS does not facilitate random introduction requests, as this approach is not only prohibitively time-consuming, but could undermine trust with customers. Instead, engage in well-prepared, detailed discussions.
Present Tangible Opportunities
Engage AWS with specific opportunities (where you’ve got initial traction) or early-stage opportunities where a champion has been identified and a clear use case exists. These elements make the engagement meaningful and productive.
Role of AWS in Co-Selling
AWS’s role is to support ISVs in the sales process, not to source all of their business. They can provide valuable insights into customer processes, stakeholder management, ongoing projects, cloud budgets, and AWS Marketplace maturity.
Leverage AWS Insights:
Use AWS’s guidance on understanding customer environments and aligning your solution’s value proposition. AWS can help navigate the customer’s decision-making process but ISVs need to know how to articulate the specific value and use case of their solution.
Key Advice
Showcase Customer Value:
Focus on the problems you aim to solve for the customer and the value your solution brings, rather than merely highlighting your company's credentials.
Be Prepared and Have Clear Ask:
Clearly articulate what you need from AWS, such as information on economic buyers, stakeholder insights, and procurement processes.Ask about relevant projects that could impact or compete with your solution.
Engage with a Clear Use Case:
Present a specific use case or pain point you are addressing for the customer and how this fits into the overall cloud transformation strategy.. This approach demonstrates the impact of your solution and facilitates a more productive discussion.
Transforming Sales with a Common Language
By using a common language and integrating this into your sales process ISVs can significantly accelerate success in cloud marketplaces. By aligning with familiar methodologies like MEDDIC or any of its variations, sellers can more easily qualify and close deals. This approach helps identify key decision-makers, map out the decision process, and leverage AWS's drive to solve customer challenges.
Alliance leaders should train their sales teams to adopt these practices, focusing on the specific metrics that reflect impact, engaging economic buyers, optimizing procurement processes, and addressing customer pain points. By doing so, they can enhance their sales strategies, making it easier to leverage the marketplace and co-sell effectively with AWS. This alignment not only simplifies the sales process but also accelerates deal closure and increases win rates.
Unlock Your Growth on Cloud Marketplaces
I've been reflecting on the past year of Cloud GTM Leader course. Our programs have welcomed 150+ alumni from industry leaders like GitLab, Citrix, and IDC, and featured nearly 50 incredible expert speakers and mentors.
Jay McBain from Canalys recognized it as a Top Education and Training Program for Channel and Partnership professionals. What makes our course so impactful?
We asked our alums, and here's what they said:
It was the "Structured and Methodical approach to unbundle the complex process of partner enablement/Cloud GTM/Cloud Marketplaces."
Our alums highlighted the "open discussion with peers from different business functions and companies covering SaaS, Cybersecurity and Hyperscalers." They loved the "tactical elements and the measurement tools to measure progress."
"People with real experience sharing the how - how did they win, how did they fail, how did they tackle challenge x or y”
From VPs of Partners of the Year to alliance leaders with decades of cloud GTM experience, 50 outstanding expert speakers delivered unique insights in our course sessions.
Rolf Heimes, Jonathan Kingsepp, Brian Laing, Mike Marzano, Rick Buijserd, Darren Sharpe, Subhash Jawahrani, Kate Kwiatkowski, Abhijit Madhugiri, Alex Balcanquall the list goes on.
Results have been rapid
Many of our alumni cracked the code of cloud marketplaces, generating significant traction. Here is just one of many stories: $0 to $200K+ revenue in cloud marketplaces in 8 weeks.
The journey continues long after the course
Our Masterminds are yet another testaments to the incredible insights of our community. The high-energy discussion and probing questions turned it into a forum for the community to truly help in Cloud GTM each other and build lasting connections.
🎯 If you're ready to accelerate your cloud GTM growth, join us for the upcoming Cohort!
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Co-selling with hyperscalers is key for cloud marketplace growth. It's key because it aligns sales strategies with emerging tech trends.