Meet Niall Ruane, a brilliant mentor in our Cloud GTM Leader course, whose đ superpowers are Co-Sell & AWS. With a 25-year career spanning Partner, Channel, and Direct Sales, Niall has worked for the past 13 years in Cloud Services. For the last 8 years, he served as a Senior Sales Lead in Enterprise Sales at Amazon Web Services (AWS).
Niall is now founder and Managing Director of Flywheel Consulting, specializing in AWS Marketplace Build-Market-Sell.
He shared his insights on creating a winning co-sell motion with cloud providers:
đŻ Early alignment is crucial for a Successful Co-Sell
Co-Sell on Marketplace is a net new route to market. It is not an OR channel - it is an AND channel.
It is important to emphasize that when Marketplace partners are engaging and selling to customers in a new Co-Sell motion, Cloud Provider is NOT selling your service, and the partner is NOT selling the cloud providerâs service. Theyâre offering a JOINT solution to customers that addresses specific customer needs and delivers better customer outcomes.
Co-Sell via Marketplace requires partners to be exceptionally clear on their "WHY" their product/service delivers additional customer value.
đ¤ Collaborate early on WHY
For a successful Co-Sell motion ideate the "WHY" for the customer, explaining how the "better together" story leads to a successful customer outcome. For instance, AWS ideates through a working backward workshop that starts with customersâ needs and collaboratively work backwards to ideate on solutions to deliver better customer outcomes.
đ Be crystal clear on the value you deliver
Drawing on my experience as a seller in a cloud provider, if we're working together, I needed a clear understanding of other's values:
âď¸ What are you deeply passionate about?
âď¸ What are you best in the world at?
âď¸ What economic value do you bring to the collaborative solution?
đ Build Trust
Co-sell is a lasting business partnerships for customers, partners, and Cloud Providers. Establishing trust is crucial for success as this success needs to scale into vertical industries and regions etc.
đŻ Share success stories
Celebrate and share successful case studies with customers, marketplace sellers, and cloud providers.
đĄ Bring Unique Insights to Effectively Engage
In addition to absolute clarity on your "WHY" and Values you deliver, other effective strategies to engage with CSP sales teams include:
âď¸ Elevate customer engagements with your Insights
Enhance interactions by having specific insights into a client's business challenges or a unique perspective on addressing customer needs.
âď¸ Leverage competencies: Cloud provider sales teams seek partners with the right competencies to deliver optimal customer outcomes.
âď¸ Referenceable use cases: Highlighting previous customer studies is an impactful tool to engage with Cloud Teams and emphasise the value add.
__________
đ Accelerate your Growth in Cloud Marketplaces
Transform your marketplace strategy with first-hand insights from Cloud GTM leaders in our 5-week cohort course. Learn in a community of great alliance leaders. Join 100+ alums from companies like GitLab, Darktrace, IDC and others.
Comments