Winning Cloud Marketplace with Automation

Trunal B., CEO of Clazar, frm. Director of Engineering in Confluent, explained in our course why cloud marketplace GTM and 🛠️ automations should be a “tightly-knit collaboration”.

Here is top 7 insights from his session:

1️⃣ In Marketplace Listings Generating Leads Automatically is a Myth

There's a myth out there in the industry, folks, where people feel like if I just got listed on marketplace, the leads are going to start flowing in. That is very far away from what the truth is…Getting listed on the cloud marketplaces is only the step one of it.

2️⃣ Reporting is Essential

Anything that you cannot measure, you cannot change. If you're just got listed and you have no visibility into the reporting or any of the analytics, it's going to be very hard for you to make any progress in the right direction.

3️⃣ It's Critical That Sales Teams Adopt Your Automation

If whatever system that you put in is not adopted by your sales team, nothing else matters.

4️⃣ Don’t Ask Sellers to Change their Workflow

If you ask any of the users to change their workflow, generally it is met with a lot of friction. So as an internal automation tool that you're building, if you can make it so that it's very easy for them to learn and they don't have to go learn some third party interface or other system, it generally becomes a lot more easy for them to adopt.

5️⃣ Stay on Top with Alerts

You have to be on top of the marketplace events with alerts in your internal systems, where all of these marketplaces will keep on sending you events as your buyer is going through the journey of purchase, like contact upgraded, contact added, all these type of things. You can get an email as well, but what we've seen is an automation in either Slack teams or using webhooks and going directly into deeper of your ecosystem is very, very helpful.

Renewals for majority of the SaaS businesses out there is a good chunk of the business on a yearly basis, so it needs a special attention.

6️⃣ Educate Sellers on the Value and Operations of Cloud Marketplaces

To make this channel work, please, please, please educate your sellers ... If your seller doesn't understand how to make this channel work, what kind of automation is needed for him or her to make the channel successful, the whole thing is going to fall.

7️⃣ Treat Co-Sell as a Partnerships Opportunity, Not a Lead Generation Engine

The secret to Co-Sell success is treating Co-Sell as a partnership opportunity and not a lead generation engine… All of the hyperscalers have fantastic programs for you to start sharing your pipeline with them, start to share your unique value prop with them so they can help. Start doing that and give yourself at least, I would say 3-5 months before you can start really see the engine kicking.

__________

📈 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.

Join Cloud GTM Leader course