What We’ve Learned from Processing $9B in Marketplace Transactions
Since Tackle’s inception, we’ve driven over $9B in Cloud Marketplace transactions and, as a result, have a deep understanding of the factors that inform how companies buy in the cloud. In this session, Tackle Founder and CTO Dillon Woods will explain how Tackle Prospect’s AI-driven “propensity to buy” model can immediately help your company reach the right customers, tap into committed cloud spend, and accelerate the co-sell sales cycle.
Hey everybody, thanks for joining me in the home stretch here today.
This will be our last session of the day.
So we have a quick 20 minutes to talk about data and then it will be a wrap.
Let me go ahead and get my screen share working here.
There we go.
Okay, so we started tackle coming up on our eight year anniversary here soon.
It's really felt like a lifetime.
But prior to that, I was in the shoes that most of you were in.
I was working for an ISV.
We were trying to lean in a little bit more to our AWS partnership.
And one of the ways that we wanted to do that was to list our product in the
AWS marketplace.
At that time, SAS listings weren't possible in the marketplace.
But in 2015, we were able to get into the first beta program where we were one
of five
ISVs who launched SAS listings along with AWS.
And that's really where I got my experience from, why I became passionate about
this area
and why I went on to launch tackle about a year later.
When we first started, what we were really focused on was getting people
integrated with
the marketplace and getting them operational or sometimes we say, transactable,
getting them to a state where they could accept transactions.
But what we quickly found was that that really wasn't enough.
That was sort of a starting line.
What we actually needed to do was to help them expand and incorporate their
cloud go to market
into their existing go-to-market motions.
So that's what we started to build out on.
And a really funny thing happened as we started to see success with that is
that we started
to gather a lot of data.
And I shared some of the stats on the data that we've collected here on the
slide.
But the one that I'm personally most proud of is the 22,000 offers transacted
stat.
What that means to me is that we were able to help take something that was in
sort of
a chicken or the egg scenario where sellers sort of wanted to be in marketplace
and buyers
sort of wanted to be in marketplace, but there wasn't really a clear first m
over to
establishing a real marketplace where transactions are happening.
And not just a little bit, but the volume continues to go up and we see growth.
We see growth quarter over quarter.
So those 22,000 transactions, that's over $9 billion that's been distributed
from all
three of the cloud marketplaces out to ISVs like yourselves, which is pretty
amazing.
And as we've seen that, we've been able to uncover a wide variety of different
problems
and use cases that we didn't really even know existed up to that point.
And as it turned out, a lot of those problems could be solved with data.
That's something that's very interesting to me because that's really where my
background
is in.
It's in data and data science and machine learning.
So I was really excited to see how we could apply some of those concepts to the
data problems
that our customers were seeing.
So a few years ago, we went out and invested in our own data team, data and
intelligence
team internally.
We were able to take some passionate engineers who had a great AI and ML
background, put
them on that team, even hire some outside help to help bolster that and to get
them
working.
And when we created that team, we really gave them two foundational principles
to work from.
The first was that we had to go above and beyond to respect our customers' data
privacy.
That's something that is really fundamental to all of the work that we do at
tackle related
to data is to make sure that we exceed the expectations that we have with all
of our
customers with respect to data privacy.
And it's been challenging for the team, but they've really risen to the bar.
And I can say with confidence that all of the data products we've built, the
ones that
are GA, the ones that are in early access, the ones that are coming soon, all
of them
meet that criteria and respect the data privacy of our customers.
And the second one is that they had to solve real customer problems.
Really when it comes to data, it's really easy to get sidetracked from thinking
about
our customers and trying to solve the problems that they have.
You can get into experiment mode really easily.
Luckily for us, we have a lot of great customers who are starting to have great
success with
their cloud go-to-market motions and have really gone above and beyond to sit
down with
us and help us understand the pain points and help to iterate with us as we
built solutions
for those problems.
So today, what I'm going to be sharing with you are six different data products
that we
built.
Some of them are already GA.
Some of them are in early access, and one of them is coming soon, something we
haven't
talked about before, so I'm excited to share it for the first time today.
And a variety of different use cases that those data products can solve.
So hopefully everybody can learn something new today, and thanks to all the
customers
on the call who have worked with us and these early access programs, thanks
again for sticking
with us.
So as we're building this program, the first really important question we had
to answer
is, what is the scope of our data products?
What problems are we willing to solve?
Because cloud go-to-market is really a pretty big area.
There's really a lot to it.
There's a lot of different things that we could do.
And so we had to start by thinking about the breadth and forming a point of
view.
And so what you see on the screen here, this is a tackles point of view on the
scope of
the problem.
When we think of cloud go-to-market, these are all the different steps that we
think
are important.
I think that the width of this might be surprising to a lot of people.
We're primarily known for our ability to help companies transact through cloud
marketplaces.
After all, that's where we started.
We can apply our data to help companies accelerate their sales cycles.
That's the metric that we measure and look at the most when it comes to
transactability.
Are we helping customers get those offers out the door, get them accepted, and
most
of them get them accepted faster than deals that aren't going through the
marketplace?
So we think we can definitely help there.
I'll show that to you.
But then from there, we want to expand out to the right and to the left.
Partnering is an area that's become more and more integral part of our story
over the
last couple of years.
I think it was at the XP event two years ago during our first XP event where we
started
to announce that partnering in CoSEL was something that TACL was going to get
more interested
in and it was going to be a big investment area.
We went out and made an acquisition of CorePlus Consulting to really double
down on that.
Now it's something that's become table stakes.
Any solution like ours has to, in addition to transactability, it also has to
have a
partnership story.
CoSEL has to be part of it.
But now beyond that, moving even further to the left, we're starting to think
about how
we can get further and further up the funnel to think about targeting.
How do we go and find accounts and tell them exactly what's going to happen?
How do we get to, beyond that to ABM?
How can we help you craft campaigns and then even further, how can we help you
build those
account lists in the first place when you're just starting to think about what
your ICP
looks like and starting to refine that?
How can we help you there?
So overall, we're thinking about this whole end-to-end story for our data
products and
the six that I'm going to tell you about today are all across the map where it
will
start over on the left and then move to the right on this diagram to talk about
the outcomes
that we can think we can achieve.
Even the outcomes are on the top of the slide for each area.
Those are the primary things that we think we can solve for.
And it's also really important for us not only to create these data products,
but to put
them in the hands of the users who can take action on them.
This is a major problem throughout the industry with data.
The data by itself doesn't really mean a whole lot.
It's only when you take the data and take the information and get it in the
hands of
somebody who can do something with it that it becomes important.
And for us, one of the primary ways we do that is to expose it through our
Salesforce
app.
And when we were defining the schedule for this XP session, they asked what I
wanted
to talk about.
And I initially said I want to talk about two things.
I want to talk about data and I want to talk about Salesforce.
And I ended up having to pick one.
I can only have one.
So I went with data.
But just to give you the quick pitch on Salesforce since it's the other area
that I'm really
passionate about right now, is that if there's one key thing that you could
take away from
this session about Salesforce, it's that not all Salesforce integrations are
equal.
I think that there's really three tiers of Salesforce integrations and apps.
The first is a true integration where there's just synchronization of Sales
force objects
between systems.
So maybe there's-- we're taking the opportunity objects.
We're adding information about two about opportunities and we're synchronizing
that
with Salesforce.
That's the lowest level.
Medium level would mean that we would start to use Apex, which is Salesforce's
programming
development kit.
And we would start to build an experience out within Salesforce.
So now a seller could work on a third party app within Salesforce.
Maybe they're doing that in a basic way through something like an iframe.
Or maybe it's a fully built out experience.
But it's kind of a standalone-- maybe a standalone tab within Salesforce.
That's the second level.
The third level is full integration across the Salesforce workflows.
So we're talking extending the base objects, creating workflows that tie them
together,
and even creating new objects within Salesforce.
And when that's done correctly, that's when a Salesforce app can become really
powerful
because the sellers who are using it don't even necessarily feel like they're
using
an outside app.
It just feels like everything they need is available cohesively within their
existing
workflows.
And that's what we're trying to build a tackle.
We're trying to build the best-in-class user experience for sellers who need
access
to all this information at the right points in time.
So one ask for the audience here in chat, either in the public or private to me
I'd love to know your favorite Salesforce package that you think gives the best
experience
or adds the most value to your Salesforce workflow.
I just want to take a look at them and learn from them.
So that would be awesome if you could do that before the end of the talk today.
Okay, so first product area.
We built out a product that allows you to find your TAM overlap with the
different cloud
providers.
This is really useful for a company who's maybe new to cloud go to market, and
they
don't quite understand the potential or how big it could be for them because
everybody
has a different customer base.
They have a different market, and they don't really know, like, is that the
same market
that AWS is serving or one of the other cloud providers could be better.
And so we can do an analysis on your account list and show you how well it
overlaps with
the different cloud providers.
This can provide some strategic direction on where you should partner first.
You should probably do all three, but what's when are you going to do first?
What's when are you going to do today?
And how are you going to go after that?
How are you going to measure that relationship over time?
The best way to do that is to know where you're starting from.
What's the overlap, and then how do you attack that over time?
Even for customers who are not new to this, it's something I recommend redoing
periodically,
because things change.
This is like John talked about in his talk first thing this morning.
This is a market that's evolving.
There are a lot of buyers now who are interested in this, but there's going to
be more and
more every day.
So even a quarter from now, the overlap that you have with the cloud providers
is going
to look different.
So I would definitely keep coming back to this as an ISV to measure.
A sneak preview to the future.
What if tackle could provide the same kind of overlap analysis for channel
partners?
So we could show you of all the channel partners who are working with these
cloud providers,
which ones do you have the best overlap with?
How do you get in?
That would give you some direction on which ones you should start working with.
Maybe which ones you should start integrating some CPBO kind of activities with
, some channel
partner private offers, or maybe even what if we could do that for major ISV
partners?
Say that you wanted to develop a CoSEL program with Salesforce.
What would that look like?
What's the potential there?
Those are things that we could do in the future.
If you're interested in that, let me know as we start to design out what those
could
look like.
Next as you're planning, building an ICP is a very important activity that
every company
has to do, and a lot of them struggle with it.
So we heard earlier during Jake's session from ZoomInfo, and they talked about
how they
can help in this area.
And so at tackle, what we do for ourselves is we use a combination of ZoomInfo
data, we're
customer of theirs, along with tackle intent data to help us inform our ICP.
And we found that this can be incredibly useful.
What we can do as a data product, we're doing this in early access now, is to
help our customers
analyze their ICP, and then we can make suggestions about how to refine that I
CP for Cloud Go
to Market.
What we find is that we might take the arranges that you're thinking about in
your broad ICP,
we can take a look at all of your transaction history, your opportunity data,
at the types
of accounts that you're selling to, and we can suggest a new ICP for you.
It's probably a more refined version of your broader ICP, but it's going to
help you get
more targeted to specific types of accounts that are a good fit for Cloud Go to
Market.
And having both of these side by side can be really powerful.
It's something you can take up to a leadership team and say, "Hey, look, we've
agreed that
this is our ICP in general."
But as we think about our Cloud Go to Market motion, a more refined version of
that is
here.
And it gives you a really great place to start a discussion about what kind of
accounts you
should be going after and what the potential of Cloud Go to Market really looks
like for
you.
Next, moving down the line is ABM activities.
In this screenshot, what we're showing here is 6 cents, where your marketing
team might
be doing some customer segmentation of your account lists, doing some filtering
on lots
of different types of intense scores.
The more signals that you have, the better.
And tackle can become one of those key signals.
This is something that we use for ourselves and also something that a lot of
our customers
are seeing really tremendous success with.
It is right within 6 cents.
This works today.
You can connect it out to Salesforce where we're storing our intent data and
you can pull
in those scores and start to do filtering and segmentation on tackles data
along with
all the other signals that you're seeing.
So as you're building campaigns or as you're building account lists or
territories for specific
reps, you can take that into consideration and you can route deals that are
highly qualified
for Cloud Go to Market in specific directions or run campaigns against those.
Next is account planning.
This is probably of customers who have used tackles data products.
This is the one that they probably have the most exposure to.
This has been used over 4 million times, which is pretty crazy growth.
When the team actually told me that stat, I had to pause for a second and say,
"Hey,
could you go back and check that, make sure that that's correct?"
Because it is a lot.
But it was correct.
That is true.
And so what this means when we're talking about targeting is building an
account plan
or an action plan for specific accounts that are at some level of qualification
within
your pipeline, probably a little bit later level.
You want to know three key things for each account.
You want to know about the CoSEL, you want to know about Marketplace and you
want to
know about Channel.
So what we can do is to help give your sellers direction on each of those
things.
We can tell you first of all, is this a good fit for Marketplace?
If so, which Marketplace?
Because it's a big difference.
If a seller is going to go out and initiate a conversation, they need to know
how to start
that conversation.
Should they start by talking about AWS or should they start by talking about G
CP?
We can give them that direction.
It doesn't mean that we're always right.
Sometimes we might be up, but it gives you a starting place to know how likely
they are
to think about each Marketplace.
After that, you need to have a strategy about how you're going to engage that
Cloud provider.
Is it a good fit for CoSEL or not?
It's a little bit of a different question than is it a good fit for Marketplace
We have models that can help answer that question and can help you understand
when you
need to submit it as a CoSEL opportunity and how qualified it's going to be for
the AWS
team.
Are they going to want to accept it?
That's really the key question.
We can help give you guidance there.
If it comes back is incredibly low, maybe you know not to waste your time on
this one.
This isn't a good fit.
Similar for channel, we can tell you if it's a good channel opportunity.
If so, which channel provider is a good opportunity for?
This is one of the main questions that sellers have when they're thinking about
channel is
like, "Well, I think maybe this is a good channel opportunity, but I don't know
who
to talk to.
I don't know which one it's going to actually work with."
We can connect you to the right channel partners who know how to sell through
the Marketplace
is that you're targeting because they don't all use all three.
So we can make those matches and give you that account plan, which can save
your team
tons of time as they're thinking about mapping these out at the start of the
sales cycle.
Next this is a new one that's coming soon that we haven't talked much about,
but is
a CoSEL automation.
Before we were talking about account planning on an individual account level,
but when you're
really at scale with one of the cloud providers really engaging in their CoSEL
programs, you
need to move beyond doing it on a one by one basis and thinking about it much
more
holistically across all of your opportunities and all of your accounts.
It's a very, to do it manually is a very time consuming process.
It's something that we offer as a managed service that many of our customers
have great success
with is that tackle will take over the responsibility of running these CoSEL
programs because it's
so time intensive and difficult to do.
What we want to do is to offer customers an alternative.
Maybe they're not ready for our managed services program.
So they should have a co-pilot with them in Salesforce that's helping them
search through
all of their opportunities, figure out which ones needs to be submitted, and
synchronizing
all of those with the cloud provider at the same time.
This can save over 20 hours per week and not just submitting them and synchron
izing them,
but keeping them up to date because eventually the cloud provider is going to
be responding.
They're going to be accepting something.
They're going to be denying something.
They're going to be requesting more information.
Some of the sales reps are going to try to get in touch.
And as that happens, we're going to be sending notifications to the right
people on your side.
We're going to be saying, look, here's the email address and the phone number
of the
seller you need to talk to.
Or like, hey, a lines person, these particular deals need more details.
You need to go work on those.
These ones are all good.
Don't worry about it.
So we can keep this going on an ongoing basis and help you improve all the
metrics that those
cloud providers care about that they want to see from you.
Those are things like the number of submissions in general that you're doing.
What we call our batting average or how many of those submissions are being
accepted, how
responsive you are, if they ask for information, how fast you get back, and of
course, what
are your close rates?
How many of these coastal opportunities actually result in close deals?
We can help you improve all of those metrics over time using this CoSEL co-p
ilot tool that
will be ready for customers soon.
And then lastly, this one's in early access with some customers already is
expansion of
your account lists.
So we have your account lists.
We can help score those.
We can help show you the overlap with cloud providers.
But what if you're missing some accounts on your account list?
You've done your best effort to build a great account list according to your I
CP.
You've pulled in all the data you need for those accounts.
You're starting to work on them.
So what we find is that still, there are some great accounts out there in the
world that
aren't on your account list.
And we can help you discover those.
So as we go through the process of showing you recommended actions and then
tracking to
see what actually happens to seeing what works and what doesn't work, we can
show you
accounts that you don't know about that are similar, awfully similar to the
ones that are
working really well for you.
And we can feed those back into your account lists.
It's almost like demand generation.
It's almost like an expansion of your ICP.
There's lots of different ways to think about it.
But what we're really doing is helping you find those outliers that you may
have missed
as you did your initial account discovery.
So those are the six data products that we have coming up.
It's an area that I'm really passionate about.
So if anybody wants to talk about those or learn more about those, please reach
out anytime.
This is the end of our session for today.
I hope everybody really enjoyed it.
I learned a lot, honestly watching it.
So I hope everybody was able to find value in it.
Tomorrow, we are going to start again.
XP starts again tomorrow at 12 noon Eastern time.
So if you're registered, you should be able to go.
You can rejoin us at that time.
And lots of great programming on the schedule for tomorrow.
So thank you all.
Thank you all very much.
And have a good evening.
Thanks for joining us today.
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