How to Drive Co-sell and Marketplace Adoption in Your Revenue Teams with FullStory
Learn how the team at FullStory has trained and educated its revenue team to drive adoption of its co-sell and Marketplace motion.
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- Let's jump in Everett.
Can you lead us off with a really quick crash course
on what is Cloud GTM?
- Absolutely.
Yeah, I'll do my best.
And we might have a little bit of bias here
being tackled at the Cloud of the Marketing Company,
but we view Cloud GTM as when a software company
has positioned itself to leverage
Cloud provider ecosystems to drive revenue
and kind of support new revenue strategies.
And with this motion, you know,
sellers are meeting their customers
where their wallets are,
which is increasingly with their cloud consumption commitments
with the cloud providers.
So allowing sellers and organizations
to nurture these co-sell partnerships
with the cloud providers,
which we see lead to more momentous,
high value sales opportunities
that are typically transacted via a cloud marketplace.
- Sweet, thank you, Everett.
So building a successful Cloud GTM motion
really requires enthusiasm, education and enablement.
So all our goal for today is to really provide actionable tips
and best practices for really creating a new mindset
and enabling new behaviors
to drive really consistent repeatable adoption
of these tactics in your sales org.
So in the next 20 minutes, 25 minutes,
we're gonna cover one,
how to motivate and excite your sellers
to leverage Cloud GTM to define how what success looks like
and share some wins and success stories
from the field at full story and tackle.
Third, cover how you can really influence behavior
and make all things Cloud GTM a habit.
And then fourth, cover what role the partner team has
in all of this.
Then if we have time, we'll wrap up with some questions.
If not, we'll answer the questions offline,
but let's jump in.
So it's a heavy list to really ask sellers
to consider new steps and their strategy
and their sales process, right?
It can definitely feel like we're throwing them a curveball.
So what are the best ways to encourage buy-in
for Cloud GTM and really excite sellers?
So we'll start off with you, Chris, for this one.
- Yeah, absolutely.
So yeah, I mean, as we can overlay,
sellers are always trying to optimize their time
to be most effective to accomplish their most important goal,
which is closing deals.
Us as sales leaders, among many other things,
it's our job to enable them to do that
as efficiently and effectively as they can.
What we've found at full story is that,
you know, a Cloud GTM motion and leveraging Cloud alliances
can be really helpful in helping them close deals.
We've seen examples of Cloud partners opening new doors,
increasing existing deal sizes,
accelerating new deal cycles,
saving at-risk renewals and even upselling existing customers.
So across a variety of different deal types
and situations, we've seen value and leveraging Cloud partners.
So really it's about educating the sellers
on the potential, the opportunity that investing time
to learn about the Cloud GTM motion
will bear fruit on the back end
and then showing them the examples of how it'll work.
- That's great.
Yeah, show the evidence, show them the money,
show them how the deal size also grows.
So Everett, how do we excite the sellers on the tackle team?
- I think really I can echo Chris, right?
Maybe we're a little different
because Cloud go to market is our lifeblood.
It's kind of how we do everything and it's what we're selling.
But when I kind of looked back at all the deals
I've done at tackle and kind of preparation for this,
you know, something that excites me is as a seller
is the past of least resistance
that doesn't cost me anything, right?
So when I'm co-selling with the Cloud provider
on a deal, you know, establishing legal and financial terms
is often super simplified.
And the motion is becoming increasingly familiar
to procurement teams, which accelerates my clothes.
Like that's material to me as a seller, right?
So the few deals that went outside of marketplace
over my last almost two years
was a bunch of extra work that I had to do.
So I saw that material change.
And then, you know, the exciting part about co-selling
is not only does collaborating with the Cloud provider
rep kind of support my current deal,
it leads to more pipeline.
So we want that reciprocity both at the organizational level
but at the personal level.
So I know the motion when I'm co-selling
and really leaning into Cloud go to market,
it's benefiting tackles co-sell metrics
with our Cloud providers,
but just as exciting, I'm empowered as, you know,
a quota carrying a to collaborate with my counterpart rep,
not only on that deal, but to follow on deals
and kind of support other accounts
that we can target together.
- That's great.
Thanks for sharing y'all.
So we mentioned seeing success with that.
We'll move on to the really the anatomy of a win.
So I'm really interested to hear what wins
have looked like for your teams.
So Everett, you can lead off first.
- Yeah, you know, I feel like I might touch on,
you know, a few common characteristics today
about this flow, but I think all of my deals,
you know, share some of the common characteristics
that we see in a marketplace win.
You know, I was working on one this week, right?
Where the process is that I might have to go through
transacting directly with the new customer,
just to satisfy maybe our two legal teams
is so much different than if I'm going through marketplace
and maybe we can leverage a standard contract
that's familiar with everybody through AWS
or just the contracting of how folks get paid, right?
Or and how they pay us.
No PO, no invoice cloud provider handles that,
the type of platform handles that, of course.
And so when I'm educating it, maybe a new
account on how to work with tackle
and how they're potentially going to work
through the marketplace, I'm able to sort of highlight
how these things make it all easier.
And my CoSEL counterpart provides additional intel as well.
I think we've all had a moment in a sales cycle
where everything was going right.
And then for some reason, something stalled.
And so I have several, you know, experiences over my last,
you know, tiers with tackle where the ability to co-sell
with someone from AWS or Microsoft or Google on a deal
has helped accelerate deals that are going really well
or provide, you know, kind of a helping hand
when deals needed to kind of get back on track.
So I think there's some common characteristics
and every one of my deals kind of inhibits one of those.
- That's awesome.
Chris, have you had any success stories
or wins you like to share?
- Yeah, I have a few.
But in general, you know, full story is relatively early
in our cloud GTM lifecycle.
The first deal we put through a cloud partner
through tackle was in Q4 of last year.
And since then we've put, I think, a total of 25 additional deals
were 3 million in ARR.
So I've begun to ramp well.
And this year we've got a nice healthy pipeline
through the cloud alliances.
So excited about the momentum we have
and the potential for this year and then into 2024.
But there's been a few examples.
You know, we mentioned all the different ways
that we've seen cloud partners impact deals
in a positive way.
And so I'll give you a few examples there.
We were working, one of our customers is a crypto exchange.
And as we're all probably familiar, last year,
there was a bit of a crypto winter.
A lot of these crypto exchanges had to pull back on spending.
So they were looking across the board,
how do we cut spend at all on all their software providers
and vendors?
And of course, full story was on that list,
not because of lack of value,
but because they had to pull back.
We partnered with our counterparts at Google
and were able to find out that actually at this exchange,
there was unused commit dollars.
So dollars that they had previously committed to pay
through their cloud alliances or their cloud partner.
We were able to funnel those unused commit dollars
towards funding full story and continuing the renewal.
So that was a great example of how we were able to find money
that was already allocated to help fund a platform
that they know they wanted to keep,
but didn't think they could.
On the new business side,
we were working with a large international airline.
And this was a great example of a true co-sell motion.
So this was a new deal for our cloud partner
and a new deal full story,
where we went in with the better together story
and how full stories data can complement other data captured
through the cloud partner and were able to close that deal.
And so that was the first for us,
the first for the cloud partner.
And there's a lot of growth potential there as well.
And then finally, we were working with an existing customer
that was a calendar and meeting booking platform.
And this is a great upsell experience.
They were a smaller account for us.
And we were able to through partnering with our counterparts
at the cloud at GCP,
we were able to up level our conversations
with the different contacts we were working with
and ended up for exiting the size of that contract at Renewable.
So a few flavors of value across the gamut,
but something that all sales teams
and sales leaders could get excited about leveraging cloud.
>> Now that's awesome to hear the,
all the different levels,
whether it's a renewal and upsell or yeah, just new business.
So love to hear those stories,
how you all overcame those challenges
and have positive results.
So now let's talk habits.
So I actually just finished reading a book called
Atomic Habits by James Clear.
If you haven't had the chance to read it yet,
10 out of 10 would recommend.
But one of the lines that stuck out to me was this one.
With the same habits, you'll end up with the same results.
But with better habits, anything is possible.
If you can get 1% better each day for one year,
you'll end up 37 times better by the time you're done.
So let's apply that to the challenge at hand here.
How do you make Cloud GTM a habit for your sales org?
How do you get 1% better each day?
Chris, we'd love for you to start on this one.
Yeah, absolutely.
Great book, by the way.
I was just looking at it on my bookcase as well.
And one of the takeaways that I would parlay off that is
one of the best ways to create a habit
is not necessarily to have more discipline about it,
but to make it easier.
So how do we make these habits an easier part
of our normal flow so that it's easier to build them?
And so with within full story,
the way that we do that with our new newish Cloud GTM motion
is we make it a part of the sales process
and make it accessible and easy for the account reps
to see and touch.
So for example, we have in our Salesforce instances
on account pages the ability to see what partners exist
for a particular prospect or customer account.
And so right there as a part of going in there
and managing opportunities and all other kinds
of Salesforce admin with accounts, they can see,
hey, here are my partners that I can leverage
for this particular account.
So that's an example of building it into the flow,
making it easy for the reps to make it a habit
within their process.
That's great, Everett, what you got?
That's exactly where I was gonna go, Chris, right?
We had all these bullet points prepared,
but the number one thing I'm thinking about for a seller,
especially a new seller who's trying to figure out
how to lean into Cloud Go to market is like,
make it easy for them.
Don't introduce maybe a bunch of new work
that maybe implies they're gonna lose control
of their cycle or somebody else is gonna get involved
that they don't know or when they don't
maybe feel comfortable.
And I think we at TAC will do a good job of that.
And it's obviously part of what we position for the market.
I have the ability to within Salesforce
with very minimal sort of clicking and typing
and facilitating kind of activate the Cloud Go
to market motion in a sales cycle, right?
So I have my prospect scores that've shown me
who's likely to procure via which marketplace.
I've got my very simple click to co-sell button
within Salesforce, once my stage gets to a certain point,
I don't have to go include a bunch of people, emails,
slacks, text messages, you know, figuring out,
you know, when and where to go.
And then obviously when it comes time to transact,
we have that downpacked here at TAC will.
So it's, I think it's really important
when you're getting started to understand
that sellers are territorial and they should be protective
about their deals and their cycle and their pipeline.
If you want them to transact and kind of lean into a new motion
make it as simple as an intuitive as possible.
And let them kind of maintain control.
I think that's a big part of this too, right?
You want to co-sell, you want to lean in with the cloud provider
but give your rep the opportunity to maintain their agency
and control their cycle as much as possible.
But yeah, make it easy.
- One thing I'll add to that too is
nothing creates a habit with sales reps
as much as adding it to the comp plan.
And so that's another way to reinforce
whether it's spiff says or getting rolling
on trying something new to down the road
just making it a normal part of the base comp plan
and accelerator comp plan.
- Definitely, great insights, y'all.
So we've shared some success stories.
We've shared how to build habits
but let's kind of combine those two topics.
How you all seeing these wins in your organization
drive these behavior shifts and habits
being built on your teams?
And not ever you can lead off for this one.
- Yeah, you know, again, maybe tackles a little unique
because this is what we do day in and day out.
But what I think we see sometimes is maybe in combination
with my alliances and kind of co-sell team,
we begin to understand maybe a new program
that a cloud provider has offered or updated
to kind of enrich, you know, maybe the incentives
or the comp that a cloud provider might get
to go through a marketplace.
And so there's this, I sort of think about, you know,
any skill, it's kind of like a muscle.
It's like you gotta work it out to build it up
but then you gotta maintain it.
And so there's this constant kind of observation
head on a swivel understanding
what makes this more attractive for folks
as the space evolves.
I mean, Microsoft's a good example, right?
It's like last week they just announced a bunch of changes
to the way that they co-sell, incentivize
and compensate folks.
And so what we'll see is someone on our team
leverages something new, right?
And then other folks go, "Hey, how did you get that done?"
Sounds like it grew a deal or it, you know, revived a deal
that it may be gone stale or, you know, expanded
the opportunity size.
And so I think sellers, you know, look at each other
to kind of constantly be learning, understand kind of
what tips and tricks we can steal.
And so, you know, tackle, it's a muscle
that we're constantly, I think exercising, you know,
with the cloud providers and with each other
to understand, you know, how these incentives evolve
and how we can be more savvy.
- That's great, that's great.
So Chris, how about you all?
How do the wins you've seen really impact habits
and behaviors shifts?
- Yeah, I think one of the things I love about
working with cloud partners and Co-Cell Motions
is that it's really a win for all the parties.
So the customer finds a lot of value
in using their commit dollars and transacting
in an easier way for them.
Cloud partners obviously are more sticky
and have more revenue flowing through their platforms.
ISVs like full story can benefit from closing,
you know, more deals and upselling deals.
And then sales reps on both sides,
the cloud partner and the ISV benefit
from the comp band and closing more revenue.
But I think what I've noticed is that
when reps at full story see how smoothly
the contracting process can go on the customer side,
that really changes their mindset
'cause I'm sure Everett can attest to this too.
At the enterprise level, contracts are sometimes
some of the most difficult elements to get through
'cause a lot of it's out of your hand.
If you're running it through a process
that is already predetermined, predefined
and pre-approved internally at a customer
that can really accelerate it.
And so when reps see that ease of use and transaction
that will change their behavior till lean towards that more.
- That's great.
Thanks for sharing y'all.
So last topic here,
as talking about the role of the partner team.
So I know we have a handful of folks in partnerships
and alliances attending today.
So we'd love to hear from you, Chris and Everett.
How has your partner team contributed
and enabled your revenue teams?
What's working well for y'all?
So Chris, feel free to take this one first.
- Sure.
Yeah, so help the revenue teams is what I would say.
Do what we're talking about habits,
do everything you can to make it easy for them
to adopt this new motion.
That includes things like education
on how to execute cloud partnership deals,
the benefits of it, et cetera,
build it into the processes of the existing
sales operation motions within your organization.
And this is one where I think it's sometimes
easy to overlook,
but as you get all that foundational work set up
with the process and making it easy,
after that's done,
a great next step is to proactively build,
bring opportunities to the table.
So get smart about what you know about the cloud partners
that you're bringing to the table
and the account sets that the reps are going after
and see if you can make connections proactively
on their behalf to get the ball rolling with them.
I think that's one element that is often overlooked
and you'd be surprised how receptive sales teams would be
if when you bring things to the table for them
to just start working and apply their sales motion to.
- Great points.
Everett, how does the partner team
that TACO help you all out?
- Yeah, two things come to mind.
And one is kind of real time.
Like, we have a cohort of folks on our partner team
out at AWS Summit in New York City this week and today,
and I'm not there,
but they're aware of a lot of the deals
that we're working on,
some of the challenges that we're facing
to get a text message from someone on your partner team
when they're because they walked the floor
and bumped into somebody that's close to a deal
that you're working on is super exciting.
And so to Chris's point,
it feels like our alliances and kind of co-sale team
is our partner team is on the front lines with us.
And it's again, a little unique for us
because every deal that I do is gonna go through
one of the marketplaces that they support.
We've got someone that supports AWS, GCP,
and somebody on Azure.
So my deals help them hit their numbers
maybe a little bit more directly than in some other scenarios.
So that feels really good, right?
And I think Cloud GoToMarket shifts the paradigm a little bit
for the value of partner teams.
They're able to, I think more closely,
attach themselves to dollars and deals in these programs.
And so I love that, you know,
it doesn't feel like maybe they're just asking me for time
or asking me to do something else.
They're helping me drive these deals
'cause we both get compensated for the same thing.
And then to just maybe build on that
and kind of revisit what I just mentioned
about Microsoft announcements last week,
it's like, I didn't have time to be at that conference
or listen to every thing that was said there.
So those people are banging down my door, go,
"Hey, these are the updates, right?
"This is how this impacts some of your deals
"and how some of our customers are gonna sell."
So they're out, had on a swivel understanding
how our sort of way to facilitate
with this Cloud ecosystem evolves.
It's a gift and a curse, right?
The Cloud providers listened to what the community says.
They changed their programs.
It seems like every five minutes,
hopefully to help everybody,
but your sellers aren't gonna have time
to focus on all of those updates.
And so the partner team is kind of providing
a little bit of a buffer,
"Hey, maybe you don't need to know everything," right?
There was a week of announcements at Microsoft.
"Here's the five minute headline for you
"to go run and be successful and understand
"how this is gonna help you."
So they're on the front lines with us and they're really
helping us 'cause we have that shared incentive.
- No, that's great.
Aligning on goals is a great way to really accelerate
that teamwork and collaboration, right?
So, all right, Joel, in the last couple minutes we have,
what's the final message you want the people to hear?
Each of you can share some final words,
wrap things up just to summarize this topic.
So Everett, you can jump in first and Chris,
you can close us out.
- Yeah, I think cloud go to market
just represents a new way to win,
maybe an easier way to win, a smoother way to win
for everybody involved.
I think in this climate too, everyone is trying to do more
with what they have, right?
And so when you have the opportunity to reach
across the dance floor and grab the hand of someone
at a cloud provider to say,
"Hey, let's go make sure a deal closes."
It's exciting, it's helpful.
And you have no idea what's gonna come from that.
I think we measure maybe what our behavior could turn into,
but the personal relationships that are built
when you co-sew with the cloud provider
can really change your year, right?
And so I think the headline is cloud go to market
allows you to do more with what you have
and win more, win more often and win a little bit easier.
- Love that.
All right, Chris, you're up.
- Yeah, I'll wrap it up simply
is that a ton of value in cloud go to market.
What I'll say is it's a marathon, not a sprint.
So get started, start to build those relationships.
It will pay dividends.
You won't close deals immediately, but they will close.
And then when they do and that momentum picks up,
it's gonna be really great.
So don't be afraid to try it out and check it out.
- Love it.
Where's it was in my career, y'all?
So yeah, y'all may be wondering attending, what's next?
So I'm gonna drop a few quick links in the chat
if you'd like to learn more about how tackle is helping out
by 150 plus ISBs, launch their cloud go to market strategy
and also another link to learn more about all the great things
that full story is doing.
So yeah, once again, huge thank you, Chris Everett
for joining us today, sharing more about your cloud GTM journey.
And of course, thanks to all of you
for your excellent comments and contributions
to today's event attending.
So our next cloud GTM master class session
is just two weeks from today.
We're featuring the director of global strategic alliances
at WIS.
He'll be sharing his revenue playbook
and how WIS skyrocketed from 1 million to 100 million
and ARR and record breaking time.
So yeah, thanks everyone for joining.
Hope you have a wonderful remainder of July
and we'll see y'all next time.
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