Keys to Becoming a Successful AWS Marketplace Seller

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[silence]

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I'm waiting for my screen to come up here really quickly so hang tight with me.

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All right, it looks like it's up on my side so hopefully it is on yours as well

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I wanted to do a quick introduction and thank you for having me today.

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I am Jen Valverty and I lead the AWS Marketplace team for the Americas region.

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I represent both the buyer and the seller experience.

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And today I'm here to chat with you about what are the best practices or the

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characteristics of successful sellers on AWS Marketplace.

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A little bit of background about myself, I've been at AWS on the Marketplace

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team for the last five years.

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I started out as a category manager for Endpoint Security and then worked my

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way to Marketplace Development Manager before leading the team.

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So a lot of experience with ISVs in their journey on Marketplace and how they

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become successful.

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And over the years by far, the biggest question that we get asked is what are

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other ISVs doing in order to be successful on the Marketplace platform.

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So what we did was we created a framework of business best practices and

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buckets that we know are absolutely crucial and needed in order to be

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successful on Marketplace.

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And it really starts with AWS Marketplace selection. If you're playing a game

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of Monopoly, this is a do not pass go if you don't have the product.

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Not only needs to resonate with an AWS buyer and a cloud buyer, but it also

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needs to be presented in a way in the catalog that makes sense for your product

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And what I mean by that is are you leaning into the product platform using

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features and functionality that Marketplace provides for its customer base,

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flexible payment scheduler, standard contract, those sort of things.

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And what's your product built in a way that makes it easy to consume. If you

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have a product like growth strategy, are you listing your product on our

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platform in a way that is easy to consume in that way.

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Does it deploy automatically? Is it something that's easy to find, try and buy?

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And then when a buyer does want to double down and go into a contract with you,

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are you available to

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do those contracts in a way that an AWS buyer wants them?

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I'd say next is really a commitment to AWS Marketplace being a true route to

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market. And the way that we look at this is, are we meaningful to your revenue

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as an ISP and how do you measure success and are you committing resources, time

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and energy into AWS Marketplace as being a true route to market?

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The next pillar that we evaluate is sales and marketing alignment. And there's

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a whole lot that goes into sales and marketing alignment. So I'm going to

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double down on this here now. I think there's some questions to along these

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lines.

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When it comes to sales alignment specifically, what we want to see is that your

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sellers are incentivized to try and lean in with Marketplace, but also to co-

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sell with AWS.

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And rather than it being a traditional channel where you may expect us to bring

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opportunities, what I want you to think about in this sales alignment is really

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, how do you get the most out of the AWS relationship and selling on the

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platform?

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And if you're thinking about a sales methodology like MedPIC, there are several

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items in there and data points that we can team up with you on in order to get

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closer aligned within our joint opportunities.

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So rather than think of it as a top of funnel, lead generation source, what are

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we doing to really go arm and arm with you and your product, AWS, when we're

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going after these customers.

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What information do we have that we might be able to help you with? Is it who

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you'll have to overcome in sales ops? Is it legal? Is it procurement? Really,

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our sellers have sold into these accounts? And so how can we best help you?

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And then taking that information from successful selling into your marketing

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strategy. How are you aligning what it is you're seeing success within in your

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marketing strategy? And are you pointing your traffic in the right way to our

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platform when it makes sense?

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Are you nurturing those leads in a way that is very cloud specific, making sure

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that you are accounting for your marketing campaigns within the data that you

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're finding when you're selling with us.

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And then when we move over to the right here, this is where the rubber really

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meets the road. If you're building a practice to sell a marketplace and you

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haven't taken operational efforts, you can't get it.

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You can take an operational excellence into account. You might be building for

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one, two or three private offers. What you really want to do is build towards a

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hundred and a thousand private offers. Are you putting the right strategy and

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process in place to be able to account for that? Are you recording these things

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in your CRM integrations? Are you making sure that the process of working with

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us is scalable?

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And the next is enablement across the board. So enablement looks like, you know

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, enablement for your field sellers. It is enablement for your finance team. It

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is enablement across the board for sales operations and legal all of it.

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I usually use the, like, a litmus test for sales alignment as to whether or not

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they've been able. If I can ask a seller at an ISB, what the value prop of

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marketplaces and how they've used it.

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And also, how are you measuring success? Are you enabling the team to report on

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and see the success through marketplace? Are your deal sizes larger? Are they

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faster? Where is it that we're providing value in between? And that really

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makes a difference here.

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And then AWS partner programs is another one that we really need to lean into.

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Are you staffing your marketplace team in a way that is able to lean into the

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programs that make the most sense for you as an ISB?

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So I'm going to pause there for a second. I know that we have Ali on the line

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and see if there's any questions as to really the best way to move forward with

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your marketplace business.

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Ali, can you hear me?

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All right. Well, I have a set of questions that she was going to ask. So I'm

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going to go ahead and anticipate here.

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Let me click on the Q&A section. Oh, there we go. Okay. I've seen in the chat.

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No, sorry. That was a technical fault on my side.

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But the question is, we've seen marketplace and co selling get more and more

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aligned over the years at AWS. What are the main drivers for this and benefits

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for ISB's?

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So one thing that we've really come into over the last few years is alignment

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with our own sales teams, understanding and realizing that we are better

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together going in with joint solutions to our cloud problems.

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And with that, we need ISB's alongside of us. So on the AWS side, we also

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incentivize our field sellers to work with ISB's to come up with the best

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customer solutions.

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And some of the drivers there are really larger deal sizes faster and higher

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win rate. And we see that because we're coming together and working on a

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solution from the AWS side as well.

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Another thing benefit is that there are AWS counterparts have a deeper level of

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understanding of our joint customers selling into these accounts already. It

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might be, what does that environment look like over the next 18 months.

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What projects are planned and how is it that we can jointly go in together to

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solve those problems for our customers.

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And I got another question here from Ali. The majority of the ISB's think that

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CoSEL is all about top of the funnel lead creation.

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I hear you talk about the benefits of CoSEL more broadly. How would you suggest

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ISB's look at CoSEL to ensure they set the right internal expectations on the

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why.

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And I have a great question. I touched on it a little bit earlier as to the

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expectations and resetting that when you look at AWS market place as a route to

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market, it is not a traditional channel where you register opportunities and it

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, you know, I would encourage you not to measure it based off of

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your own business.

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And I think that you're getting as far as that new goes.

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The way you really want to look at it is how do we go in and help augment your

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sales cycle. What is it that the AWS marketplace team, the AWS field sellers

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can do to help you go arm and arm into these opportunities.

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And if you reframe that and work with us more often, you'll find that there's a

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lot of different ways that we can help you.

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All right.

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Brian Kane, an old friend. I love it that we got a question from you. Can you

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share some best practices on working with channel partners.

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IECPPL, especially for ISVs just sharing, starting to bring their channel

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partners into their marketplace motion.

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This is great. We see some ISVs come in and say, we're going to try this as a

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channel and we're only going to go direct.

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And what we end up finding is that it's not the way that customers purchase.

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And when you go into it with a customer first outlook into selling through

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marketplace, you can't ignore channel.

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And what you really want to do is incorporate the channel into your business

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just as you do and make sure that marketplace is an additive to it rather than

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one or the other.

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And CPPO is a great mechanism that we use in order to facilitate those

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transactions.

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We want to maintain the relationships with your channel partners and have

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marketplace be an added benefit rather than a distractor to that relationship.

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Hopefully I answered your question, Brian. Mark Johnston, how important are

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competencies for marketplace offerings?

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Think of competencies as another selection criteria. If you were to go to

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Amazon.com, I know me.

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I have a lot of results to my searches and I'll automatically kind of click the

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prime button.

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When you look at the competencies for marketplace, it's that added selection

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that says not only do we think that this product is good, but it has also gone

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through. A more rigorous process in order to in order to get that badge and that stamp

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of approval. And we really, we not only lean into the competencies, but they're

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also marketed on our site as well. So that's an added benefit for you.

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All right. Did I get all the question in here? Do we have any others? I know I

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have one minute left.

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I will say that if you are an ISV that is thinking about listing on AWS

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marketplace or you already are listed, we have characteristics for successful

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seller workshops and we will go down evaluate each one of these categories with

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you and give

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an idea of how we can help what we think the next steps are and and really how

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we can team up together to be more successful together.

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Let's see here. Tom Wilson for the most successful marketplace firms.

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Are they industry or taking specific industry approach. I've honestly seen it

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both ways. If you have a sales play that resonates with a specific industry, we

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lean into that heavily.

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And if you go more broadly, you may end up finding that you're seeing success

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in specific industries that we can help you with. So I don't think there's a

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right answer here.

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And thank you so much for the opportunity to present today. Please reach out.

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Thank you.