Salesforce’s Cloud GTM Strategy and Why Now Is the Time to Align with AWS Marketplace
Tune in as Tackle CEO John Jahnke chats with Nick Johnston, SVP, Strategic Partnerships & Business Development at Salesforce, about Salesforce’s journey to list and launch their entire product portfolio on AWS Marketplace and how the organization plans to leverage the AWS partnership in its go-to-market system.
All righty.
We will kick things off.
So Nick, welcome.
John, thank you for having me.
Yeah, appreciate you making some time.
I know people are excited to hear the Salesforce story.
I thought we would start.
Everybody knows me since I kicked off the event, but just to say hi, I had a
wardrobe
changed to a hoodie.
I'm John of CO, a tackle.
Great to see you all again.
Nick, take a second, introduce yourself.
Yeah, thanks, John.
So hey, everyone.
Nick Johnston's SVP of Strategic Partnerships at Salesforce.
I've been at Salesforce just about 11 years now.
So it's been a great journey, part of our Strategic Partnerships team here for
the last
six or so.
It's been a great opportunity working with the tackle team for the last nine
months,
and really excited to share some of the learnings and hopefully get some great
questions
throughout the session.
Awesome.
So maybe, let's start with, you guys launched at Reinvent last year, but we
both know the
journey started long before that.
I think a lot of ISCs don't fully appreciate when you take a strategic approach
, what it
takes.
I'd love for you just to maybe take a step back and walk through some of that
story.
Yeah, so I like to think about this story in chapters, because as you stated,
it's been
a journey.
And chapter one for us was our own decision to start moving infrastructure that
has historically
been running on the Salesforce hosted infrastructure and start running it in
the public cloud.
And we have a program at Salesforce called Hyperforce, which is the cloud
native version
of our products that around five or six years ago, we decided needed to run on
hyperscaler
infrastructure as opposed to us managing our own.
And that move set the foundation for having the right solutions that we could
actually
take to market in the cloud marketplace because we had the ability to run on
the cloud.
From there, we started getting feedback from customers, especially large AWS
customers,
which was the first footprint for us with Hyperforce, where customers who also
had their
own AWS environments started looking to us and asking, what are the things that
I could
be doing as a shared customer of Salesforce now running in your Hyperforce
environment
and also an AWS customer, help me unlock integrations between the Salesforce
platform now running
on AWS and my AWS environment.
So we spend a lot of time with AWS thinking about the right product interoper
ability, better
platform openness, platform features.
And that was chapter two, more of the product innovation, making our two
platforms run better
together, given where we were running.
And then naturally, the third chapter came up where customers started wanting
more flexibility,
functionality, and as the AWS marketplace was taking off and getting a lot more
mind share,
customers coming to us asking to see us show up more tightly with the AWS
account teams
as one team and working with them, but also having the option of the
flexibility of using
their AWS agreement to purchase Salesforce products, as well as the ability to
go direct.
So those three chapters took us about six years, and we just launched the third
chapter, if
you will, as you said, at re-invent, and we're often running, selling via AWS
marketplace
now.
Awesome.
Amazing.
Did the acquisitions, like how did they fit into the story?
Because I think, you know, obviously Tableau and MuleSoft and Slacks probably a
different
chapter, but how did they come into the story along the way?
Did they influence or change the strategy at any point?
Yeah, the acquisitions were huge, actually.
I'm glad you went there, John, because both MuleSoft, so one of the strategic
academic
acquisitions we've done, as well as Tableau, were AWS native products.
And they had been exploring their own path in deploying via AWS marketplace,
and customers
had even more specific requests that were using those technologies that pushed
us that
direction.
And so they just added additional fuel to the fire of demand, and we'll talk
about this
a little bit, too.
Historically, we've been a direct business.
It's a huge part of our internal strategy, intentional strategy.
But having both MuleSoft and Tableau become part of the overall portfolio, and
frankly,
Slack as well.
Slacks and AWS native product.
Our customers started creating that additional groundswell on top of that hyper
force infrastructure
that I referenced before, where it just really made a lot of sense for us to
think more intentionally
about the channel here, and what the AWS marketplace and other cloud market
places could potentially
do for us.
Great.
Awesome.
So obviously Salesforce is a big place.
Big company, lots of products, lots of people, visionaries and SaaS, pioneers
of SaaS.
This was a strategic decision.
Take us through who all is involved.
And as a strategic partnership leader, what did that getting stakeholder
alignment journey
look like?
Yeah.
Frankly, I think we had to sell it internally.
There's the strategy and the approach.
We had to sell internally harder than we did anything else, frankly, and even
working with
our partners on the strategy.
And that's frankly going back to what I referenced, our history of being a
direct business and
really focusing on.
When we think about sales capacity and where we need to grow, we've always
historically
really thought about what that means in terms of hiring and account executives,
SEs and
the people dedicated to a specific territory, as opposed to ways that we can
unlock channel
motions like marketplaces to create new revenue.
And so just the way we approached the discussion with our ELT, which was CEO
and all CEO directs,
we had to make sure there was a really good understanding of what the
opportunity was,
why the time is right now and reinforcing customer demand.
And I'll tell you our leadership team, CEO and CEO directs also started having
conversations
with customers just to test it a little bit because obviously the partnerships
team is
going to sell this as a good big idea as a way to drive new value and our
customers are
asking for it.
But I think our ELT was even more surprised.
I should say it's excited.
And they started talking to customers and realizing some of the buying motions
and the patterns
that had maybe evolved in recent years that really reaffirmed for them that the
time was
right to make the decision.
So frankly, this was a super cross-functional CEO on down level discussion,
including our
head of finance, our head of IT, our head of technology, head of product, head
of distribution.
So all the teams had to really understand what we were signing up for before we
went on.
And ever since then, we've been able to go.
I would say you can test me on this job, but we've gone pretty fast.
So once we got that top down alignment, we started running.
Yeah, you guys have been rolling fast.
We had debates about, hey, how fast do you want to go?
Is going all in the right strategy?
Do you go slow and grow?
And you're like, no, we're going fast.
And you guys definitely have done that.
So exciting to see.
And curious, were there any big resistance points on that journey?
I think that learning point, someone asked this question earlier about how you
get those
people involved, I think educating them to be able to test is a really smart
strategy.
But were there any resistance points that you didn't expect as you were
fielding that
internal alignment?
I think really the hardest part was looking at our existing sales motion and
what was
going to need to be true in the private offer path, which was how we decided to
start our
focus.
And really understanding where there's a clean happy path, working with you
guys and working
with AWS on this is the motion that's really going to work.
And then here are the types of scenarios where maybe our customers are
expecting certain
terms or flexibility that just maybe isn't as easy to navigate when you're
going through
marketplaces, that we had to draw more of a clear distinction between this is
inbound
and in play, I should say, and this is out of bounds.
And you can't do these types of deals through the marketplace yet.
And frankly, the biggest resistance was with sales teams that wanted the
flexibility to
be able to do everything.
And then our operations teams that really needed to be clear, like we're not
ready to
do the entire book of business quite yet.
These are the things we have to hold on.
And so those were the initial hurdles, but once we started getting the message
out, we
had that top down support.
And frankly, we trained our entire field and we had mandatory training for
every single
salesperson across the company, both in our Q4 as well as our Q1 of this year,
so that
everyone knew the types of transactions that would work really well versus the
ones that
didn't.
So that was the main area where we had the friction early on was when we'd get
an account
team wanting to bring us something that we just couldn't do the way they
thought they
could.
And so it's all part of the education.
And when you talk about like that training and enabling the sellers and kind of
the next,
maybe I'll lead into the next question, because these two might blur together,
like, how are
you envisioning AWS Marketplace fitting into your overall go-to-market system?
Like you said before, you guys are very historically direct company.
Like, how do you see this fitting in?
And then how from a seller enableman standpoint, is that embrace working?
Yeah.
I mean, first and foremost, macro, our salespeople have to think so much
broader than just the
solutions that Salesforce offers now to be relevant in a world where AI, and I
mean,
just the last presenter I was listening to talking about generative AI
technology and
data sources that are so important for the enterprise.
We have to be able to look around and have conversations with our buyers about
where
else are you investing and where is your cloud infrastructure hosted today?
How are you thinking about your data strategy?
Where are your LLM models that you're using to run your business?
And a lot of those questions are things that are outside the scope of just
Salesforce products.
And so a core part of the motion overall is being more thoughtful about the
other big
investments that our customers are making, and that's where the natural
alignment in
the sales motion becomes, well, talk to your customers about where they're
running their
infrastructure, and then talk to them about, do they have a preference of how
they're consolidating
their infrastructure spend?
And frankly, talk to the Chief Procurement Officer, which isn't necessarily a
persona
that Salesforce had been super focused on, but these are all things that are
now core
to the motion as we're taking this wider aperture of where our customer's
strategic investments
are, and then making sure we have the right levers or the right options to be
able to
present to customers if they want to work with us direct.
That's great, but we can show other paths of flexibility if they want to go
down the marketplace
path, which is really important for customer choice.
So I think we're going to continue seeing us focus on using cloud marketplaces
as a customer
choice path, especially as we're having these much broader conversations around
AI and data
and where Salesforce is solutions like our Einstein co-pilot and our data cloud
fit in
that broader strategy.
And where our customers direct us and the ways they want to buy will be where
we focus on
what comes next with a marketplace strategy.
Cool.
Yeah.
You hit on a point around persona, and I hear this question a lot, especially
for people
in more business application, vertical solution spaces where they're like, "Hey
, my target
ICP, my normal buyer doesn't necessarily understand this."
How did, and you talked about seller enablement as part of that, but is there
anything else
if you double clicked into that specific point that you think of that you'd
share with people
to say, "Here's how we work through that?"
Yeah, I think it's, I mean, every company has their own secret sauce on who
their best
personas are that they work with more frequently.
We pride ourselves on having deep customer relationships and having good
relationships
with everyone who's got involvement in making buying decisions, but I just
think generally
software salespeople are maybe a little more cautious about the chief
procurement officer
as a persona.
Whereas what we try to help our teams understand is you have a gift, you can
now bring them,
as Salesforce hadn't prior been available on some of these cloud marketplaces.
If you want to talk to them about how they can optimize spend and think more
thoughtfully
about their renewal processes and bring together some of their strategic
contracts, now you
have something that is potentially a lever that's really interesting and a
value driver
for how they think about the business and where they're making their
investments.
That was the real main piece for us, was just first and foremost, don't be
afraid to take
this story to the head of procurement.
It's a great person to have the conversation with and know that you're bringing
something
that could actually be pretty powerful for them and they're going to probably
want to
lean in, assuming they have some significant investments in cloud
infrastructure as well.
So it was just additional enablement, as you said, but it's just an added
persona now
that we're trying to focus on more.
And I mean, kind of going back to your original started point, I think those
three chapters
you talked about hit pretty closely with how we talk to people.
It's like running on the cloud, how do you make your products better together,
tell a
better together story and then bring that to market together.
And as you think about maybe more broadly, the business application landscape
or maybe
even the Salesforce ecosystem, like, and how other Salesforce ecosystem
partners might
think about this, what advice would you give to them as they're thinking about,
when should
I, how should I approach this?
I mean, the advice I would give is when I'd say now, immediately, if you're not
, just
because of what I was referencing before.
So much of these decisions that companies are making in terms of their data and
AI strategy,
which frankly are board level imperatives at the moment, they're going to
involve a hyperscaler
and all the large hyperscalers have this marketplace strategy now, which is
really becoming core
to the to the motion.
So the when is now and the who I think is dependent on what the right path is
for your business
application for your strategy.
But the key and the why, I guess, is customers love it and we've gotten some
really good
feedback from our customers so far.
It thought fit for everyone, but the majority where it is a fit, they've
already started
to learn this motion a little bit, which was frankly, the one thing that
surprised me
a bit is how many customers had already gotten familiar with this play.
So that was great.
And I'd say just some of the things to think about would just be how do you
build the business
case to put in front of your executive leadership team to get them excited
about the opportunity
and make sure you're reinforcing that this is the how in terms of the way you
get these
really large super powerful infrastructure companies who have a great sales
organization,
really strong technical resources, that's how you get them to want to lean in
with you
is if they understand how there's connect connectivity to the overall benefit
of running on their
cloud and you get additional advocates for you in the field, which is really
hard to
come by.
So those are the things that's how we approached it and those are the things I
would recommend
anyone who's considering it or on the fence think about in terms of the why,
the when,
the how and the who.
Those are all the right questions to be thinking about and just go fast.
And curious as you think about like the business goals and maybe even less
specific about numbers
and more about like new business versus renewal business and even across your
whole portfolio
people are asking like what's available?
What is that?
What everything sales for ourselves available?
Could you maybe talk through some of your goals and how you think about new
versus renewal
versus across the portfolio?
Totally, totally.
So macro, like the three levers in terms of the way even we position it
internally looks
really similar to some of the frameworks that I've seen others presenting today
, which is
can we create additional growth through this path?
Can we close deals faster, reduce our cycle times and can we prevent attrition
in instances
where companies may be tightening their budgets and need to consolidate.
So those are like the three macro levers that we're looking at right now on
every transaction
we're doing in marketplace and trying to assign a value for us so that macro we
're looking
at it not just as business we already would have had but more on those three
levers.
And then with just the breadth of our product portfolio we're blessed in the
sense that we
have a pretty wide range of different products and so not every customer is
going to be using
all of our clouds but we have a pretty significant install base of the customer
using at least
one.
And so we're seeing it much more as a renewal/add-on path as opposed to net new
customers but
we think it opens up really interesting ways to get customers thinking about
maybe experimentation
or trying a complimentary cloud product that they hadn't quite yet whether it's
Slack and
our portfolio or thinking about running Tableau cloud alongside of sales cloud
or maybe they
didn't quite have the investment before but they're able to draft off their
broader infrastructure
budgets to go take a run at that.
And so I think the add-on business, renewal business, expansion business is
really core
for us and we'd love to have some net new logos come from this but so far it's
much
more about add-on and expanding the breadth of renewals.
Sweet.
So let's see trying to look through it.
We had a whole list of, I mean curious on the channel stuff like that's been a
hot topic
today and tomorrow and again you guys are a direct company.
How do you see channel fitting in?
How do you see it fitting in?
I do and I think the channel is going to continue to be more and more important
for
us at Salesforce.
We have a pretty broad and super experienced group of partners both our system
implementers,
globalized size, our ISVs, our strategic partners and I think we're trying to
figure
out the best ways to keep them excited and partnering with us but then also
really getting
more leverage in the field from their sales organizations as well and so the
channel is
the right way to make that happen and I think what we'd be really interested in
going into
like phase two of this marketplace journey will be around how do we think about
multi-party
offers with our SIs, with companies that are building on Salesforce as the
platform that
they're developing their apps on.
So how might we go to market not just with our apps but also with ISV apps
together and
an SI involved as well to really help a customer even think more completely
about what they're
signing up for and not only the Salesforce apps but the ecosystem apps that are
going
to be part of their implementation.
So we think that's a super interesting path that we were looking forward to
working John
with you guys on helping us unlock.
I think right now we've been trying to figure out just the Salesforce specific
motion on
marketplaces but that'll be our next move.
Awesome.
We've got 20 seconds.
Any closing comments?
No, I'll just say thank you and thank you to the team.
We couldn't have gone as fast as we had in the number of countries and the
number of
products we've now launched in the last six months.
Anybody on this webinar that would love to talk more, I'd be glad to make
myself available
and share some thoughts and perspectives I love meeting with other channel
leaders and
partnerships leaders so please don't hesitate to reach out.
Awesome.
Thanks Nick.
Thanks everyone.
Alright, cheers.
See ya.
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