Lessons Learned in Scaling Cloud GTM Successfully with Google
Tune in as Chelsea Berlucci, Head of Subregional Co-Sell, NorthAM at Google explains what it takes to drive an impactful co-sell motion with Google and how to scale your Cloud GTM motion through the Marketplace. Get actionable tips, takeaways, and examples!
Hello, everyone.
Hi, everyone.
All right.
Let's get started.
Today's session is on lessons learned in scaling cloud go to market
successfully with Google and here with me today is Chelsea Berlucci. Chelsea, why don't you give us a little bit about your title and what is like
one fun thing you're focused on at Google right now.
Sure. Thanks, Erin. Great to be here.
Hi, everyone. I know we have this awesome spot of later in the afternoon,
depending on where you're sitting.
So hopefully we get a little excited for this session. Let's talk about Cocell
and glad to be here with you, Erin again.
So again, my name is Chelsea Berlucci and I'm the head of our sub regional co
cell team here at Google cloud.
I've been in this role for a little for a few years now. I've been at Google
for almost six years, and I started in in Cocell in 2022 really focused on ISVs
and how our sellers adopted a co cell strategy.
Meaning I have a team that sits in each of our sub regions. They work with the
sales leaders, customers and sellers to say, Hey, we have this opportunity with
marketplace and here's how you action it with ISVs.
So it's pretty interesting role. This year I took on a little bit more scope.
So I do end to end Cocell, meaning my team instead of just focusing on ISV, we
actually focus on our service partners too.
Although we have dedicated folks that cover each type of partner, but I'm glad
to be talking about I speak because where I started as well, and love talking
to the partners and talking about Cocell in general.
Beyond that you asked me something fun and interesting. I'm working on right
now. So this year in July, we're going to be hosting our ISV forum in New York
City.
And this is really an event that's all about Cocell. We get to hear from our
sales leaders here at Google Cloud and they share what's top of mind for them,
right? What they're working on, what they're tasking their sellers their CEs to
work on, and how can partners really action that as part of, you know, really
the broader Google Cloud ecosystem is bringing on this partner ecosystem that we
have. So I love the event. It's full of energy. It's at our peer 57 and really
we get to do more. Like peer 57 is just such a cool place.
It's yeah. So it's great that we pulled it in as part of the Google Cloud
campus there in New York. It's open, not crowded. So it's just want this wide
open space again to kind of enjoy the view, but also get groups together.
Yeah, I'm looking forward to that event as well.
Really quickly. I'll just do a quick intro. Aaron Feiger, the VP of Cocell here
at tackle joined the tackle family about a year and a half ago through the
acquisition of my company, core consulting, where we've spent the last decade
helping ISVs go to market with cloud partners and really figuring out their
coastal strategies and how to integrate that into their go to market motions.
So was really excited to bring core and tackle together so that we can really
help ISVs with their cloud go to market strategies and creating that flywheel.
One fun project I'm working on right now at tackle is we're getting ready to
kick off like an internal to customers only video podcast with Patrick Riley,
one of our folks in our customer success team.
So I'm really looking forward to getting out even more content about Cocell and
how can we continue to help our partners, no matter what stage and phase they
're at in their coastal journey.
I'm really making that a revenue generating vehicle for them. So I thought we
would also get started with a little bit of a level side.
So, because I like I find now that I'm out talking to even more people and co
cell is like all the rage and buzz.
I'll say, what do you do? And then we're like, I do cocell and then you start
talking about and you're like, Oh, you do cocell like channel and channel like
channel cocell and, Oh, you're doing cocell like devices and Oh, you're doing
cocell like B2B software cocell.
And so now that cocell is kind of getting even bigger footprint and more of a
trend and buzz, I find I have to like, well, what kind of cocell do you mean.
So I thought it would be good to kind of like do a little level set on what's
Google's point of view or how do you guys define cocell and the approach of co-
selling at Google.
Yeah, that's, you know, great question. And like you said, this, this word is
becoming more pervasive, but even in 2022, when I took over this role, it was
something that was still developing.
And then like you said, people really do have their own definitions depending
on what type of customer they're talking about, what type of product they're
talking about, what type of motion and general.
For us here at Google, it's really the way that our sales team or our
organization works with another organization to cocell or sell a product, a
solution or service jointly to an end customer.
So when we talk about it in terms of ISVs, because I believe that's mostly
audience here today or partners in general, it's really how do we coach our
teams.
And jointly, how do we coach maybe our partners teams to say this is how we're
going to market to service our end customer. The cool thing here is we're
always thinking about the customer at the heart of things.
And so what does a customer's care about? What are their business initiatives?
What are their technology initiatives? And that helps us immediately get on the
same page because the tricky part of cocell is two organizations that have two
separate missions,
two cultures, ways they can technologies, technologies, they have to come
together on the same page about something to cocell. And so we really try to do
that again by keeping the customer at the heart of things, but then really
coaching our teams to say,
hey, you have to be a little bit open a little bit more abstract in your
thinking when you work with another partner because you two may have different
objectives.
And you should still be thinking about what the customer wants. So that cocell
motion is jointly going after a customer with either a product, again, a
service or solution of some sort.
Yeah, I really like that. Like keep the customer at the center. So then if you
keep the customer at the center and you think about cocell, then you could say,
okay, how are we cocelling together with Google, meaning, how is our brands
showing up in the
machine that we're delivering to this customer around our joint solution in the
product and it being co built so that we can cocell it together to this
customer to answer their problems and challenges and initiatives that they have
How are we showing up as one team cocelling together to support this customer
and drive our joint technology into this customer. And then how are we
continuing to like turn that customer into a raving fan of our joint solution.
And so cocelling is, yes, it's bringing together people, but you have to
remember the product, the messaging and how you represent that and present that
to the customer.
And does that make is that cocell cohesive and understandable.
Right.
Absolutely. Yeah, I fully agree on that one. I think that as you know,
different organizations work together and certainly here is you do have to
establish a service. And that baseline. But again, you know, understanding how is this going to be
delivered to the end customer really helps you craft and maybe even, you know,
put together backwards timeline of where where we're going and where we need to
be to make sure we're delivering
the right foundation there.
Yeah, for sure.
So, tackle, one of the first things I did when I came over is work with the
team to put together this maturity model to really help all of us meet our ISVs
where they're at in their journey and figure out what are the things we need to
focus on to help you move from left to right.
And so in this maturity model that we're going to be talking about even more
tomorrow in day two, and we're going to hear customers who have been working on
building adoption and what they did to go from building to driving and the
things that they focused on that got them that traction.
And I'm really excited about tomorrow's whole day agenda on just customer
stories and real live like this is what they're doing now to move from left to
right in this maturity model.
But wanted to just also kind of give this as a foundation for our continued
conversation on what it looks like to successfully co cell with Google in in
thinking as you guys work with ISVs you see this as well from their partnership
with Google,
their first getting started establishing that foundation, then they're starting
to build adoption around that partnership from and then going into driving that
adoption really scaling that adoption from the lens of Google.
How should I see these be thinking about their co cell journey and their
maturity journey with Google like what things should they start to focus on.
And let's start with like establishing the foundation. Sure. You know, I love
this maturity model I think it's certainly in line with the way we coach our IS
Vs.
And so for my role in particular doing co cell, my team again like I said is
aligned to our sales is in our customers and really at the heart of it is
trying we're trying to do solution completeness we're trying to make sure we're
leveraging the partner ecosystem to provide these services to our customer.
But that means I get to see a really a large variance of ISVs and how they go
to market. And some like you said can do it, you know, pretty effectively.
Right, they take these steps they take in this information they make sure they
apply and some just go straight to the end here.
And so the coaching that we really give is, hey, look, you have decided to
become a Google cloud partner, you have active listings in the marketplace.
Awesome. We're there we feel like we've arrived, but the works really just
getting started, unless you started to do that work prior to your listing being
active. Yeah, right. There's so much more.
I do think people sometimes think, okay, I've turned on this listing, where all
the customers weren't they clicking to purchase why I haven't gotten all these
offers to come work with me yet.
And you really do have to activate that co cell motion in order to grow grow
the business even further.
So what we like to say is, hey, if you're having an initial conversation,
either it's an alliance person to a seller or alliances to alliances within
Google cloud.
What are you actually discussing and what are the walkaways and when I say walk
ways, I mean, what are these maybe the established repository of information
that you've built out to share with a seller to share with an alliance person
or maybe even sometimes a customer.
And so that's first is, you know, sharing your footprint or your repository of
information. And that's the first part of a go to market is what do you do and
how do you position that with a sales team and then how did they position it
with a customer and this can come in a number of different
ways. I like to see things in the form of very tactically, maybe a battle card
that does a quick overview of your solution that you have listed in the
marketplace.
It's a good format for me to understand who I need to work with, how to pitch
the product how to position it and how to at least take that stage zero or
first step with a customer.
The other thing we really challenge our ISVs on is a quick pitch. Now, everyone
would probably love to get on a call and do a two hour deep dive session about
their solution and say everyone's gotten this, you know, certain active level
understanding or top level understanding
of a solution but no one actually has time for that. So if you were to boil
down your offering to a five minute quick pitch, it's a challenge right because
you do want to always share more but think of it more as again that door opener
What's kind of the information that folks need to be armed with to be dangerous
. And then I always think of the qualifying questions right. So if I'm a seller,
I'm alone on a call or I'm an engineer, I'm alone in a call from Google Cloud
with a customer.
And I've heard some buzzword shared about your product. How can I continue to
qualify this customer to the point where I bring in my sales counterpart at
that ISV.
So getting those foundational pieces of information together is great. That's
just content.
There's a whole other side of that around you should still have this plan being
built out of really what a strong go to market looks like for you. And that is,
you know, what areas of the business are you targeting.
And the other big thing is that we see a lot of ISVs say, I want to be
everywhere. My products good for everyone. And while that may be true, that may
absolutely be true. You may have one of these horizontal solutions that fits in
every piece of the business.
We do ask that you may be start in a specific area. So certainly have your top
maybe 50 target accounts, but then take it down another layer.
Which area of the business is it a geographic area that you want to get
stronger in or that you are strong in, you need to build even further base?
Or maybe it's a vertical business. It could be retail, healthcare, life
sciences, financial services, etc. Focus a little bit more on where you want to
develop your business because then you start to build this groundswell of
champions and sellers that start to collaborate
together within Google that I've said, Hey, have you spoken to this ISV over
here? We're in the middle of an opportunity with the customer. They just
finished a group of concept. They absolutely loved it. You need to get this
partner involved in your business.
And so, you know, those things is being crisp and clean about where you want to
go with your service, but then also, you know, giving folks the information
that they need rather than you having to have a bunch of one on one
conversations is incredibly helpful to establish that baseline foundation there
too. Yeah, so I want to dig into a few things that you said and also pull in some of
the conversations earlier today. So in the CRO session that happened earlier,
one of our customers was even saying like, how important it is that you know
you train your sellers on how to speak to those cloud sellers.
And so that translation layer of like, what are the, what is the language that
Google talks in, and what are some of the key metrics that you could kind of
give everyone some pointers today on as they think about creating those
materials and making sure that it lands with the Google person
they're connecting with, what are some, what are some of that messaging and
like metrics that matter right now at Google.
Yeah, so I think it's, you know, not a secret. Of course, we incentivize our
sellers to drive business to our marketplace. And so really love that.
We love that.
Yeah, so we need to do this. And then of course we also have financial
incentives amongst other things for our customers to make purchases on the
marketplace. So once you're in, in the actual marketplace, you have an active
listing you have integrated billing where a customer can purchase and a seller
can sell, you know, you're at a specific ring where we can really start to action and
work together. When you are trying to have that first conversation with a
seller, I always like to say, you know, choose a little bit of give and take,
and that you go in there with some information about
maybe it's the customer you're trying to talk about, or a list of customers
that you know maybe in their territory and whether you cover them or not, you
can reintroduce them to or introduce them to appear if yours that covers that
account too.
So one is going with the give, right, hey, I'm bringing you a little bit of
information around this customer.
This is the last conversation I had with them, and you know, this is really
what they need to action on. And by the way, here's how our solution can
support it, but here's where I'm getting stuck along the way.
So really being able to show up with pieces of content and information that
they can take back in their next conversation with a customer is helpful.
So outside of that is, you know, maybe even sharing a quick, you know, the five
minute pitch, a little bit of a demo on, hey, here's where you can find our
listing in the marketplace.
Here's some other information around it. Here's the free trial we have offering
offered, and then maybe also here's the proof of concept and this is what this
sales cycle looks like.
That also leads into, you know, what does the actual cycle look like when maybe
a Google cloud seller is jointly selling with your co selling with you.
And that is pulling them behind the scenes on maybe a specific win, which is
really what I've been trying to get a lot of our partners to do this year.
It's great to speak in, here's how we should do things but that's a
hypothetical.
What we want to understand is where we've won in the past. So arm each of your
sellers with their own personal win story, or a win story that maybe you all
have been able to spotlight and maybe have a use case published about that so
that they can really
reshare that with the seller and say, hey, best practice.
Here's how we engage with this customer. Here's how long the sales cycle took.
Here's what they actioned out of a proof of concept. This is, you know, the
typical amount and the time it takes.
So that's the way the people we sell to as well within a customer base. So
giving them those insights, all of that seems like a lot of information, but
can absolutely happen in a 15 minute conversation.
If you get the 30 minutes, great. Hopefully you have at least a few walk away
items for next steps.
And also, hopefully you have another engagement with maybe another Google cloud
seller to then further on that those conversations relationship within Google
cloud.
But I think a lot of the things you rattled off there are really good sound
bites that go on a battle card. That can be that leave behind as well for them.
And then another thing you had mentioned in is like start small, be specific in
one area, get some wins under your belt. That will then fuel, you know,
creating that content and getting those wins into the hands of your sellers.
So you can go tell those success stories. And we find that we give that kind of
advice in that building adoption phase. Like you want to go build adoption, go
get very specific in like an industry or a pain point that's going on right now
Maybe a segmentation and really put together a go to market campaign around
that topic, identify those customers and then bring that customer base to your
Google partnership and start to engage with the sellers around those target
like that total addressable market that you're trying to go after in that very
specific campaign.
What are like two or three hot areas right now that you would say inside of
Google if they were to put together a campaign? Is there industry or use case
or, you know, that you could kind of, or something you're seeing like that's
working and getting traction in the ecosystem?
Absolutely. So, you know, there are a couple of areas that, you know, if I'm
having a conversation with a partner, one year spot on around focusing on a
specific area. And so first I'll take a step back and I want to share, you know
, really around how we're organized within Google Cloud.
We have our strategic center industries accounts. And that would be our retail
health care life sciences, telco media entertainment and gaming and then
financial services.
And then the area that my team supports is our enterprise sub regions. And so
that's northeast, mid Atlantic southeast are central business, western state
Silicon Valley, San Francisco so Cal, and we also have mid market enterprise.
There's Canada and then we have startup acceleration too. And so that covers, I
gotta figure out maybe for a specific region I want to go into.
Yes. And so that's exactly. Yeah. And so that's the next point is like, okay.
So there's then a coastal lead that is aligned to each of those regions or
industries and working with them to say, what is top of mind for the retail
lead and what are maybe some pain points that we're facing right now in retail
or in the northeast business.
Hey, you know, we have a high concentration of sellers. Let's activate them to
work with the sellers in that region to really drive more, more sales, more
connections and more customer adoption.
So once you get focused in that area, that's great. But you also need to then
say, okay, is there if you're going to do a play? What does that look like? And
so some folks have done it in a couple of different ways.
But of course, GIN AI, Cloud AI everywhere right now. And we have a lot. Yeah,
I know. I said it.
Uh oh. And so, I mean, we only have seven minutes left in the session. So that
's good for us.
We did. Yeah. We did that. So I think with that is, you should absolutely be
telling your story. If you have leveraged Google Cloud's platform in order to
develop a product around generative AI or cloud AI in general.
Right. We have customers that are out there and whether they're trying to
either build their own solution or buy an out of a box solution. They have to
report to shareholders. They have to have a strategy.
They have to something around AI. And what I really challenge our sellers to
understand is if it's not first party at better be third party, because that is
running on Google Cloud.
And we want our customers to say that Google Cloud is a cloud of choice for AI
period. Right. There's no reason why we shouldn't be there in the top of that
race with AI.
So, you know, that's one like you're going to get ears perked up, especially if
you're talking about AI. The second piece is that, you know, well, we of course
have financial incentives for our customers that have Google Cloud commitments,
which again, people understand.
We have Greenfield business out there. And, you know, that is really sharing
kind of the way in which we adopt Greenfield or customers that aren't currently
using Google Cloud is going to set the pace of our business moving forward.
So any partner of mine that I work with that is unafraid to go into a Green
field space and understand it's going to be a bit of a grind.
I want to be right there in the trenches with you. So really thinking about
those things, but I would take it also back to you is, you know, if you're a
partner and you've had your last 10 conversations and a customer is really
asking you more about, you know, data analytics and pulling out insights
or they're saying, Hey, we're having issues or we're seeing a lot in the news
about this security issue. We want to be, we want to make sure we're protecting
our environment.
And you have a solution that supports that. Let's go after that. And let's
create our own play there, or maybe you are a partner that has a free platform
and you want to make sure you're activating those users to go to a play or paid
platform.
Then we can also use that as a specific play, but the note here is to get
focused on a region or an industry.
Work with that co cell lead to to establish a baseline of these are the
customers we want to go after. These are the ones we can either upsell to and
these are the ones that may be net new to us.
And then let's make sure our sales teams are working together rather than just
alliances having the single conversation with a bunch of people and that's
really where you get get that motion moving a lot quicker.
That's all great advice. Thank you so much for sharing that. I put the slide up
that you'd shared with me on frame your coastal journey with the Google Cloud.
I thought like that would be a great segue into kind of explaining the slide to
the audience and in what the different teams here represent.
Sure. Yeah. So this is something I put together after again having a lot of
conversations with partners that we're saying, you know, what more could we be
doing. And so I then created more of a hey let's do a little bit of a test.
Right. We're actually are you in this co cell journey. And then what does great
look like. And so I like this because in your maturity framework to your
maturity model it really outlines a lot of these these steps too.
But you know this is again at a high level. So the first one is alliances to
sales and that's.
Hey, you've joined the Google Cloud marketplace or your partner of Google
clouds and you have then said we're naming an individual or individuals or a
team in our organization to be specifically aligned to the success we're having
with Google Cloud and driving Google Cloud sales.
That's great. And then that team then aligns to our sales team or our co cell
team too. And that's the first step. And that's really saying dedicated
resources and investment in Google Cloud and its success.
But those again those conversations can only go so far because they seem to be
more one to many and also it's not a sales team working with another sale sales
person to.
So that next step is making sure that your sales work is aligned to our sales
org and that's coaching your sellers on how to work with Google cloud sellers.
And likewise that's what we do on our into that's a lot with my team does is
coaching our sellers on how to engage with their partners appropriately.
And when you know we see two sales people work together, the advancement of an
opportunity is just so much quicker, right? You build confidence and you get
more comfortable because you're talking about the same customer, same
opportunity, and that drives business a lot further.
And we heard earlier in Dives session, you know, he mentioned that partners are
seeing a 35% increase in their win weight and they really look at co cell as
being one of the main contributors and why that success rate is increasing.
I couldn't agree more. You know, you can't deny that stat that die shared. I
think I've been a seller for 14 years before I took this role.
And doing co cell in my own way as a seller, you get to a point where you are
picking up the phone and you're calling an ISV seller about a product you're
again you're jointly selling to a customer.
And again, you know, you move a lot quicker than me having to hop as a seller
to alliances and then to a salesperson and bridging the gap and doing huddles.
It's just that direct connection again, you become buddies. You're in the
trenches together. You're selling to the customer. You're really trying to
understand how to support this customer the same way.
So I have to imagine it just, it accelerates the business so much faster there
for sure.
Yeah, I mean, our customers don't have to do this alone. Our software companies
don't have to do this alone. And to know that you have a partner like Google
and tackle here to help you.
Man, you're going to you're going to go faster together than if you were to try
to tackle this on your own.
So what we only have less than a minute to go. What is one thing you want to
leave the audience with when they think about like co-selling with Google or
being successful with Google or as they go to do their planning.
Some partners are into their their planings for next year, their next fiscal
year.
What should they be thinking about when it comes to co-selling with Google?
You know, good question. I think that the coaching that you give and the things
that we've shared here today, hopefully people grasp from that is that even if
you feel like you're starting small or slow, you're building a foundation that
's really going to again
accelerate your business where I see people get stuck because when they start
way too big and saying, Hey, we want to tackle it all versus those that
understand.
Let me start in this area. Let me build my champions. Let me get some wins
under my belt.
And then they're actually more surprised with how quickly they grow their
business year after year versus those that want to start at the finish line.
Right. So I would say that. You're well the ocean. And then you're like, you're
not doing any one thing great.
So like find one thing and do that really great.
Yes, absolutely. And we can tell the difference between the partners that do
that versus the ones that don't. And we want to work with those that are really
going at the right pace as well to build the relationship with Google.
Well, thank you so much, Chelsea. This is so great. I feel like we could have
had another threat like we could have talked for an hour easily.
Absolutely. Thank you so much for having me. Have a great day.
Thank you.
Yeah.
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