Value Is Not Free: How to Think About and Account For Mark ...
Wrestling with Marketplace listing fees within your organization? Here are some recommendations for how an ISV can handle them.
If you’re selling software in 2021, one of the most important channels to leverage is Cloud Marketplaces, like AWS, Azure, and GCP. These rapidly growing sales channels are being fueled by a relentless surge in cloud spend. You’d be hard pressed to find a prospect or customer who isn’t dedicating significant budget dollars to these hyperscale providers. That’s why an estimated 70% of B2B software sellers will invest in Cloud Marketplaces as part of their go-to-market strategy this year.
Once you determine you’re Marketplace-ready (take our short quiz to see where you stand), your next decision involves how you choose to enter the Cloud Marketplace. You essentially have two options: Invest in building and maintaining your own listings or leave the work to a specialized partner.
Let’s break it down.
Cloud Marketplaces come with some pretty steep barriers to entry. We’re talking Everest steep. Unless you have Marketplace expertise or previous experience, you’re likely to run into some hurdles.
The most common challenges we’ve seen sellers encounter when they opt to build their own Marketplace presence include:
There’s an obvious thread binding these challenges together: cost. We’re talking hard dollars and opportunity cost alike.
Not to mention, you’re burning all of this capital before you’ve driven a dollar of revenue. There’s a serious risk of ending up back at the drawing board if you don’t choose the correct strategy which will allow you to drive revenue and incrementally invest in that strategy as your success grows.
Building your own Cloud Marketplace listing isn’t impossible by any stretch. But it’s not for everyone. There’s no guidebook on the planet that can teach you everything you need to know and ensure to derisk your efforts. Even if you’re a software industry tidal with plenty of time and resources to spare, chances are this is not an area you need or want to dedicate engineering resources to (bespoke Marketplace integrations are generally not a good fit for your product backlog).
This feels like a good time for an analogy.
Like you, Tackle leverages a CRM tool to help ensure we can track, manage, and forecast our business—all of that is incredibly important to running an effective company. We have a team of engineers who are fully capable of building a highly customized tool to meet our forecasting and relationship management needs, but do we have them build that? No. It’s a waste of their time, which is best spent making our products awesome. We subscribe to a CRM tool built by a company that is focused on making incredible CRM tools.
The “buy” option for Cloud Marketplaces operates on a similar principle. You work with a specialist to get you from point A to point B. No hassles, no massive learning curve, no engineering.
Tackle’s Cloud Marketplace Platform gets you where you need to be and then some:
Global cloud data platform Snowflake had customers with large Microsoft partnerships that wanted to close business through the Azure Marketplace (a smart practice that lets buyers burn down their cloud spend commitments – one of the top 4 reasons buyers have been flocking to Marketplaces). After some quick research, Snowflake realized that building Azure listings themselves would require a prohibitive amount of engineering and financial resources, especially with the learning curve required to get familiar with Marketplace integrations, workflows, and seller guidelines and requirements.
The Snowflake team asked around, and Azure Marketplace experts recommended Tackle’s Cloud Marketplace Platform as the top alternative to DIY.
Tackle saved Snowflake several months of engineering time to go live with their listing and provided detailed guidance at every step. Tackle also assisted with Snowflake’s first private transaction and provided custom documentation to help their team complete smooth transactions going forward.
Since joining Azure, Snowflake has closed deals of all sizes. In several cases, customers were willing to spend more with Snowflake through Azure since the budget was already approved and transactions closed faster.
Your decision of whether to build or buy will likely come down to how much you’re willing and able to invest in your Cloud Marketplace listing. If your business has the time, money, and patience to master the Marketplace learning curve and devote engineering resources to constant upkeep, building may be a viable option. But we’d caution that the Marketplace journey doesn’t end with getting listed. One you’re in, that’s when the real fun begins!
If you’d rather start reaping the advantages of selling through Marketplaces as quickly and easily as possible, you’re better off teaming with an expert like Tackle who will be by your side for the long haul, ensuring you’re an expert at driving revenue.
Schedule a demo with Tackle to learn more about how you can enjoy the benefits of Marketplace without the burdens.