Driving Meaningful Marketplace Revenue Begins at Sales Kick-Off
Nearly one-third of B2B software revenue is projected to flow through cloud marketplaces in the coming year. What was once an experimental channel has become a core part of how modern ISVs go to market: unlocking committed cloud spend, aligning more tightly with hyperscaler partners, and creating a more predictable, scalable path to revenue.
At Tackle, we see this shift every day. Hyperscalers are no longer just a place to transact: they’re becoming a system of record for how software is bought and sold in the cloud.
Below, we’ll explore why AWS Marketplace continues to gain momentum and how ISVs can move beyond “being listed” to building a repeatable, revenue-driving marketplace motion, and how to get the ball rolling at your upcoming sales kick-off.
Why AWS Marketplace Is Gaining Popularity
Today’s buyers expect purchasing to be seamless, fast, and aligned with how they already consume cloud. AWS Marketplace delivers on all three, especially for organizations operating under committed cloud spend. When deals can be transacted against existing budgets, procurement friction drops, internal approvals accelerate, and cloud partners become active participants in helping deals close.
The results speak for themselves. Forrester’s Total Economic Impact study of AWS Marketplace found that, compared to traditional direct sales motions, AWS Marketplace deals are 81% larger, 27% more likely to close, and move 40% faster through the sales cycle.
From a revenue leader’s perspective, those gains translate into stronger forecast confidence, tighter partner alignment, and a more operationally sound GTM engine. That’s why nearly 80% of partners now view AWS Marketplace as a critical part of their co-sell strategy.
From Marketplace Presence to Marketplace Performance
Listing on AWS Marketplace is just the starting point.
To drive meaningful revenue, marketplace motions have to be understood, trusted, and operationalized by your sales, partner, and revenue operations teams. Without that internal alignment, marketplace becomes a last-minute procurement workaround instead of a strategic growth channel.
The challenge is real:
- 40% of ISVs say they struggle to clearly communicate their joint value proposition with AWS
- Even among ISVs with formal GTM strategies, nearly 1 in 5 report that their teams have little to no understanding of their joint value
The intent is there. But it’s missing the enablement, process, and systemization.
Why Sales Kick-Off Is the Inflection Point
Your sales kick-off is one of the few moments in the year where strategy, execution, and culture converge. What gets stage time gets adoption. What gets adoption gets pipeline.
Positioning AWS Marketplace as a core GTM motion at SKO signals something important to your team: marketplace is a pivotal part of how we sell. Period.
At Tackle, we work with ISVs to turn marketplace from a concept into a concrete, operational motion. That means equipping reps to:
- Understand when and why to lead with Marketplace
- Articulate the joint value with AWS in customer conversations
- Navigate deal structures, private offers, and approvals with confidence
- Align with partner and RevOps teams to move deals from listing to closed-won, faster
When your joint value prop becomes actionable, and not theoretical, sellers stop seeing Marketplace as friction and start seeing it as a competitive advantage.
A Practical Framework for Making Marketplace Real
To help kick off this process, we’ve partnered with Purechannels, the partner experience agency, to develop a simple, five-step framework designed to help you operationalize AWS Marketplace across sales, partnerships, and revenue operations that can be leveraged to help guide your sales kick-off.
The framework outlines how leverage AWS Marketplace to achieve:
- Stronger partner alignment
- Shorter sales cycles
- More predictable pipeline
- Higher deal values
Ready to turn AWS Marketplace into a repeatable revenue channel instead of a one-off tactic?
Download your free guide and start building a marketplace motion your sales team can actually run.
