5 Things to Know About the AWS CPPO Program
If you’re selling on AWS Marketplace and leveraging private offers, you might also be thinking about expanding your reach and selling power by partnering with some of the more than 1,400 global consultants in the AWS Marketplace to reach new customers via CPPO (Channel Partner Private Offers).
Read more: Tackle’s AWS Marketplace Seller Guide to People and Programs
What are Channel Partner Private Offers (CPPO)?
Channel Partner Private Offers (CPPO) enable third-party companies such as channel firms, digital agencies, Managed Services Providers (MSPs), or Value-Added Resellers (VARs) to sell your product through AWS Marketplace private offers. The wholesale price is dictated by you and the channel partner applies a mark-up when they create the private offer.
According to Tackle’s State of Cloud Marketplaces Report, 55% of enterprise respondents said they view channel partners as complementary to Marketplace. This sentiment indicates that sellers don’t see channel partners and Cloud Marketplaces as an either-or choice—they want both. For sellers in the enterprise segment, 80% of their Marketplace deals had some level of channel partner involvement over the last year, and this group expects 83% of Marketplace deals will have some channel partner involvement in the next year.
Read more: Leveraging Channel Partners (and AWS’ CPPO) to Build a Customer-First Cloud GTM Strategy
How AWS Channel Partner Private Offers work
The concept of AWS CPPO is simple enough. You give an outside seller the tools to make private offers for their customers to buy your software via the AWS Marketplace. Here’s what you need to know about the actual mechanics:
Create a paid listing: Before you can take advantage of AWS CPPO, you’ll need a paid product listed for sale on AWS Marketplace so that you can create private offers.
Agree on a wholesale price: The next step in getting the CPPO ball rolling (after listing your product) is agreeing on a channel partner wholesale amount.
With a CPPO, you give resellers and partner consultants access to your company’s Marketplace listing and a wholesale price. You may have a “blanket discount” to offer every partner, negotiate deals with individual partners, or alter wholesale prices on a deal-by-deal basis.
Channel partner creates a private offer: After you’ve reached an agreement with the channel partner on what wholesale price you’ll give them, you can also dictate term length, payment schedule, and EULA. Partners work with their network and customers and create a private offer when the time comes.
The private offer process for channel partners is mostly the same as direct private offers. This has actually become much easier in that partners can create approved private offers on their own and send a unique offer URL to the customer.
Customer accepts the private offer: When the customer accepts the channel partner’s private offer, the purchase is processed the same way as any other Marketplace sale. The customer is passed on to your company for onboarding and service, and the transaction lands on the customer’s AWS bill.
Funds are dispersed: AWS Marketplace handles all of the administrative work of disbursing funds (including collected sales tax). While your exact payout schedule will vary based on the customer’s payment schedule and terms, you don’t need to do anything special to receive payment.
Read more: Startup Essentials: Making the Most of AWS Marketplace
5 Things to know about AWS CPPO
1. CPPO can expand your network with worldwide partners
In today’s world, it’s critical to make ecosystems and channel partners a central tenet of your business for the sake of your customers: You’re not just partnering with a company because it’s good for your brand, you’re doing it because it’s the right thing to do to enhance and expand the customer experience, and to bridge technology gaps to solve problems for customers.
Additionally, if you establish a relationship with a consultant, they represent an additional stream of new accounts that you can access. Partners can “carry your flag” when you’re not around, or don’t have the resources to do so.
Channel partners can also have a presence across the globe, which can help you break into new markets with less effort from your sales team. This is especially appealing as an economic downturn causes companies to look hard at their revenue streams and focus on doing more with less.
2. AWS CPPO also provides easy Cloud Marketplace billing and deal splits
If you have experience working with resellers or partner consultants, you’re familiar with managing splits and ensuring that those resellers and consultants get their margin. The magic of CPPOs with AWS Marketplace is that it automatically divvies out the customer’s payment to the respective parties.
Rather than a channel partner receiving funds from the end-customer and having to keep their portion and send you the rest, AWS Marketplace will take care of the calculations. You will be disbursed the wholesale cost you set in the CPPO (minus the AWS listing fee) when AWS disburses payment to you.
3. AWS CPPO helps you build stronger relationships with channel partners
While your company benefits from an extended network that reaches new customers, channel partners understand their customers’ business needs and are eager to help them implement the right tools to meet those needs, like your product. As your channel partners become more successful through sales of your product, the symbiotic relationship between you and the partner will strengthen. These partnerships create a vast ecosystem that translates into big business. For example, Highspot has observed that partners contribute 58% of the revenue generated by their top sales reps, and that working with partners influenced a 60% larger deal size.
4. Buyers may have channel affiliations
Besides having a preferred Cloud Provider, your customers may have relationships with channel partners that they want to maintain. CPPO allows the buyer to maintain their strategic partnerships while potentially burning down their Marketplace commitments. Participating in CPPO and empowering your customer’s partners to act as a seller on your behalf may build trust (and help close deals) with those customers who are hesitant to transact on Marketplace.
5. Tackle can help you manage AWS CPPO
Taking advantage of CPPO on AWS Marketplace is already a more streamlined version of traditional reseller agreements. However, Tackle’s Cloud GTM Platform has tools to make managing CPPO even easier:
Integrate with AWS Marketplace and Tackle. Tackle helps you manage the listing that makes CPPOs possible while Tackle Offers helps you create, customize, track, and recognize revenue with these private offers with ease—whether sold directly by your own team or through a partner.
Our platform processes the entitlements and sends notifications to your team via email, Slack, and more. From there, your standard ‘new customer’ process can begin.
Report on CPPO deals with Tackle. Just because AWS handles the billing doesn’t mean you’ll completely disregard customer details.
Tackle also enables in-depth visibility into all the details of each financial transaction. Through an easy-to-understand reporting dashboard, the ISVs internal sales and accounting teams can track and monitor the transaction lifecycle.
Even sellers outside of the Tackle Platform can take advantage as we can plug-in to any Commerce Analytic Services (CAS) enabled listing, which means you’ll have full visibility across all listings.
Read more: How Tackle Worked with AWS Marketplace to Drive 300+ CPPO Offers in Four Months
FAQs (Frequently Asked Questions):
What are the benefits of CPPO?
The benefits of AWS CPPO include access to an expanded network of resellers and partner consultants (some of whom may have a worldwide footprint), easy Cloud Marketplace billing and deal splits, stronger relationships with channel partners and AWS, and the ability to build trust with customers who may be hesitant to transact via Cloud Marketplaces.
What is a channel partner?
Channel partners help you support and drive a customer’s digital transformation strategy through the hyperscalers (AWS, Google, Microsoft). According to Crossbeam’s 2021 State of the Partner Ecosystem Report, 82% of B2B SaaS companies have some kind of channel partnership. As companies large and small continue to rapidly adopt and prioritize cloud, channel partnerships have evolved from a more transactionally-based model to a holistic, solutions-focused model. Often companies seek support and services across each step of their cloud journey, and channel partners are in a unique position to provide that holistic support.
What is an AWS advanced consulting partner?
AWS advanced consulting partners help AWS customers design, build, migrate, and manage applications on AWS. ISVs authorize channel partners to resell software through the AWS Marketplace Management Portal (AMMP).
Like what you’re reading? Tackle helps you get listed on AWS Marketplace, handles end-to-end Marketplace API integration, and tracks all your orders—including CPPOs—in real-time with little to no engineering involvement. Take our three-minute Cloud Go-to-Market Readiness Review to see where your business is on its Cloud GTM journey.
