Leading a GTM team

Marketplace revenue is growing but finance hates the platform fee. How do I make the case?

The short answer

Do not argue about the fee, argue about the alternative. Compare the fully loaded cost of deals won through the marketplace with your normal CAC, then add the weeks of procurement and legal you skip. Then point at where the money comes from: the customer is spending budget already committed to their cloud provider, which regularly unlocks a deal size no departmental budget would have carried. If you are in a program like AWS ISV Accelerate, private offer fees drop, so the real internal conversation is usually about qualifying for the right program rather than about avoiding marketplaces altogether.

Go deeper, your way

4 hand-picked resources, 1 India-specific, 4 link-checked. Pick how you want to dig in.

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✓ Link checked Free Intermediate

Why we picked it The actual eligibility bar for co-selling with AWS, in AWS's own words: marketplace listing, ACE eligibility, 5 launched and 15 qualified opportunities in 12 months. Read it before you promise your board a co-sell motion.

AWS ISV Accelerate Program

From Amazon Web Services 10 min read

Open aws.amazon.com

The same ground, at another level

How channel, resellers and marketplaces reads from a different seat.

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People also ask

What is a channel partner, and why would a software company hand over 30% of the price? Because the partner is selling you something cash cannot buy: an existing trusted relationship with a customer, in a market or segment where you ha... Breaking into GTM 5 resources → Is our product even ready for resellers? Probably not, if you are still learning how to sell it yourself. Channel accelerates a motion that already works; it does not create one. SaaS Capi... Breaking into GTM 5 resources → What is a cloud marketplace and why does everyone tell us to list on AWS? A cloud marketplace is a catalogue inside AWS, Azure or Google Cloud where a customer buys your software through the procurement they already use f... Breaking into GTM 3 resources → App store, app directory, cloud marketplace: which of these actually matters for us? They share a name and almost nothing else. An app directory (HubSpot, Slack, Freshworks) is a discovery surface for that platform's existing custom... Breaking into GTM 4 resources → How do we actually list on AWS Marketplace, and what changes in our sales process? The listing itself is a few weeks of work: register as a seller, choose a delivery method (SaaS is usually contract or metering based), write the l... Doing the work 5 resources → A reseller has signed. How do I make them actually productive? Assume two months of your time before they sell anything, and plan for it from the day the contract is signed. They need exactly what your own reps... Doing the work 4 resources →

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