A Cloud Provider Co-Selling Success Story – Winning 4 Ways

It was a typical day at our startup office, doing typical startup-y seller-type work, i.e., prospecting, when I was approached by my manager about an inbound lead. Turns out a sales team at AWS had heard of our startup, Armory, Inc., and wanted to introduce us to one of their strategic accounts, Snap, Inc. I was shocked and stoked. I admit that I was giddy.

It felt unreal because I knew the power that AWS wields. I wasn’t immediately certain that I could get a deal there but it felt highly likely if we played our cards right.

I can’t continue without recognizing that a lead like this is GOLDEN. A truly rare thing. Even if AWS had said, “there’s some interest here but you are on your own”, it would have made my day to have a lead at a marquis company drop into my lap. But because AWS saw Armory as a way to provide value to Snap, we would be perceived as a validated tool in their toolbelt, eliminating the need to identify and vet a tool themselves. So it wasn’t just a hot lead. It was a scorching, burn-your-fingers type of hot.

Specific to the co-sell experience, we sellers know it is a professional fantasy to magically get immediate access to an account and, perhaps more importantly, to get immediate trust. Partnering with AWS, it’s just suddenly there.

Typically, a seller’s access to a customer is limited to the people and processes specific to their solution. A sophisticated and highly motivated seller may go outside of the software category circle of influence in certain situations that warrant the effort. For instance, a seller of data software may explore and engage with the app development or engineering teams to get broader exposure and buy-in.

Whether you go that far or not, it’s common knowledge, supported by the oft-used and widely despised MEDDPICC framework, that broader awareness of a customer’s org enables a higher level of assuredness that you understand how to do business with them. But even if you are selling a true platform solution that requires widespread exposure and buy-in, you still don’t have Cloud Provider breadth and influence. It’s as close to God-level as you can get.

As important as the air cover, an AWS introduction also means access to the right people. In this case, it was fortuitous that the AWS Solutions Architect (SA), David Murray, recognized our value to the customer. David had attended a meeting set up by my manager, Kit Wetzler, our Head of Sales, where our solution was presented to a group of AWS SAs.

In my mind, presenting your solution to a group of AWS Solutions Architects is pure genius, so kudos to Kit for recognizing the value in that effort. Similar to the breadth of decision making exposure that Cloud Provider AEs have, Cloud Provider SAs have broad exposure to the software solutions already deployed in the customer environment. This particular situation is evidence of just how powerful that visibility can be.

Having worked closely with Snap for years, David was very familiar with their deployment of the open source technology that was the core of our solution at Armory. Because our solution enabled a competitive advantage over Google, AWS was motivated to support adoption. When Snap ran into an issue that required additional expertise, David thought of us and reached out.

Kit and I ended up traveling to meet with the customer on short notice and as an amusing side-note, the AWS team didn’t tell the customer beforehand. They just brought us in and introduced us when the meeting started. The customer took it in stride and in fact, showed appreciation for AWS taking the initiative of addressing their problem and managing logistics on their behalf. (I wouldn’t expect this as normal behavior; in this case, it was due to the nature of the relationship between AWS and Snap and the specific people involved.)

So…time out!

Consider for a moment the challenge of getting the meeting described above without the help of AWS. The challenge would consist of (1) getting in front of exactly the right people, (2) at the right time, and (3) in a situation where trust is already established. (See this blog for more on the massive importance of trust.) You are likely to get #1 with a lot of effort and prospecting savvy. But you might miss #2 because a project could be happening right now and by the time you reach the right people and six to nine months have past, you are way too late. And regarding number 3, if you don’t have trust, you may not even get a meeting. Ever.

Partnering with the Cloud Providers gives you the trifecta of account engagement.

Win #1: We got in…at the right time, with the right people. Huge.

On to win #2…

AWS brought us in, saved us a year of work, and enabled us to highlight our expertise in an initial project that–believe it or not–AWS paid for. Yes, funded the initial project–based on a clearly-defined ROI and –and the check wasn’t small. Take that in for a second. (And sign up for my AWS Marketplace coaching subscription if you want to learn how to make that happen.)

Sales Process Acceleration

Once our expertise was proven out, we were in a position to highlight our enterprise features and enter into a sales process. Not to kick a dead horse, but the process was accelerated because, yes, we were talking to the right people at the right time. So as we got closer to the commercials phase of the sales cycle, the AWS Account Manager I was working with, Erin Quinn, asked if I’d be up for transacting in the AWS Marketplace. I told her that I was aware of the marketplace but I needed to understand why she was suggesting it and how to approach it with the customer.

I didn’t know it at the time, but that’s when I experienced Win #2.

In my 25+ years of selling there has never been a truly significant change in the sales process that I can remember. There have been changes in methodology and approach, but a real change in the process? Nope.

When Erin suggested transacting via the marketplace, it represented that sales process change. Suddenly there was a procurement option to present. Before the advent of the marketplaces, the only real path to procurement was the purchase order process. So when the time came to negotiate, sellers had only a round-about “trial close.” For those that are not familiar, a trial close is where you try to determine whether a customer is ready to buy, typically by asking questions or…providing options.

The Trial Close

There are a lot of ways to trial close earlier in the process, but at the end when it’s time to buy, the options are more limited. A trial close right before negotiating could be something like, “I know you are getting close to a decision, so if you choose to go with us. at what point would you need to have the solution in production?” A more blunt force approach would be, “…if you chose to go with us, are we in a good position to get a purchase order before the end of the month?”

Both are better than not executing a trial close to help understand the customer’s readiness to buy your solution, but neither one is anywhere near as powerful as, “…if you were to go with us, would you be open to purchasing in a cloud marketplace or do you expect to go the traditional route using a purchase order?”

If the power of that approach is not immediately obvious, consider the idea that a customer could buy using a credit card or a purchase order. Even using those two options would be better than no procurement option. But replacing the credit card option with the marketplace option opens up a whole different discussion and puts you, the seller, in a whole different light.

Bring Marketplace Up Early and Often

Having brought up the marketplace option, you can now sell the benefits of the marketplace. If you take my coaching courses, you’ll see how much more powerful it is to bring this up early in the sales process. Bringing it up early is the best way to maximize the benefits to create a truly unfair advantage over your competitors and make your deal much more likely to close. Not to mention the possibility of making the deal bigger and closing it faster. But I digress…

The customer not only has options now that you brought up the marketplace, but they should be compelled to go to Procurement to bring it up. If your competitor is not offering this option AND it turns out to be attractive to the customer, you may have achieved the single advantage you needed in a highly competitive sale in order to close the deal.

Even if the customer doesn’t see value in purchasing through the marketplace, you will likely have performed an effective trial close, in that the customer was compelled to visualize buying your solution and you will very likely get a reaction.

Be Different, Be Compelling

The point in Win #2 is that simply using the marketplace as an option is different and compelling. If the customer doesn’t buy through the marketplace, you still have an advantage over a competitor who doesn’t know how or why to bring it up.

Win #3 is more obvious. Win #3 is closing the deal early.

After Erin explained that Snap could use the marketplace purchase to draw down on their “commit”, I was shocked again. I truly couldn’t believe it. There was a wildly compelling benefit to the customer. In this case, Snap had not burned through their commit and it was late October. So part of this story was luck, but isn’t that always the case? Plus, a case could be made that early in the year is a great time for a customer to draw down on their commit so that they are certain to use it all.

The Commit Drawdown Benefit – Accessing Committed Spend

After I explained the draw-down benefit to my end user customer at Snap, he went to procurement and was told they were interested. After that, he brought it up multiple times because he wanted to be sure to take advantage of it. Keep in mind, they hadn’t even told us yet that they were going to go forward with our solution. So was it a kick-ass trial close? Oh yes it was. It was obvious by then that they were buying.

But it got better. Snap’s desire to draw down on their commit compelled them to make the purchase in late November in order to ensure it happened before they lost any leftover committed spend. I was able to close the deal in November, well before our year-end in December. Again, unbelievable. Not to mention impossible without the marketplace option.

The other benefit Erin explained when she first brought up the marketplace was that the AWS sales team would get quota credit if the deal was transacted there. I consider this part of Win #4.

My little $275K deal was hardly a drop in the bucket for AWS, when it comes to revenue-impact. But just the idea that it would contribute to more support and goodwill from AWS was enough to make my head spin all over again at the value marketplace selling.

This got better, too.

I had no idea that my “little” deal, which btw, was pretty fat for me and Armory, was going to open the door for tens of millions of dollars to start flowing into the marketplace. After my buyer transacted our deal in the marketplace, he began purchasing everything he could, using that vehicle. My deal essentially opened the marketplace floodgates, a huge benefit to both the customer and AWS. Win #4 for me was all about understanding co-sell; both understanding the power of AWS co-selling by leveraging the marketplace as well as knowing how to most effectively use that benefit to my advantage.

To review, here are the four wins:

1. Get in at god-level.
2. Leverage a change in the sales process: a new and powerful trial close.
3. Close the deal early.
4. Maximize the co-sell.

There are more benefits to marketplace selling, but the benefits outlined here were enough to make a huge difference in my deal, not to mention a major change in my sales process going forward. If we didn’t have AWS support at Snap, it’s unlikely we’d have known about the problem that we could solve and even if we did, it’s unlikely we’d have gotten in at the right time. If Armory didn’t have the opportunity to solve the problem, we’d have never gotten a deal. If Erin hadn’t mentioned the marketplace, it’s unlikely we’d have closed the deal before our fiscal year end. If we hadn’t transacted in the AWS Marketplace, it’s likely someone else would have opened the floodgates, but we got credit and enabled more revenue flow by opening it up earlier.

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It was an amazing experience and the very beginning of the journey that brought me to the here and now, where I can help you maximize the benefits of the marketplaces. Sign up for my newsletter to get marketplace selling tips and updates.

If you have experienced the benefits explained above and had an exceptional outcome, please describe your experience in the comments. If you are willing to explain the story in detail, I’d be happy to add my thoughts and publish it in my blog on its own or as part of a similar subject.