Here are eight lessons worth discussing with your team:

1. Give co-sell executive backing and a repeatable process.

Nofar Asselman, Worldwide Leader, AWS Marketplace Center of Excellence, Seller GTM Innovation
​Nofar highlighted two characteristics of companies reaching $1B Marketplace milestones: executive sponsorship and repeatable co-sell plays. Templates and clear engagement triggers help sellers understand when to involve AWS and what support to ask for. That makes the motion less dependent on individual relationships.

2. Put co-sell expertise close to your sellers.

Sid Vajpayee, Vice President, Global Cloud & Technology Alliance Partnerships, Zscaler

Sid described hiring specialists, including people from hyperscalers, and embedding them in regional sales teams. They help sellers choose the right cloud, understand the joint use case and engage their counterparts. The support follows the opportunity through to the Marketplace transaction.
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​3. Fit Marketplace into the way your company already sells.

Robert Karbaum, Director, Partner Systems & Innovation, Salesforce

Robert described how Salesforce aligned Marketplace closely with its direct selling motion. This reduced the need for bespoke structures and freed capacity to build features and automation. At the event, he reported that Salesforce’s Marketplace business spanned 35 countries. The lesson: make the route easier for your existing sales organization to use.

4. Give channel partners a clear role in scaling.

Munish Khetrapal, Vice President, Cloud, Palo Alto Networks

Munish named channel participation as the turning point in Palo Alto Networks’ Marketplace journey. Partners helped deliver the offerings and ensure customers consumed them successfully. As he put it: “So, for us, that was the big pivotal point.” Build partner participation into the Marketplace growth plan early.

5. Recognize the services opportunity around the transaction.

Mark Grigoletto, Director of Cloud Marketplace, Presidio

Mark estimated that services accompany 80% of Presidio’s Marketplace product transactions, even though many customers purchase those services outside Marketplace. Implementation and ongoing services deepen the customer relationship and help uncover further opportunities. The channel’s contribution extends beyond the product transaction.​

6. Build co-sell targeting around a specific customer trigger.

​Drawing on her previous experience at an ISV, Nofar Asselman explained how customers’ monthly AWS Lambda spend helped identify demand for serverless observability. That signal gave the team a focused way to map and target accounts with AWS. Define the workload, usage pattern or business event that makes your solution relevant, then build your co-sell play around it.

7. Turn joint innovation into a repeatable sales and delivery process.

Whitney Bragg-Sabins, Senior Global Relationship Manager for AWS, ServiceNow

Whitney described ServiceNow’s Joint Solution Accelerator as a framework connecting ServiceNow, AWS and system integrator partners around business outcomes, priority use cases and implementation. The aim is to turn joint innovation “into a simple field motion with clear ownership.” Give partners a defined path from the customer’s business problem through to delivery.

8. Automate the full offer lifecycle to support scale.

Munish Khetrapal said more than 93% of Palo Alto Networks’ Marketplace offers were automated, from quote generation through execution and booking.

“It was simply impossible for us to hit the scale of business without that type of automation.”

Plan automation across the transaction lifecycle, including the work needed to execute each deal. Munish also described working with SaaSify each month to adapt the operating playbook to individual cloud marketplaces.

Take one of these lessons into your next team meeting. Decide what you would change, who would own it and how you would measure whether it helps.

Our $1B Marketplace Club report gives you more examples to work from: 16 company profiles, 10 key insights and 7 operating playbooks.​

Read the full $1B Marketplace Club report here.