Here's why that could be a game-changing insight for your SaaS GTM strategy.

When the Sr. Director of WW Business Development & Strategy at a $62B data giant shares their strategy, we listen.

In our recent event, Drew Herd of Databricks explained a marketplace insight that challenges conventional wisdom: external Google traffic converts on their Cloud Marketplace listings at 2X rate of traffic from Databricks' own web pages.

The explanation reveals a critical insight for cloud GTM:

Google Cloud's existing customers arrive with billing IDs already in place. "We get better conversion there," Drew explained during our recent GCP event. These customers face dramatically less friction when starting a trial or making a purchase.

The marketplace-first mentality runs deep at Databricks. From inception, they made 2 foundational decisions: be cloud-only and make their platform easy to use. This required deep integration with cloud infrastructure, security ecosystems, and they also focused on marketplace.

“We wanted it to be easy for our customers to buy, easy for our customers to be invoiced, and easy for our customers to see how they're actually using our products. So it all kind of begins with that marketplace, and you know, bringing it back to PAYG. PAYG is the beginning of that journey.” Drew explained.

On marketplace, Databricks has mastered the PAYG (Pay-As-You-Go) model with a 14-day trial strategy, creating a frictionless path for enterprises to evaluate and deploy their Data Intelligence Platform.

With 500+ new signups monthly through GCP marketplace alone, it's the first step in their consumption-focused growth model, that's helping to deliver 62% YoY growth on $3B+ revenue.

As Databricks itself has 1,600+ quota-carrying salespeople, they keep realistic expectations about the cloud partnership.

"We don't look at Google sellers as people who are ever going to sell Databricks," Drew notes.

Instead, they strategically leverage Google's strengths at two critical points:

Top of funnel: Databricks uses the Marketplace as a key entry point for new customers through their PAYG trial strategy, driving top-of-funnel acquisition.

Bottom of funnel: They strategically use Google Cloud's programs (PSF, workload migration) to help close deals and encourage customer commitments

Databricks also actively engages in three-way meetings and alignment calls with Google Cloud account teams, maintaining a joint focus on the customer.

With Canalys forecasting SaaS marketplace sales to hit $85B by 2028, these marketplace strategies are becoming critical.

Join Cohort 10 of Cloud GTM Leader (April 1): Unlock Marketplace Growth

Our milestone Cloud GTM Leader cohort 10 kicks off on Tuesday, April 1st - can you believe it? 200+ alliance leaders, millions in marketplace deals—and we're just getting started!

When we launched our first Cloud GTM Leader program 18 months ago, we never imagined the transformation we'd witness.

As Cohort 10 kicks off Tuesday, I'm reflecting on the collective wisdom from hundreds of alliance leaders with whom we've shattered the "tribal knowledge" barrier of cloud marketplace success.

The most eye-opening insight? In a world where cloud commits reached $419 Bn and are on track to hit half a trillion (!) by the end of 2025, success patterns have emerged with striking clarity:

Companies that consistently land $1M+ marketplace deal flow approach cloud GTM fundamentally differently from those who struggle with sporadic transactions. It's rarely about technical integration—it's about GTM transformation.

What we've learned across 9 cohorts that might surprise you:

• The maturity gap is still huge: While many companies are "listed" on AWS, Azure or Google Cloud, only a minority have built systematic GTM and processes to consistently capture enterprise cloud commits and marketplace opportunity

• Internal buy-in is still one of the biggest challenges and predictors of success: Organizations with aligned incentives between sales, alliances, leadership, and marketing teams report much higher marketplace growth

• Best performer profile: Leaders generating the largest revenue via marketplaces don't just co-sell—they make their solution essential to the cloud provider's customer conversations

• Deal velocity acceleration: One alumni went from zero to $200K marketplace revenue and $7M pipeline in just 8 weeks—proving what's possible with the right framework

• Free trials and PAYG is the next frontier of growth in Cloud GTM

• Channel Partners proved to be essential for scaling on cloud marketplaces

Our community now includes alliance leaders from GitLab, Citrix, Darktrace, HashiCorp, AllCloud and others who've transformed marketplace listings into growth engines.

In celebrating this milestone, I'm grateful to 50+ speakers who shared their insights and especially to our incredible mentors, who go above and beyond: Jonathan Kingsepp, David Mauer, Alex Balcanquall, Mike Marzano, Brian Laing, Niall Ruane, Michael Musselman, Daniel Roppert, Rolf Heimes and many others.

We’re proud of our 9/10 ratings across cohorts, speaking to the practical value participants extract beyond theoretical knowledge.

For Cohort 10, we continue enhancing our most-loved elements, expanding our masterminds, adding new frameworks and case studies of marketplace growth. We also added community meetups that continue post-course.

Cohort 10 starts Tuesday, April 1st - last chance to join

The opportunity cost of waiting on Cloud GTM has never been clearer. Will your team join the ranks of marketplace leaders in 2025?