"Our Reps Don't Talk About It"

Here is a pattern that comes up constantly when working with ISVs who have been on cloud marketplace for six months or more. The listing exists. The billing integration is live.

The private offer capability is configured. And when you ask the VP of Sales how it is going, they say some version of: "Our reps don't really talk about it in deals."

This is not a marketplace problem. It is a sales enablement problem.

Cloud marketplace does not sell itself. A listing on AWS or Azure Marketplace is infrastructure — it is a channel, like having a reseller agreement or a direct order form.

Whether that channel generates revenue depends entirely on whether the people closing deals understand it well enough to use it and believe it is worth raising.

If your AEs do not bring up marketplace in deals, they have one of three problems: they do not understand the buyer benefit well enough to explain it, they believe it complicates the deal rather than simplifying it, or they see it as something that benefits the company but not their quota. All three are fixable.

This guide explains how.

The Sales Leader's Honest Objections

Before building the internal case for marketplace, it helps to name the objections that sales leaders — VPs, CROs, regional managers — actually have. These are not unreasonable. They are the product of a rational sales person trying to protect their quota and their team's time.