Blog

4 Key Co-Sell Challenges
and How to Overcome Them​

Independent Software Vendors can leverage cloud co-selling to create exponential growth. But there are also significant challenges, we're here to guide you through them

By Jonathan Avital, Jun 10 2021
4 Key Co-Sell Challenges<br> and How to Overcome Them​

Our last blog discussed the advantages of co-sell in the cloud and why it’s a clear win for everyone involved—cloud vendors increase their consumption, co-sellers or Independent Software Vendors (ISVs) increase revenue and market share, and end-users can easily find vetted software tools that are compatible with their cloud provider. The advantages are so striking that, if it were easy, everyone would be doing it. But there are also significant challenges in co-sell, and you need the right strategy, tactics, and deep systematic knowledge to overcome them. We want to dive into those here.

Challenge #1: Breaking through the noise

Cloud vendors want to work with ISVs—it’s in their interest since co-selling helps increase consumption and expand their portfolio of solutions. But there are countless ISV solutions out there, all claiming to be the best, and all trying to make a lasting impression on the busy cloud seller. It can be hard for any one company to stand out.

Solution: Communication strategy and tactics

In order to stand out, it’s critical to emphasize why your solution adds value to the customer and serves the stakeholder’s interest. It’s important to understand what motivates the stakeholder, to show him what he is looking for, or interested in. It doesn’t happen automatically—as an ISV, it’s up to you to engage the stakeholder and motivate him/her to direct resources and attention to your company. The stakeholder’s time and attention are limited, so you must get right to the point, use the right lingo, and align your messaging for it to work.

Challenge #2: Choosing the right partnership program

Cloud providers have countless partnership programs that can help an ISV differentiate its solution from a technical and/or business standpoint. Each program has its own, unique requirements. There’s a lot of information out there about the different programs, both public and internal, that includes lingo that outsiders often struggle to understand. In order to maximize the potential of this strategic partnership, it’s important to choose the right program, one that allows you to maximize its value as quickly as possible and incentivizes the seller to help you. But how can you navigate all the information to understand what you need to do and be sure of your choice?

Solution: Research and expertise

You have to dive deep, to really understand each program in order to evaluate which has the most advantages for you. You can either do your own research or consult with people with cloud co-selling experience who can help direct you to the right program. And that’s not all—once you’ve chosen a program, it’s also important to understand what you need to do to maximize the value of the program in the minimum amount of time, with a minimal investment of internal resources.

Challenge #3: Connecting with the right people

Cloud sales and partnership organizations are huge and complex both in terms of the types of roles and the number of people fulfilling each type. However, despite their size, they are generally well-organized and built for scale, so it’s possible and worthwhile to understand how they are structured in order to figure out where to focus your time and effort. In some cases, it can make more sense for your business to invest in a relationship with someone on the industry team, or even someone in a technical function rather than the account manager.

Solution: It’s all about people

The first step in connecting with the right people is to map out the cloud vendor’s organizational structure, understand the roles and responsibilities, and identify the stakeholders that have the motivation to push you through towards your destination. That’s who you want to invest in. You may want to think in terms of both roles and individuals.

It’s a good idea to combine a bottom-up and top-down approach. Create traction in the field, interact with AM’s and field sellers, gain some wins, and in parallel, try to land executive sponsorship from business and/or technical personas. At the end of the day, you want your solution to be at the forefront of the stakeholders’ mind. You want them to talk about you with their peers and customers—that’s what will generate a scalable sales funnel for you.

Challenge #4: Get things done

Congrats! you finally got in front of an important stakeholder. Keep in mind that the cloud stakeholders’ time is precious. If you’re not at the top of your game, they’re not going to wait around for you to get your act together—they’ll move on to another ISV that can help them achieve their goals. And even if you got it right and managed to convince them to work for you, you still want to verify that your messaging is being transferred accurately by the stakeholder, without being changed on the way to its destination.

Solution: Be prepared and minimize friction

To ensure an effective session, come with a clear-cut value proposition and specific asks for the stakeholder, and make sure that you have all your marketing collateral ready to go. This includes things like intro emails, one-pagers, sales decks, etc. It’s better for you to prepare everything for them and let them be the messenger. That way, you’ll have everything in place when it’s time, prevent messaging distortions, and show the stakeholder that you can deliver and drive mutual sales.

The art of cloud co-sell—benefit from experience

Co-selling is an amazing opportunity, but there are a lot of elements to keep track of. It helps to be aware of the challenges (we covered the main ones, but there are more) and have a mitigation plan in place to overcome them. It’s worth the investment—if you do it right, co-selling can be a strategic partnership channel with infinite business benefits.

And if you need help, give us a shout. We’d be happy to help, it’s what we do 🙂