Succeeding at AWS Marketplace Sales with Propensity-to-Buy Scores

Cloud marketplaces have revolutionized the way businesses access and consume software solutions. They offer a centralized platform where customers can explore a vast array of products and services, ranging from infrastructure to AI-driven applications. 

AWS Marketplace has emerged as one such pivotal platform for organizations to discover, procure, and deploy a wide range of software solutions tailored to their specific needs. 

For AWS partners, such marketplaces provide unparalleled visibility and reach, enabling them to showcase their offerings to a global audience of potential buyers. Moreover, by leveraging the infrastructure and services of cloud providers like AWS, partners can streamline deployment, scale effortlessly, and deliver exceptional value to customers.

When co-selling with AWS, it becomes essential for partners to leverage every bit of data and insights around customers that can help them achieve better engagement and success.

Propensity-to-Buy

One of the key metrics that defines successful engagement within AWS Marketplace is the concept of Propensity-to-Buy. This metric, provided by AWS as the Marketplace Engagement Score, offers valuable insights to partners into the likelihood of a customer procuring a solution through the marketplace. 

Propensity-to-Buy takes into account various factors, including past purchasing behavior, current needs, and pattern or likelihood of available cloud budget, to generate a predictive score indicative of the customer's readiness to make a purchase.

WorkSpan Hyperscaler Edition for AWS, (see WorkSpan listing on AWS Marketplace) delivers these Propensity-to-Buy metrics inside your CRM. With its CRM integration with AWS ACE and AMMP, partners can now see these scores at an opportunity referral level. 

WorkSpan Hyperscaler Edition for AWS delivers a comprehensive suite of solutions aimed at optimizing and simplifying various aspects of co-sell partnership with AWS. 

Starting with WorkSpan Marketplace Listing Management Service, partners can benefit from expert support in launching transactable offers efficiently, reducing time-to-market and resource requirements. 

The Co-Sell Automation offering facilitates streamlined collaboration with AWS, automating opportunity and referral sharing with AWS ACE while providing real-time insights. 

WorkSpan's Marketplace Private Offer Management app integrates the AWS Marketplace Management Portal and your CRM seamlessly, offering a consolidated view of operations and simplifying the creation and lifecycle management of private offers. 

Collectively, these offerings empower businesses to navigate the intricacies of the AWS partnerships with enhanced efficiency, control, and performance optimization. 

Leveraging Propensity-to-Buy for Success

Partners should view Propensity-to-Buy as a strategic asset in their engagement with customers. By understanding the factors influencing a customer's propensity to purchase, partners can tailor their approach to maximize conversion opportunities. 

For instance, partners can use the score to prioritize sales efforts, focusing on prospects with a higher likelihood of making a purchase. Additionally, partners can leverage the insights provided by Propensity-to-Buy scores to personalize their efforts, addressing specific pain points and delivering targeted solutions that resonate with the customer's needs.

Navigating Different Propensity-to-Buy Scenarios

When dealing with customers exhibiting varying levels of propensity-to-buy from the cloud marketplace, partners should adopt a nuanced approach tailored to each scenario:

Low Propensity-to-Buy: For customers with a low propensity-to-buy, partners should focus on nurturing the relationship, providing value-added services such as consultations, demos, trials, and proof-of-concept to demonstrate the benefits of their solutions. By building trust and rapport, partners can gradually increase the customer's confidence and willingness to transact through the marketplace.

In addition to above, you should look at educating the customers on the benefits of procuring software from AWS marketplace, as a gateway to a vast ecosystem of software solutions and services tailored to meet their business needs. AWS Marketplace can transform the way they procure and deploy software solutions. Here is a summary of those benefits:

• Cloud Committed Spends: Educate customers about Cloud Committed Spend programs. These programs incentivize customers to commit to high-volume and long-term cloud spending, often including SaaS solutions available on the marketplace. In case they are already leveraging these programs, ask them to find any unspent budgets that are parked with AWS that they can leverage to buy your solution.

• Procurement at Speed: Access a diverse range of software solutions quickly, with the agility to scale as needed. Benefit from flexible pricing options and commitments tailored to your requirements, allowing you to pay for what you need, when you need it.

• Decreased Transaction Friction: Enjoy customized terms and flexible payment options through Private Offers and Consulting Partner Private Offers. Negotiate custom pricing, volume discounts, and terms directly with third-party vendors, ensuring a seamless procurement process.

• Standardized License Terms: Simplify procurement with standardized contract options designed collaboratively with buyers and sellers. The Standard Contract and Enterprise Contract for AWS Marketplace provide consistent terms for software usage, reducing negotiation time and accelerating innovation.

• Vendor Insights: Mitigate risk and streamline procurement with Vendor Insights, which consolidates security and compliance information in a unified dashboard. Gain access to evidence related to data privacy, application security, and access control, facilitated by automated evidence refreshing through AWS Config and AWS Audit Manager.

• Professional Services: Access assessments, implementation, support, managed services, and training for third-party software through Professional Services available in AWS Marketplace. Simplify procurement by finding software and associated services in one centralized platform, streamlining the entire innovation process.

Medium Propensity-to-Buy: For customers with a moderate propensity-to-buy score, partners should seize the opportunity to capitalize on their interest and facilitate a smooth transition towards procurement through AWS Marketplace.

Collaborate with the customers to assure them on their procurement and support journey through AWS marketplace. 

• Strategic Planning for Adoption: Collaborate with customers to develop a strategic roadmap for adoption, outlining clear milestones and success criteria. Offer guidance on deployment strategies, integration with existing systems, and scalability to ensure a seamless transition.

• Incentives for Commitment: Showcase the benefits of long-term commitments through AWS Marketplace, such as volume discounts, extended support, and priority access to new features and updates. Highlight success stories of other customers who have realized significant value through such commitments.

• Consultative Support: Provide ongoing consultative support throughout the procurement process, addressing any concerns or questions the customer may have. Offer insights into industry best practices, regulatory compliance, and optimization strategies to maximize the value of their investment.

• Engagement with AWS Resources: Facilitate direct engagement with AWS resources, including solution architects, technical account managers, and industry experts. Leverage their expertise to address technical queries, validate solution designs, and ensure alignment with AWS best practices.

• Continuous Value Delivery: Emphasize the continuous value delivery enabled by AWS Marketplace, with access to a wide range of software solutions, professional services, and ecosystem partners. Illustrate how ongoing innovation and updates ensure that customers stay ahead of evolving business needs and market trends.

High Propensity-to-Buy: Customers with a high propensity-to-buy score are poised to make a purchase from the marketplace imminently. Partners should capitalize on this opportunity by expediting the sales process, providing seamless onboarding, and facilitating a smooth transaction through the marketplace. Additionally, partners should strive to exceed customer expectations post-sale, fostering long-term loyalty and advocacy within the ecosystem.

• Accelerated Onboarding: Streamline the onboarding process by providing pre-configured solutions, deployment templates, and best practice guides. Ensure that the customer can quickly deploy and start realizing value from the solution without delays or complexities.

• Fast-Track Procurement: Expedite the procurement process by leveraging streamlined purchasing options, such as Private Offers and Consulting Partner Private Offers. Negotiate favorable terms and pricing to align with the customer's requirements and accelerate decision-making.

• Scalable Solutions: Highlight the scalability and flexibility of your solutions to accommodate the customer's evolving needs and growth trajectory. Showcase case studies and testimonials of other customers who have successfully scaled their operations using your solutions on AWS Marketplace.

• Post-Sale Support and Optimization: Offer dedicated post-sale support to address any implementation challenges, technical issues, or optimization opportunities. Provide guidance on resource optimization, cost management, and performance tuning to ensure maximum return on investment.

• Long-Term Partnership: Position yourself as a trusted advisor and strategic partner for the customer's long-term success. Demonstrate your commitment to their goals and objectives, and proactively identify opportunities for collaboration, innovation, and mutual growth.

By leveraging these Propensity-to-Buy metrics, partners can optimize their sales strategies, deepen customer relationships, and unlock new opportunities for growth. As cloud adoption continues to soar, mastering the art of using Propensity-to-Buy scores will be instrumental in driving sustained success and competitive advantage for partners in AWS Marketplace.

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Happy Partnering!