How to Unlock Committed Spend If You Aren’t the CISO or CTO
One of the key benefits of listing and selling your solution on AWS, Azure, and Google Cloud Marketplaces is the opportunity to unlock your prospect and customers’ committed spend budgets.
Referred to as Google Cloud commits, MACC (in Microsoft), commitments (in AWS), and cloud commits, this budget is money that CISOs and CTOs commit to spend in annual and multi-year contracts with their cloud service providers (CSPs) – AWS, Azure, and Google Cloud. CSP customers agree to commit spend budgets largely to get a better deal on consumption costs.
Originally, the committed spend budget (and cloud marketplaces) were reserved for IT, DevOps, and cybersecurity purchases. But today that has changed. In fact, there’s a good chance that your prospects have committed spend budget on the verge of expiring in their organization that your buyer is entirely unaware of.
Here’s a guide to help your buyers unlock committed spend budgets within their organization.
Can economic buyers like CFO, CMOs, CROs, HR leads, and others access committed spend budgets?
Yes!
While cloud marketplaces were initially geared towards IT, DevOps, and cybersecurity solutions, that has changed immensely in recent years.
Today, MarTech, FinTech, HR Tech, eCommerce, AI, data analytics, and a wide range of solution types are available on cloud marketplaces.
If your buyer says they don’t have a budget, encourage them to ask about the committed spend budget within their organization.
Internal discovery questions:
- Who is our CSP?
- Who owns our committed spend budget internally?
- When do our cloud credits expire?
When is the best time to make the case for accessing the committed spend budget?
After organizations sign their multi-year cloud contracts, the economic winds can change. For this reason, the CEO, CFO, and committed spend decision maker may have decided to put more money in the committed spend budget that they might have otherwise.
Your organization’s cloud commits are set to expire.
If your contract is coming up and your compute costs have been lower than expected, now is the best time to request budget from committed spend. To make this case, simply point out that the money will expire and go to waste.
What to highlight:
- Point out that the money will go to waste if not spent by the expiration date. No one wants to leave money on the table.
Your department had their budget slashed but needs a solution that will drive tangible ROI.
If your budget was slashed unexpectedly but you need to procure key software, be prepared to explain that this money will be better spent on revenue, marketing, opps, or another department, as opposed to IT.
These requests need to be approved by the budget holder, usually the CFO and CIO. Be prepared to make the business case for your solution.
What to highlight:
- Be sure to explain how the solution will benefit the business, including expected ROI, time savings, and organizational-wide benefits.
- Point out that there are plenty of cloud commits left, and it’s best to start using this budget so we don’t waste it down the road.
- Highlight that this will make procurement easier and faster, especially for the legal team since the contracts are written up.
You need to accelerate procurement.
Let’s say this new solution is mission critical for your department. In that case, buying the solution through a cloud marketplace can accelerate procurement and implementation.
What to highlight:
- Explain that the solution is needed ASAP and procuring through the marketplace will accelerate the process for legal, procurement, and ops.
- Focus on how the solution has been vetted by the CSP through security and legal review.
Your solution offers features that also benefit IT.
Depending on your department, your solution might have use cases that can be useful to the IT team.
What to highlight:
- Flag why the solution is mission critical for your department, as well as how its use cases can be leveraged by IT users. Two birds, one solution!
If I am not the CIO, CISO, or CTO, how can I access committed spend?
In every organization, this will look slightly different.
If your CFO owns all budgets, then you will likely need to funnel this request towards his direction, with the business case attached. What ROI will this solution bring?
If your CIO, CISO, or CTO own the budget, they might need to run the request by the CEO or CFO. However, if you make the case that there is plenty of committed spend budget left and that it’s due to expire, or the solution is relatively low-cost, the committed spend budget holder can often approve this without additional input. After all, who wants to risk leaving money on the table?
Invisory is your Cloud GTM partner
Navigating cloud marketplaces, including committed spend conversations, can be challenging. At Invisory, we help you build an end-to-end cloud GTM strategy to help you unlock the most value from listing and selling on the cloud marketplaces.
Listed and transacting? Not listed but curious? Looking to expand to another marketplace? Invisory is here to help.
Reach out today.
