Why is Salesforce Selling on AWS Marketplace?
Last November, Salesforce and AWS made a joint announcement that select Salesforce products were being sold on the AWS Marketplace. You might be thinking, Why would Salesforce, the world’s number one CRM, want to sell on a cloud marketplace?
From one perspective, Salesforce is simply practicing what it’s been preaching since 2005, when the company launched its own cloud marketplace, the AppExchange. But Salesforce’s decision to sell solutions like Service Cloud and Tableau on the AWS Marketplace also tells us something larger about the future of B2B selling in hyperscaler marketplaces like AWS, Azure, and GCP.
Here’s our take on why Salesforce is fully embracing the hyperscaler cloud marketplace movement.
Why established brands are selling on cloud marketplaces
It’s no secret that consumer behavior is changing. “The line between B2B and B2C buying is thinning,” analyst Jay McBain recently pointed out in a webinar hosted by Invisory.
What McBain means is that today’s B2B buyers – which are largely millennial – have different shopping habits than previous generations. In 2024, B2B buyers are largely digital first, and generally speaking want to streamline the sales process. By streamlining, we mean automating the procurement process to just a few clicks, like you’d buy household goods on the Amazon app. For B2B sellers, removing as much friction from the process is imperative. Or as McBain put it, “Shoppers don’t want to talk to a person anymore.”
For a company like Salesforce, listing on a trusted marketplace like AWS enables customers to embrace the the buying experience they’re familiar with, which includes:
- Subscribing to software products, as they would subscribe to Netflix.
- Making payments directly to the marketplace as they would buy third-party goods on the Amazon app. AWS ensures the ISV gets paid, manages currency conversion, and takes care of tax payments.
- Requesting customizable private offers, which helps buyers streamline the negotiation process for customers with unique use cases and cloud commit budgets (more on that in the next section).
Why Salesforce is selling on the AWS Marketplace
For Salesforce, the advantages of selling on the AWS Marketplace are clear. By selling on AWS, Salesforce can:
- Take advantage of AWS Marketplace customer cloud commit spending. Many companies who host on AWS have credits to use before they expire, and spending them on solutions built or acquired by an established brand like Salesforce is a safe bet. Think of credits like a use it or lose it gift card available for just one year. When that committed cloud spend can be spent on applications listed on the marketplace AND cloud compute your money goes farther and sales cycles shorten.
- Streamline the procurement and legal process. Say goodbye to unnecessary redlining.
- Market expansion by reaching customers who are built on and exclusively buy solutions on the AWS Marketplace.
- Increase visibility for solutions that have been acquired by Salesforce, such as Tableau and Mulesoft.
- Take advantage of co-sell opportunities. While newer ISVs struggle to get the attention of AWS PDMs and sales reps, established brands like Salesforce get full access to co-sell support and tools from the get go.
Getting more out of your AWS + Salesforce tech stack
Companies are also thinking strategically about how to get more out of their tech stack. With so many solutions on the market, no one wants to accrue unnecessary tech debt, or invest in a solution that doesn’t integrate with their existing systems or data.
Launching Salesforce products on the AWS Marketplace, then, isn’t just about making it easier for B2B buyers to procure Salesforce. It’s also about having an instance of Salesforce that more seamlessly integrates with their existing tech stack and CSP. The results:
- Integrated data and AI
- More innovation
- Easier to build customer-focused apps using the broadest and deepest set of cloud services
- More unified view across your tech stack
- Deliver better experiences for both customers and employees
Salesforce products available on the AWS Marketplace
Invisory for cloud marketplaces
Invisory helps ISVs of all shapes and sizes streamline listing, selling, and developing a GTM strategy across cloud marketplaces like Azure, AWS, and the Salesforce AppExchange. No matter where you are in your journey, Invisory is your secret weapon for driving cloud marketplace success. Book a time today.
