How to align sales and partnerships for Cloud GTM success: 7 best practices

Businesses everywhere are grappling with the new reality today, where budgets are tighter and resources are stretched. Add to that extended sales cycles—longer by up to 3.8 weeks—and GTM teams must exert more effort to achieve the same results. 

This challenge, coupled with the need to meet millennial buyer expectations, has transformed cloud marketplaces into a crucial revenue stream. However, organizations often underestimate how collaborative cloud GTM truly is.

Success in Cloud GTM isn't a solo sport. It takes a village, from finance to product, to make revenue predictable. But let’s be honest: the whole thing hinges on the relationship between Partnerships and Sales.

Partnerships might own the strategy, but Sales owns the customer. They’re the ones navigating the reality of Marketplace deals and POs. So, how do you get Sales excited about routing deals through the cloud marketplace instead of seeing it as a hurdle?

Here are a few best practices to turn "why are we doing this?" into "how can we do more?"

TL;DR

Cloud marketplaces are no longer just a partnership initiative. Success in Cloud GTM today depends on tight alignment between the Sales and Partnerships teams. 

The most effective SaaS companies operationalize marketplace selling through shared incentives, clear sales workflows, CRM-native processes, and ongoing enablement and communication. This helps turn cloud partnerships into a scalable revenue channel.

1. Map cloud GTM impact to sales success metrics

We often speak about personalization in the context of prospect or customer experiences. However, many partnership experts we’ve spoken to, including the likes of Airtable’s Nelson Wang, encourage you to apply this inwards as well. 

This means speaking the language of your audience, which in this case is the sales team. Instead of organizational impact, you have to show them how this makes their lives easier right now.

Map Cloud GTM to sales priorities, blockers, and KPIs. This helps them see how the motion can help them achieve their functional goals as well as the broader organizational ones. 

Show how Cloud GTM can help unblock Sales by:

• Lowering budget concerns
• Reducing legal processes
• Shortening the sales cycle
• Making access to key decision-makers easier

As the channel picks up steam, you also need to create bespoke reports to help the sales team visualize the outcomes they are driving. This means identifying specific success metrics (we’ve listed a few below) and presenting the data for them from a marketplace perspective.  

By presenting these metrics clearly, you help the sales team see the tangible benefits of collaboration. It encourages them to integrate marketplace strategies into their day-to-day operations.

2. Drive inside-out education from partnership to sales

Friend of the Clazar podcast and partnership leader, Neeti Gupta, said it best, “Any pushback is often because there is a lack of understanding.” 

Like Neeti, every partnership leader and team needs to bring vision and education to the table to build strong sales alignment. This involves training Sales on partnership benefits and cloud partnership dynamics. For example, explain the lift in performance, the timelines associated with co-selling efforts, and how to navigate platforms like AWS effectively. 

You’re asking a team that’s already successful to change their entire playbook. That’s a massive cultural lift, and you shouldn't underestimate the friction that comes with it. The point above will help them with the WHY. Education, training, and enablement will take care of the HOW.

We will examine this in detail later, but gaining early allies in Sales can help. Keep the communication ongoing by using QBRs and team calls to reinforce this education and celebrate initial successes.

If you want Sales to adopt a new way of working, you have to prove it’s a better way of winning.

To gauge how your initiatives in this regard are working, here is a checklist of questions to ask.

3. Reimagine your sales playbook right from discovery

If your AEs are only bringing up the Marketplace at the finish line, they're already behind.

Bake a marketplace-first mindset into the sales process right from the discovery phase. Add the right script into your sales playbook to help AEs identify deals that could go the marketplace route, and steer the sales cycle in that direction. 

Asking the right questions at the outset will preempt objections that the marketplace inherently solves and get your reps beyond the first call way faster. 

Don’t let the momentum die after initial training. Use regular training sessions to keep success stories top of mind, keeping the sales team engaged and informed. When sales representatives recognize the value of cloud sales earlier in the cycle, the outcomes are quicker.

Questions to incorporate into the sales cycle

1. Have you identified where your budget is coming from for this project?
2. Have you purchased software via the marketplace previously?
3. Do you have unspent commits you’d like to use for this purchase?
4. Which cloud/channel partner can help get me access to a decision-maker?
5. Which C-levels are involved in purchasing with cloud spend?
6. What is your typical legal review process?
7. Where do you want your software to be deployed?

Free Resource: The Complete Guide to Cloud GTM

4. Build a conducive comp plan for marketplace-routed deals

‍In a recent webinar, Retool’s Head of Sales, Eleanor Dorfman, hit the nail on the head when she said that your compensation strategy implicitly tells your team how you want them to sell. 

Your compensation plans should align with the strategic focus on marketplace-routed deals. This will take exec-level alignment, but a channel-neutral, full attainment compensation plan for Cloud GTM gets your AEs on board. 

NVIDIA’s Nima Badiey agrees, adding that calculating reps’ comps after accounting for marketplace fees creates a disincentive to sell through this route. Creating this disparity between cloud and direct sales will be counterproductive, especially since the savings through cloud sales efficiency far outweigh the cost. 

From the top down, incentivize teams to prioritize marketplace deals by rewarding larger, more frequent transactions. Offering SPIFFs (Sales Performance Incentive Funds) is the best way to influence short-term behavior changes and get AEs to build this muscle.

‍There are three elements of neutrality to promote for your cloud GTM process:

• Deal neutrality: Calculate transaction fees as a part of the COGS (Cost of Goods Sold), not the contract value of a deal closed on the marketplace
• Comp neutrality: Give AEs equal incentives for any channel they close a deal on, including co-selling with partners

Attainment neutrality: Consider 100% of the deal value as quote attainment

5. Keep the wins top-of-mind

Everyone loves a good success story. And nothing says “you are on the right path” better than your wins. 

So remember to communicate and celebrate wins regularly. Stalled deals taken to closure, the biggest deal closed through the marketplace, your first inbound opportunity, great feedback on the deployment experience, all of it.  

Make it a part of your GTM cadence to discuss and keep success stories and metrics visible. This motivates the sales team to pursue collaborative opportunities actively. 

Here’s Laura Ripan’s take on the importance of sharing stories.

6. Don’t take AEs out of their current tooling 

This is a HUGE deal. Pun intended. There is nothing AEs hate more than to be taken out of the CRM, and made to figure out whole new tooling and interfaces. Justifiably so, because they have enough on their plate. 

Selling through the marketplace does add work. Teams have to interact with the various cloud portals and upload deal data into multiple locations. It’s the price you pay for transparency and hyperscaler collaboration, but it creates scope for human error. It’s also a steep learning curve for your team. These are big asks from a team that already feels overwhelmed by the number of tools in their tech stack.

One of the best ways to break the cloud adoption barrier is to ensure that new processes integrate seamlessly with existing workflows.

 To achieve this painlessly, use a tool like Clazar that allows AEs to create and manage marketplace offers right from their CRM. Clazar’s bi-directional integration with tools like Salesforce and Hubspot allows AEs to extend and modify private offers, upload co-sell opportunities, and track everything from start to finish, right from the platform they use daily.

By maintaining existing rhythms while introducing new practices, you create a collaborative environment without disruption.

7. Identify and leverage early champions

“Identify successful reps in your organization. And then, try to figure out where there's some pipeline that you can identify as AWS, and then go try to bring them all together. Maybe go reach out through AWS to talk to the reps about what they know in an account and then bring your team in…”

Pete Goldberg

Director of Alliances - NSA  |  Own Company

The best way to get collective sales buy-in is with the help of early allies. Identify reps who are either open to exploring the motion or have had customer-initiated requests to transact through the marketplace. 

 Just like Pete Goldberg says, showing how hyperscaler partnerships can move the needle on a deal will help you build strong rep-to-rep partnerships. As the results compound, so will the trust in the motion and the willingness of your champion’s peers to test the waters. 

Scale Cloud Marketplace Sales Through Alignment

While Cloud GTM has one clearly defined owner (the partnership leader), it has several influencers, the most vital of which is the sales team. Aligning sales and partnership teams is not just a strategic advantage; it is the lifeline of a Cloud GTM motion’s success. 

Remember that this is an ongoing journey. Stay committed to functional agility and embrace the power of partnerships, and you’ll be on the route to building a multi-million dollar marketplace motion.

If you need help setting your teams up for success with the right tool architecture, schedule a personalized consultation with our experts. 

Top FAQ's

1. Why is sales and partnerships alignment critical for cloud marketplace success?

Sales and partnerships alignment is critical because cloud GTM is not a standalone partner initiative. When sales and partnerships teams operate in silos, marketplace deals often stall due to poor qualification, inconsistent workflows, and a lack of rep adoption. High-performing SaaS companies align incentives, tooling, reporting, and enablement across both teams to scale cloud revenue predictably. 

2. How do cloud marketplaces help sales teams close deals faster?

Cloud marketplaces help sales teams accelerate deals by:

• Simplifying procurement
• Reducing legal friction
• Enabling customers to use committed cloud spend
• Providing access to hyperscaler field sellers

Marketplace transactions can also shorten security and vendor onboarding cycles because customers already trust AWS, Azure, or Google Cloud as procurement channels. 

3. What are the biggest reasons sales teams resist cloud GTM adoption?

The biggest barriers are usually operational, not strategic. Sales reps often resist cloud GTM because of:

• Additional manual work in cloud partner portals
• Unclear compensation structures
• Lack of training on marketplace sales
• Disconnected workflows outside the CRM
• Uncertainty about how cloud deals impact quota attainment

Companies that successfully scale cloud GTM reduce this friction through automation, CRM-native workflows, and marketplace-specific enablement.

4. What should be included in a cloud marketplace sales enablement program?

An effective cloud marketplace enablement program should include:

• Marketplace discovery call frameworks
• Co-sell qualification criteria
• Objection handling for procurement and cloud spend conversations
• Training on hyperscaler incentives and seller motions
• CRM-integrated workflows for offer creation and co-sell submissions
• Visibility into the marketplace pipeline and revenue metrics

The goal is to make marketplace selling feel like a natural extension of the existing sales process.

5. How do leading SaaS companies operationalize cloud GTM at scale?

Leading SaaS companies operationalize cloud GTM by treating it as a cross-functional revenue motion. They 

• Standardize workflows across sales, partnerships, RevOps, and finance
• Automate co-sell and marketplace operations
• Integrate cloud workflows into CRM systems
• Create clear ownership models and reporting structures
• Align compensation plans and executive KPIs around marketplace growth

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