Ten steps to grow revenue by aligning with hyperscaler priorities and incentives

Want to grow your revenue by partnering with hyperscalers like AWS, Microsoft Azure, or Google Cloud? The key is aligning your business goals with theirs. Hyperscalers have clear priorities that drive their sales strategies, incentives, and customer focus. When your solution supports these priorities, you unlock new opportunities, gain sales support, and accelerate growth. Think of it as building "partner empathy." The better you understand what motivates hyperscaler teams, the more effectively you can position your offering. Demonstrate how your solution increases consumption of their cloud services, solves customer challenges, and advances their industry goals.

Targeted campaigns are another powerful lever. Speak directly to hyperscaler sellers, industry experts, and joint customers. When your value proposition aligns with their priorities, your solution becomes the obvious choice. in this blog, we’ll cover ten practical steps to align with hyperscaler priorities and incentives. Let’s go!

1. Align with customer buying preferences

Understand marketplace dynamics: Many customers prefer to purchase through cloud marketplaces to leverage existing budgets, simplify procurement, and consolidate cloud spend. Hyperscalers incentivize this behavior by offering spend commitment drawdowns, making it more attractive for customers to buy through their marketplaces. This is your primary driver for leveraging cloud marketplaces as a GTM route in the first place. 

Adopt a marketplace-first strategy: If you customers prefer to buy through the marketplace, make sure that’s the primary procurement route you are offering them.  Emphasize transacting via marketplaces by making it a core part of your GTM strategy. Buy-in from the top down is essential for this to happen (we even spoke to CEOs of hyper-growth businesses like Rootly and Firefly to get their playbooks). You will need alignment from every function  – from Sales and Rev Ops to Finanance – and the designated owner of the marketplace project (likely your Partnerhsip or Alliance leader) will have to drive this.

Monitor and adjust: Continuously evaluate how your customers prefer to buy and adapt your strategy to stay aligned. For example, keep your eyes on enterprise customers that have significant cloud commitments. Enable self-discovery or contact-less procurement through website-embedded procurement journeys like  Buy with AWS if that’s how your customers roll. 

2. Make data-driven decisions

Utilize buyer intent data: Analyze data from hyperscaler marketplaces and customer accounts to prioritize high-propensity buyers. Surface insights into budget commitments, existing cloud service consumption, and competitive dynamics to target your efforts.

Monitor market trends: Keep your eyes peeled for hyperscaler announcements, partner program updates, and evolving customer needs. For examples, AWS’ recent SaaS policy update present both opportunities as well as poses engineering implications if you want to transact on the AWS marketplace without being built on AWS.  Also don’t loose sight on the broader marketplace landscape. Align your offerings with emerging opportunities, especially in high-growth sectors like AI, data management, and industry-specific solutions.

3. Leverage strategic programs and competencies

Engage in partner programs: Participate in hyperscaler partner programs like AWS Competencies, Google Cloud Partner Advantage, or Microsoft Azure’s Co-Sell Incentives. These programs offer recognition, funding opportunities, and enhanced visibility. Programs always carry qualifying criteria like value transacted in a specific duration or number of co-sell opportunities submitted. Make it a priority to achieve those targets as you establish your strategy.

Attain certifications and specializations: Earning certifications and achieving industry-specific competencies helps differentiate your solution. Hyperscalers prioritize partners that drive consumption of their services.

Negotiate strategic collaboration agreements (SCAs): These multi-year agreements with hyperscalers typically include joint go-to-market initiatives, funding support, and dedicated account management, accelerating your growth.

4. Emphasize sales enablement and incentives

Incentivize your sales team: Sales and partnership alignment and sales adoption rely heavily on how you direct their incentives. Ensure your internal sales team has clear incentives like deal accelerators, spiffs, or quota relief, to ensure marketplace-driven sales. 

Enable sellers with clear processes: Use tools that automate opportunity sharing and deal registration. Platforms like Clazar, for example, allow seamless deal registration in AWS ACE (APN Customer Engagements), reducing friction for sales teams by keeping them in the CRM.

Ensure compensation neutrality: Avoid disincentivizing sales reps by making sure marketplace deals are at least comp-neutral, meaning sellers earn the same commissions whether deals are closed through the marketplace or direct channels.

5. Use marketing to amplify achievements

Promote “Powered By” / “Deployed on” and competency badges: Hyperscalers offer branding opportunities through "Powered by" or similar badges for marketplace partners. Displaying these prominantly also builds trust with buyers.

Invest in joint marketing: Many hyperscalers offer Market Development Funds (MDF) for joint go-to-market activities. Use these funds for webinars, case studies, events, and other marketing campaigns.

Highlight success stories: Share win wires and case studies internally within the hyperscaler’s field teams to create awareness and reinforce your credibility.

6. Leverage funding mechanisms

Apply for co-sell and migration funding: Programs like AWS Migration Acceleration Program (MAP) or Azure’s Advanced Specialization incentives provide funding to partners that drive workloads to their cloud.

Get Proof-of-Concept (POC) funds: Hyperscalers offer POC funding to reduce customer risk. Collaborate with your hyperscaler account manager to identify opportunities where funding can accelerate deals.

Track ROI: Clearly demonstrate how these funds lead to increased consumption and revenue growth. This helps strengthen your case for additional funding.

7. Establish strong co-sell motions

Develop a co-sell playbook: Create detailed co-sell playbooks for your sales team, outlining when and how to engage hyperscaler sellers. Provide messaging and collateral that highlight your joint value proposition.

Build relationships with hyperscaler sellers: Establish regular account mapping sessions with hyperscaler sellers to identify opportunities and prioritize target accounts.

Use automated co-sell tools: Tools like Clazar can automate the process of submitting and managing co-sell opportunities, ensuring seamless collaboration and visibility across teams.

8. Tailor regional and industry-specific GTM

Identify regional priorities: Hyperscalers often have regional go-to-market priorities based on local government regulations, infrastructure, or market demand. Collaborate with regional hyperscaler teams to align with these priorities. The marketplaces now even support multi-currency payment and international payment capabilities that you can leverage to broaden your global access. 

Focus on industry specialization: Many hyperscalers have dedicated teams for specific industries (e.g., healthcare, finance, manufacturing). Align your GTM messaging with the industry use cases they prioritize.

Participate in vertical-specific programs: Programs like AWS for Industries or Azure for Healthcare provide additional visibility and support for industry-specific solutions.

9. Take a data-driven approach to partner selection

Leverage partner intelligence platforms: The SaaS app market has hit a valuation of close to $300 billion, but they didn't get there alone. They did it with strategic partnerships with and on the cloud. Leverage partner intelligence platforms to provide insights into which hyperscaler partners are most aligned with your ideal customer profile (ICP). Evaluate factors like partner expertise, customer base, and existing hyperscaler relationships.

Prioritize CPPO and channel partners: If you're pursuing a channel-first approach, consider enabling partners to transact through consulting partner private offers (CPPOs) on AWS or MPOs on Azure.. This extends your marketplace reach and accelerates deal cycles.

Continuously monitor partner performance: Regularly assess the effectiveness of your partner network using data-driven KPIs. Adjust partnerships and investments based on which partners drive the most value.

10. Remember that this is a long-term commitment

Scale you GTM operations strategically: Treat your hyperscaler partnership as a long-term investment. Establish dedicated cross-functional teams that include sales, alliances, marketing, and operations to drive consistent growth.

Innovate continuously: Collaborate with hyperscalers to build differentiated, innovative solutions that align with emerging technologies like generative AI, data analytics, and industry-specific applications. Pursue co-innovation opportunities to develop solutions that amplify hyperscaler service consumption.

While these ten steps are the milestones along your journey, collaboration, transparency, and consistency are the foundation.  Keep working on your hyperscaler partnerships by prioritizing customer wins, demonstrating value, and contributing to marketplace growth. Build a consistent cadence for co-sell motions, align on joint go-to-market initiatives, and leverage the hyperscaler’s field sellers to drive revenue. You’ll be unstoppable on the marketplace.

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