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Cloud marketplaces like AWS, Azure, and GCP have quickly become essential growth channels for SaaS companies. Today’s buyers expect to purchase software through these marketplaces because it lets them tap into committed cloud spend, streamline procurement processes, and unlock valuable partner incentives.
But we all know that listing on a marketplace is just the first step. The real growth happens when SaaS companies co-sell with the cloud providers’ sales teams. But as many quickly discover, scaling co-sell efforts isn’t always as straightforward as it sounds.
The answer is co-sell automation. By automating everything from opportunity creation to CRM updates, sales teams can focus on what matters most — building relationships and closing deals instead of getting stuck in partner portals or chasing manual registrations. In fact, our proprietary State of Cloud Marketplace & Co-Sell Report spotlights this trend with the numbers. 71% of companies are engaged in co-sell, and more than half report friction that limits their ability to scale.
In this guide, we’ll break down what cloud marketplace co-sell automation is, why it matters, how it works, and how leading teams are using it to drive faster, more predictable growth. We also include real-world insights from Verint and Vectra AI, two high-growth SaaS companies that have scaled their cloud marketplace and co-sell strategies using Clazar.
Why is co-selling on cloud marketplaces important for SaaS teams?
For SaaS companies, selling through cloud marketplaces is no longer just about distribution—it’s about partner-led growth. Co-selling with hyperscalers like AWS, Azure, and Google Cloud gives you access to an entirely new go-to-market motion. Done correctly, it can significantly accelerate revenue.
At its core, co-sell is about aligning with cloud provider sales teams to jointly pursue and close deals. It gives you the following advantages:
- Provides access to cloud sales teams and pipeline: Cloud providers have massive global sales organizations with deep relationships across enterprise accounts. By participating in co-sell programs, you can tap into this ecosystem and gain access to opportunities you wouldn’t have found on your own.
- Accelerates sales deals: Deals that involve cloud partners often move faster. When a cloud seller is aligned on an opportunity, they can help you navigate internal processes, influence stakeholders, and remove blockers to procurement.
- Increases deal sizes and win rates: Co-selling adds credibility. When your solution is positioned alongside a trusted cloud provider, buyers are more confident in the purchase. This improves your win rates, positions you strongly amid competitors, and helps land larger deals (especially with enterprise buyers).
- Unlocks access to cloud funding and incentives: Cloud providers actively incentivize co-sell through programs like funding support, credits, and marketplace benefits. These can help offset customer costs and make your solution a more attractive option for buyers.
Builds long-term strategic advantage: Consistent co-selling helps you build deeper relationships with cloud provider field teams. Over time, this leads to greater visibility within partner ecosystems and more inbound deal referrals
The challenges of manual co-sell processes
If you’re managing co-sell referrals manually, you already know how frustrating it can be. Without automation, co-sell motions tend to be:
- Slow: Logging an opportunity in AWS ACE or Azure Partner Center can eat up 20+ minutes per deal. For Vectra AI, which was registering nearly every SaaS opportunity, this created a bottleneck. Their sales team was spending hours each week just submitting referrals, time that could have been spent engaging prospects.
- Error-prone: One missing field or inconsistent data point can hold up partner acceptance and delay the entire sales cycle. Verint experienced this firsthand when small data errors — like incorrect metadata or incomplete deal information meant opportunities sat idle in AWS Partner Central, delaying seller engagement.
- Disconnected: Sales teams often bounce between partner portals, CRMs, and Slack threads just to keep everyone in the loop. Before adopting Clazar’s automation, both Verint and Vectra had deal data scattered across systems. Tracking status updates, partner responses, and next steps required manual follow-ups. And that ended up in missed opportunities and slower collaboration with cloud sellers.
As Clazar customers often share, manual workflows don’t just slow things down. They make it nearly impossible to scale co-sell efforts or measure ROI and partner engagement effectively.
How SaaS leaders are solving it with co-sell automation
After running into the usual co-sell roadblocks or manual submissions, disconnected systems, and delayed seller engagement, Verint and Vectra AI rethought how they approached co-sell operations.
Here’s how they handle it today, and what other SaaS leaders can learn from their approach:
- Auto-create referrals: Vectra AI set up rules so that any Salesforce opportunity meeting co-sell criteria automatically triggers an AWS ACE registration. No more manual submissions across hundreds of deals each quarter — the system takes care of it.
- Two-way sync: Verint integrated Salesforce with Clazar, so updates from AWS Partner Central and Azure Partner Center flow straight back into Salesforce. That means real-time visibility for sales and alliances teams without switching between portals or chasing status updates.
- Real-time alerts: Both companies use the Clazar Automation Builder to build custom workflows that fit into existing ones without disruption. Including creating rules for Slack and email notifications, the moment AWS or Azure sellers engage on a referral. That way, reps can follow up quickly and keep deals moving.
The result?
- More referrals automatically registered with sellers
- Faster engagement with the right partner reps on high-value opportunities
- Hours of manual work eliminated for sales and RevOps teams
- Co-sell scale without the chaos
Pro Tip:
Grow your marketplace pipeline without proportionally increasing operational overhead. Automation enables scale by:
- Standardizing workflows across all deals
- Handling repetitive tasks automatically
- Allowing RevOps to manage co-sell centrally
See how Clazar’s Auto Create improves co-sell velocity
Tools & integrations that really make co-sell automation work
When Verint and Vectra talked about how they scaled co-sell, one theme kept coming up: keep it simple and connected. Instead of juggling lots of tools, both teams leaned on their CRM, working hand-in-hand with AWS Partner Central (ACE), supported by automation that ran seamlessly in the background.
Here are the takeaways for teams looking to do the same.
Salesforce ⇄ ACE integration
Think of this as the foundation. By mapping fields between Salesforce and ACE (like postal code or industry), the teams made sure every referral went in cleanly without errors. Opportunities were automatically created and kept in sync as deals moved stages, so sellers didn’t waste time re‑entering data.
Inside Salesforce, reps could see ACE status, engagement scores, and even synced contacts, everything they needed right where they already worked.
Listen to Vectra’s Eric Renner explain how they did this:
Pro Tip:
See how Clazar’s Salesforce integration can make this easy for your team, too.
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Taking in referrals smoothly
When an AWS referral came through, automation did the heavy lifting: checking or creating the right account, spinning up the opportunity, filling in missing details, and sending quick alerts in Slack or email. In some cases, referrals were even auto‑accepted so sellers could jump right in.
Keeping quality high
Verint added a simple two‑step process: reps could draft a registration, then an alliances or ops owner gave it a final review before sending it to ACE. This small check kept data accurate and compliant. On top of that, regular Salesforce reports and email alerts kept everything tidy without endless portal logins.
Smarter relationship building
Both teams wanted to know not just which deals were moving, but which AWS sellers were engaging. Having that context in Salesforce helped them prioritize the right relationships and double down where momentum was strongest. Co‑sell analytics gave visibility into which partners actually influenced pipeline.
Fast follow‑up on acceptance
The moment ACE accepted a referral, tailored outreach kicked off automatically. That way, the AWS seller got a friendly, timely message, and the conversation started right away instead of days later.
Event‑driven automation
Finally, everything ran through an event‑driven workflow builder. Anytime something happened — a referral landed, an offer was published, a contract was accepted — the right follow‑up tasks were triggered instantly across the team’s tools.
Measuring the impact of co-sell automation
When Verint and Vectra AI automated their co-sell workflows, the transformation was measurable:
- Vectra AI scaled its AWS Marketplace business 2.5x year-over-year and grew its Azure business by 6x by automating ACE registrations and streamlining Salesforce-to-AWS workflows.
- Verint eliminated hours of manual work by automating two-tiered approval workflows and ACE metadata validation, ensuring every referral met AWS quality standards before submission.
- Both companies saw faster AWS and Azure seller engagement because Slack and email alerts triggered the moment a referral was accepted — no delays, no missed opportunities.
With co-sell analytics dashboards and CRM integrations, SaaS leaders now track referral volumes, acceptance rates, and pipeline influence across cloud marketplaces with ease.
Hear Verint’s Jim Tanner talk about how combining Clazar’s built-in dashboards with Salesforce workflows was the game-changer for them.
What changes for teams with co-sell automation
Automation is what turns co-sell from a high-effort, inconsistent process into a scalable and repeatable revenue channel. Here’s a summary of what we’ve learned:
Future outlook: AI-powered co-sell
In the Scaling from Referral to Revenue webinar, Verint and Vectra AI shared that while automation has already transformed their co-sell processes, the next wave of innovation will come from AI-driven capabilities.
They highlighted a ton of exciting possibilities for the future:
- Auto-summarizing opportunity history: Instead of partner reps digging through Salesforce notes or AWS ACE records, AI could provide clean, instant deal summaries ahead of every partner call.
- Prioritizing high-value referrals: Predictive scoring models could help sales teams focus on opportunities most likely to close, boosting win rates and accelerating pipeline velocity.
- Recommending next-best actions: By analyzing seller engagement data from AWS and Azure, AI could guide partner managers on the most effective follow-ups and timing for each deal.
This isn’t at scale yet — but as AI matures, SaaS companies will evolve from basic automation to AI-assisted co-sell strategies that drive even faster growth across AWS, Azure, and GCP marketplaces.
Catch the complete webinar on demand here
Automate your way to co-sell success with Clazar
Co-sell has become a critical growth lever for SaaS teams, but without the right systems in place, it’s difficult to execute consistently or at scale. Automation bridges that gap, turning co-sell from a manual, fragmented process into a reliable revenue engine.
Platforms like Clazar make this possible by embedding co-sell directly into your existing workflows, helping you move faster, collaborate better with cloud partners, and unlock the full potential of marketplace-led growth.
Talk to our experts to see how Clazar can help you automate ACE submissions, Salesforce sync, and seller engagement workflows with co-sell automation.
Book a demo today and start scaling your co-sell revenue engine.
FAQ
1. What is co-selling on cloud marketplaces?
Co-selling is when SaaS vendors partner with cloud providers’ sales teams (AWS, Azure, GCP) to jointly engage buyers and close deals.
2. What is co-sell automation, and how does it work in cloud marketplaces?
Cloud marketplace co-sell automation is the process of automatically creating, managing, and syncing co-sell opportunities between your CRM and cloud partner platforms. It eliminates manual data entry and helps teams scale co-sell efficiently.
Co-sell automation connects your CRM to cloud partner systems (such as AWS ACE or Azure Partner Center), automatically sharing opportunities, syncing updates, and tracking deal progress. This ensures real-time alignment between your team and cloud provider sales teams.
3. How does automation improve co-sell ROI?
Co-sell automation eliminates manual data entry, reduces delays, and ensures partner sellers engage faster—leading to shorter sales cycles and higher win rates.
4. Can I create private offers from Salesforce?
Yes. Clazar’s Salesforce integration lets sales reps generate AWS or Azure private offers directly from CRM opportunities.
5. Which integrations does Clazar support?
Clazar works with AWS, Azure, GCP, Salesforce, HubSpot, Slack, Airbyte, Snowflake, and more to streamline co-sell and marketplace operations.
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