Here are the top 5 cloud marketplaces questions that you can ask your customers to understand their view on the cloud marketplaces and build your strategy accordingly.
1. Which is your preferred cloud provider?
You need to start by understanding which is their preferred cloud provider. Today, there are three major cloud providers, Microsoft, Amazon and Google, through which you can sell your solutions in the cloud. However, chances are your customers have more affinity towards one over others. They may be conducting a major part of their business over the said cloud provider.Thus, start by gauging which cloud provider they prefer and why. The latter part is important to understand if there are specific benefits for a particular industry that a specific provider offers. This way, you can gauge insights on which cloud providers to target primarily.
2. Who owns the cloud relationships/ transactions in your organization?
Next, you need to identify the right person in your customer organization to interact and build a relationship with. If it is cold lead, or an extended connection, you may not directly be in touch with the person who drives or influences decision making for cloud related matters. While it is good to have more than one advocate in any organization, connecting with the right stakeholders can help move the needle.Knowledge about who owns cloud relationships can enable you to engage with the right person who will have a clear understanding of the business priorities and objectives. Through a series of conversations, this person will be able to give you a fair picture of whether the engagement will lead to mutual benefit or not.
3. Do you face challenges in SaaS solution procurement and billing?
Once you get in touch with the owner of cloud decisions for your potential customers, you need to identify the pain points they face as a business. One of the major reasons that customers move to the cloud marketplaces is to address the challenges of procurement and billing of SaaS solutions. Once they are on the cloud marketplaces, they can procure all solutions from a single platform where the cloud provider helps facilitate seamless billing as well. If they are facing challenges of due diligence and long processes of procurement, cloud marketplaces may be the best solution, making them an ideal customer for them. Thus, you need to inquire to gauge if their key pain points reflect cloud marketplaces as a potential solution.
4. What are your projected cloud budgets?
If you want to establish a thriving presence in the cloud marketplaces, you need to gauge whether or not a customer has some projected budgets for the cloud. There are several aspects at play here. First, you need to understand if they have allocated budgets already or if that is an immediate priority or not. Companies for which cloud budget allocation is not an immediate priority may not be evaluating cloud marketplaces as a channel to buy SaaS solutions. Second, you need to get an understanding of the future as well. For sustainable partnerships, you need to have customers which already predict an increase in their budgetary allocations towards cloud marketplaces. Questions around the cloud budgetary allocations will help you understand whether or not the customer will be sustainable and scalable overtime.
5. Do you have any pre-committed spend?
Finally, many organizations already have pre-committed spends with certain cloud providers which they may want to utilize by buying your SaaS solution from the cloud marketplaces. Knowledge of these pre-committed spends can help you capitalize on these already allocated budgets, leading to shorter deal times, long-term contracts and much more. Once you know more about the volume and quantum of the pre-committed spends that you can access, you can easily create private offers to suit them and facilitate a customer pull.
