Is a marketplace approval worth celebrating? Cole said for about a day. Ashley said yes, if you treat it as a starting gun.
Getting listed on a cloud marketplace like Microsoft, AWS, Pax8, or Sherweb feels like a finish line. This week Cole and Ashley argued about what an approval is actually worth.
From the inside, a new listing is one more line in a very long list. What moves a vendor up that list isn't the listing. It's evidence that partners can sell it. Are partners actually buying it? Does it attach to something they already sell? Will the vendor show up with enablement, or expect someone else to do it? With proof, the marketplace works with you. Without it, you're inventory.
For a small vendor, approval is the first time someone with real reach has said you're credible enough to sell next to everyone else. That's worth something. The mistake isn't celebrating. It's treating approval as the finish line. Her first 30 days after approval: name one owner for the listing, pick ten partners most likely to buy first and call them yourself, give sellers a one-page reason to bring you in, and decide how direct and marketplace deals get credited before the first conflict.
Approval is a door. Most vendors stand in the doorway and wait. Cole's proof test and Ashley's 30-day list are the same idea from two sides: the listing only becomes a channel when someone does the work to make partners successful with it.
The Channel Fit Scorecard is 14 questions with an instant read on your best-fit channel and how ready you are to launch it.
Take the Scorecard