The Strategic (and overwhelming) advantages of selling in the Salesforce ecosystem

The moment your AppExchange listing went live, you unlocked a door to a revenue goldmine: 150,000 companies on Salesforce, 6,000+ consulting and tech firms, and 30,000+ sales, presales, and alliances pros driving opportunity daily. This ecosystem is a juggernaut—yet most ISV founders watch it slip by, battling stalled pipelines and soaring CAC. Most limit their ecosystem actions to their monthly call with their PAM and often rely on what I call the 3 L's...Linkedin, Lunches & Luck.

The provocative truth? If you’re not mastering how to operate in the ecosystem, your competitors are. Arriving at mastery takes a plan - and the road is difficult.

The path to success truly starts with a leader who understands their place in the market and the power of the platform they are built upon. Nothing else can really happen without that. Then the journey continues with a well-defined, end-to-end sales process that captivates both prospect and ecosystem partner — sales planning, qualifying leads, tailoring demos, framing their value with the power of the platform as the centerpiece. When your are running an efficient, repeatable and "ecosystem aware" sales processes, you then pair this with strategic ecosystem relationships (SI's, ISV's and SF Sales teams) that were there waiting to find partners like you.

That's the formula. Without it, growth stalls. With it, you unlock exponential pipeline growth, lower CAC, and boost retention. BTW, so does Salesforce. 

I believe that only when you bind together the inherit strength of the most trusted CRM on the planet with disciplined sales execution, can you unlock the opportunities to sell-with and grow-with Salesforce sellers and partners. Know your true value and operate accordingly. Until you reach that point, so much of your growth remains hidden behind the harried efforts striving for incremental gains.