You've listed on AWS, Azure, or GCP marketplaces. You're registered in co-sell platforms like ACE. Your partnerships and alliances team is coordinating opportunities with hyperscaler reps. Six months in, the promised pipeline hasn't materialized, your sales team is skeptical, and your exec team is asking pointed questions about ROI.
Here's what's actually happening: you're approaching cloud partnerships like a channel motion when the economics, incentives, and operational realities are fundamentally different. The hyperscaler account executive getting bombarded by a hundred ISVs this quarter isn't ignoring you because your product isn't good—you haven't given them a reason to care.
Most partnerships and alliances teams inherit structural problems that sabotage co-sell before it starts. The difference isn't the quality of your relationships—it's how you've structured partner ops, your cloud partner engagement model, and attribution.
Channel partnerships work because the economics are clear. A systems integrator takes 15-25% of deal value, employs a sales team with direct buyer relationships, and actively works opportunities on your behalf. They're incentivized to close.
Cloud providers (AWS, Azure, and GCP) operate fundamentally differently:
| Channel Partners | Hyperscalers (AWS/Azure/GCP) |
|---|---|
| Take 15-25% revenue share | Earn 1.5-10% marketplace fees |
| Sales team works deals for you | Sales team works for cloud growth |
| Motivated by your deal size | Motivated by consumption targets |
| Will source and close opportunities | Will only engage on qualified pipeline |
Hyperscaler account executives earn minimal compensation on marketplace fees—maybe a small SPIFF if they hit certain deal counts. Their primary comp is tied to cloud consumption growth. They're not working for you. They're working to expand their customer's cloud footprint, and your software is only relevant if it drives that outcome.
This is why the "spray and pray" outreach to cloud seller teams fails. You're asking them to do ISV-led work (source deals, run demos, close on your timeline) when they're measured on customer cloud spend. The channel partner playbook—enable the team, send leads, offer rev share—doesn't translate.
Your alliances team needs to reframe the relationship entirely: help hyperscaler reps hit their consumption targets by showing how your product accelerates cloud adoption or increases workload density. It is not a channel motion.
Partnerships and alliances leaders are hired to drive incremental revenue. However, the manual ops work associated with marketplace motions is too much.
You, along with cross functional partners (RevOps, Finance, Legal, Deal Desk) are stuck:
Your team can't justify headcount or tooling investment until you prove the channel works. It's a catch-22. You need systems to scale, but you can't get systems without proving value, and you can't prove value when 60% of your time goes to admin work instead of relationship-building and deal acceleration.
The trap deepens when the same cross-functional partners become detractors instead of advocates. If partnerships and alliances teams don't offload operational burden early, they'll burn cycles fighting internal skepticism instead of closing deals.
Platforms like Suger eliminate the marketplace ops burden—automating private offers, co-sell sync, deal tracking, and billing reconciliation—so you can focus on revenue generation, not data entry.
Partner-influenced revenue is the dirtiest metric in B2B SaaS. Everyone agrees it matters. No one agrees on what it means.
Did the AWS account executive make the intro, or did they just join one call? Did they provide competitive intel that closed the deal, or did they forward an email? Was this a true better-together story, or did the customer find you on the marketplace after the deal was already won?
Your CRO wants attribution. Your CFO wants a clean number. Your sales team wants credit. Partnerships and alliances leaders are stuck in the middle trying to defend pipeline impact with anecdotal evidence.
When you can't quantify influence, you lose budget battles. Sales argues they would've closed those deals anyway. Finance questions why marketplace fees are worth 3-7% of revenue. Your exec team doesn't understand the difference between sourced, influenced, and direct—so they default to discounting your contribution entirely.
Without a clear attribution framework, partnerships becomes a "nice to have" instead of a revenue system. The first time the business tightens budget, alliances teams are on the chopping block.
You can't prove ROI without defining what counts. Most partnerships and alliances teams skip this step and regret it six months later when Sales and Partnerships are fighting over credit in QBRs.
Start with two clean definitions:
| Attribution Type | Definition | Example | How to Track |
|---|---|---|---|
| Partner-Sourced | Partner originated the opportunity before it entered your CRM | AWS rep introduces your product to a customer with $5M left in their EDP commitment | Deal appears in ACE/Partner Center/PSC before Salesforce |
| Partner-Influenced | You sourced the deal, but partner materially advanced or closed it | Your AE finds opp, Azure SA joins technical validation, deal transacts via Marketplace | Co-sell registration + marketplace transaction |
How to Track Partner-Sourced Revenue in Your CRM:
Partnership Impact Metrics That Matter to Executives:
Alliances leaders should track and report these four metrics in quarterly business reviews:
When you can show that partner-influenced deals close 35% faster or that co-sell opportunities convert at 58% higher rates, you earn the investment to scale your alliances function.
Hyperscaler account executives manage hundreds of accounts. Your outreach needs to answer one question immediately: why should I care about this deal right now?
The answer isn't "we have a great product" or "we're seeing traction in your territory." It's "this customer has budget, intent, and urgency—and we can help you hit your consumption target this quarter."
Effective account mapping starts with understanding the hyperscaler's book of business. Which of your target accounts have active cloud commits (AWS EDP, Azure MACC, Google CUD)? Which ones have unused commits expiring this quarter? Which ones are mid-migration and need tooling to secure or optimize their cloud environment?
Most partnerships and alliances teams approach cloud sellers with a generic pitch instead of specific account intelligence. Compare these two outreach attempts:
| What Doesn't Work | What Does Work |
|---|---|
| "We're a cybersecurity company on cloud marketplaces. Do you have any customers who need security solutions?" | "We're working an opportunity at [Account Name], who has $8M left in their EDP expiring Q2. They're migrating 400 workloads to AWS and need a cloud-native security posture management tool. Can we discuss co-sell?" |
| Asking for leads | Bringing qualified opportunities with budget signals |
| Pitching product features | Explaining how your solution drives cloud consumption |
| Generic "partnership" language | Specific account names, commit balances, migration timelines |
The second approach works because it's grounded in the hyperscaler rep's reality: they need that customer to consume cloud spend, and your product directly supports that goal.
The tactical work for alliances teams is building collateral that enables cloud seller teams quickly—one-pagers that explain the better-together story, customer examples showing consumption lift, and deal-specific intelligence they can take into account planning calls.
Suger's buyer intent signals help teams identify which accounts are most likely to purchase on marketplace, giving you the intelligence you need to prioritize outreach and bring qualified opportunities to cloud sellers.
Co-sell isn't transactional. It's a flywheel: marketplace revenue earns you access to co-sell resources, which generates more marketplace revenue, which unlocks deeper engagement from hyperscaler teams.
The framework that drives this flywheel has three layers:
1. Co-Build
Your infrastructure runs on AWS, Azure, or GCP, which means you're architected to serve that hyperscaler's customers best. This isn't just a technical claim—it's a strategic signal. If you're selling a data analytics platform and you've built native integrations with AWS Redshift, Glue, and Lake Formation, you're not just "compatible"—you're purpose-built to expand AWS workloads. That matters to the cloud seller trying to grow consumption.
2. Co-Market
Joint go-to-market creates association. When buyers think "AWS migration," they should immediately think of your category. This happens through:
The goal is to make your product the default answer when a cloud solutions architect is designing a customer's environment. Partnerships and alliances teams should treat this as brand-building work that compounds over time.
3. Co-Sell
This is the ground game—registering opportunities, coordinating with cloud seller teams, sharing deal intelligence, and closing via marketplace to burn customer commits. Selling with means you're not asking the hyperscaler rep to do your job. You're doing the heavy lifting (prospecting, qualification, demo, negotiation) and bringing them in at the right moments: technical validation, executive alignment, procurement approvals.
Companies that scale co-sell effectively treat it like a revenue system, not a relationship-management exercise. They build infrastructure on the hyperscaler's cloud, invest in joint marketing to create category association, and execute disciplined account mapping to bring qualified pipeline to cloud seller teams. That's what earns alliances teams the right to co-sell at scale.
1. No Executive Sponsorship
Partnerships and alliances can't succeed as a bottoms-up initiative. You need your CRO or CEO actively championing the motion, setting marketplace ARR targets, and holding Sales accountable for co-sell engagement. Without exec sponsorship, cloud GTM becomes a side project that loses priority the moment deals slow down.
2. Unclear Attribution Definitions
If Sales and Partnerships are arguing about who deserves credit, you've already lost. Define sourced/influenced/direct upfront, add the tracking field to your CRM, and enforce it consistently. Ambiguity creates friction, and friction kills co-sell momentum before it starts.
3. Treating Hyperscalers Like Channel Partners
Channel partners have sales teams working for you. Hyperscalers have sales teams working for their customers. You can't approach them the same way. Stop asking for leads. Start bringing qualified opportunities with clear consumption stories and buyer intent signals that help cloud reps hit their infrastructure growth targets.
4. Waiting Too Long to Build Systems
Manual processes work when marketplace is 5% of ARR. They break catastrophically when you hit 15%. If you're already seeing traction, invest in integration and automation now—before your alliances team is drowning in private offer workflows and attribution reconciliation. Platforms like Suger provide end-to-end management so you're not rebuilding tooling from scratch.
5. Skipping the Better-Together Story
Cloud sellers won't engage if they don't understand how your product drives consumption or improves customer outcomes on their platform. Build the one-pager. Create the reference architecture. Show the workload expansion. Make it easy for them to explain why partnering with you helps them hit quota. Alliances teams that skip this step wonder why their co-sell registrations go nowhere.
Co-sell struggles typically stem from partnerships and alliances teams fighting operational chaos, attribution battles, and internal skepticism instead of executing the fundamentals that actually drive results.
Fix attribution. Build account mapping discipline. Show hyperscaler reps how your product helps them hit their consumption targets. Top ISVs are running 30%+ of ARR through cloud marketplaces while their competitors are still trying to figure out why co-sell registrations don't convert.
We've created a Better-Together Story Template to help partnerships and alliances teams prepare for productive conversations with AWS, Azure, and GCP account teams—without the guesswork.
This fillable template includes:
✓ Better-together story framework — Structure your customer problem, solution differentiation, and cloud consumption impact in one page
✓ Opportunity qualification checklist — Ensure you're bringing qualified pipeline before reaching out to cloud sellers
✓ Good asks vs bad asks — Know what will get cloud reps to engage (and what kills opportunities before they start)
✓ 2-slide prep guide — Exactly what to present in your 30-minute joint engagement call
✓ Account intelligence framework — How to position your deal so it helps hyperscaler reps hit their consumption targets
Download the Better-Together Story Template and start building qualified co-sell opportunities that cloud sellers actually want to support.