In this week’s Road to the AppExchange webinar session, we brought together Sean Hogan, CodeScience CRO, and Nicole Widder, CodeScience Deployments Project Manager. Both Sean and Nicole were foundational to building our Deployment arm and are sharing what partners need to know do Deploy successfully.
We’re giving you a preview of the content covered in this session, but if you want to learn how to deploy like the best ISVs, you’ll have to register here. As a bonus, you’ll also gain immediate access to the previous recording in our series.
Deployment Fundamentals
For many new partners, the process of getting your application launched on the Salesforce AppExchange is considered the finish line. Most don’t realize there must be a full plan in place for getting your application into the hands of your customers. From selling your solution to the required customizations needed to get your application up and running, having a plan in place ensures your teams can work effectively and minimize the unexpected bumps that happen along the way.
Because of the complexity involved, companies typically either look to bring in an outside organization Systems Integrators (SIs) or build out a professional services (PS) team.
SI groups tend not to work with new ISV applications until they’ve proven themselves and have a certain volume of transactions happening — while ISVs want the best SI groups to ensure early market success.
We call this the integration paradox. This leaves ISVs having to build out their own PS teams, which is expensive and time-consuming. A burden is placed on the ISV because revenues from internal PS teams are often valued less than subscription revenues, and there is a significant management overhead for an additional business unit.
What is a Feedback Loop?
When discussing deployments, the feedback you get from your end-customers is a key resource that, if collected correctly, will inform your future product roadmap and drive your market fit.
We’ll walk you through our example feedback loop here. When positioning your product to your target buyer, it is the hope of any organization you’ll acquire more customers, which in turn will create more users. It should be the goal of your deployment teams to gather feedback from these end customers on what went well, what didn’t, and what improvements they hope to see in the future. This feedback should be incorporated into your roadmap and eventually released to your application. As your application grows, your product will resonate more with your target segment and give you better positioning as you come back around to reach your target buyers.
If you’d like to learn more, you’ll need to register here. You’ll also learn the core pieces your deployment team needs to be successful, why your first five customers are critical to your feedback loops, and how consistency leads to revenue generation.
CodeScience has helped bring over 220 commercial applications to market. From your build to deploy and beyond, we know how to help partners thrive in the Salesforce ecosystem. If you’re looking for help or want to learn more, get in touch today!
