Experienced ISVs know that building your product is only the first step to commercial success on the Salesforce AppExchange. Successful ISVs stand up full strategies to operationalize and commercialize their products.

For many, they think about these strategies too late and ultimately deliver frustrating experiences to new prospects and customers, or they end up stalling during launch. We’re covering the 3 most common areas ISVs overlook when launching their product.

Your AppExchange Tools

Salesforce provides a number of tools to ISVs to both manage your IP and your transactions: LMA, FMA, COA, CMA (just to name a few). The acronyms can feel seemingly endless when you go through this process. Even worse, it can be difficult to tell if you’ve set these tools up correctly. Some ISVs inadvertently point leads from their AppExchange listing to a demo org for testing and never change it back once your product goes live.

Not only does this result in missed leads and sales for your organization, but it also creates frustrated prospects who will turn to competitors’ applications to solve their problems.

Without understanding how to use all the tools Salesforce provides, ISVs create ineffective trial experiences that leave Salesforce admins confused and frustrated when testing your product. And trust us, a happy admin can make the difference in winning or losing a deal.

Without understanding how to use demo orgs effectively, building credibility within Salesforce is impossible, and they will not bring up your application as they talk with their prospects.

Lastly, Salesforce has rolled out deeper analytics for ISVs to leverage both from your AppExchange listing and within your application. These analytics can provide more in-depth insight into how customers use your application and give you guidance on the features and enhancements that should be on your roadmap.

Your Customer Support

Many ISVs already have an established technical support staff, but asking them to add Salesforce to their skillset isn’t as simple as having them run through Trailhead and get certified. ISVs create complex apps that leverage the latest and greatest Salesforce has to offer, and support teams often are not given the bandwidth needed to learn the depth of the application or all the potential impacts it could have on a customer’s org.

Customers expect excellent Tier 1 support when something goes wrong. And without the expertise to determine if a problem is stemming from the Salesforce platform, your application, or another 3rd party application, customers will become increasingly frustrated as your team potentially is trying to solve an issue that they didn’t cause or have any way to fix.

If there is an issue with your app, a strategy must be developed to determine whether to patch or go the route of a push/pull upgrade.

Managing the Salesforce Release Cycle

Three times a year, Salesforce makes a major update to their platform: Spring, Summer, and Winter. Fortunately, ISVs are given a chance to test their application against these releases before they go live. Unfortunately, QA and engineering staff are often stretched too thin to fully test and troubleshoot potential issues.

Without fully testing and knowing the potential impacts a release may have, support teams may be hit with elevated call volumes and inconsistent answers leading to frustrated customers and negative reviews. This unintentionally puts more pressure on engineering or professional services teams to create a fix on a condensed timeline, wh

Don’t Navigate This Process Alone

If you’re wondering how you can solve all these problems, you’re not alone. Having built over 10% of the AppExchange, we’ve helped clients along every step of the way. Our mission is to help partners thrive on the AppExchange, regardless of whether we built your app or not.

Our Commercial Services offering addresses all the areas we mentioned as well as educating your team along the way. Clients have freed up capital, provide better services solutions to their customers, and are re-investing back into their business.

Learn more about our Commercial Services Program here.


Don’t build your Salesforce business alone. Having helped 10% of the AppExchange, we’re bringing you knowledge refined from hundreds of clients. Get in touch today!