The most successful product leaders don’t overlook the forest for the trees. But they don’t stay at 30,000 feet either. These executives have mastered the art of balancing the nitty-gritty details in tandem with an overarching go-to-market strategy. How do they accomplish this delicate high-wire act? By defining and maintaining a clear vision of their products and their marketplace trajectory.
For many product leaders, the Salesforce AppExchange represents a fast track for development and go-to-market. Our latest guide, The Chief Product Officer’s Guide to Winning as a Salesforce Partner, tackles this topic head on — covering the advantages of launching on the AppExchange, the nuances of maintaining a strong partnership with Salesforce, and key customer stories from product leaders whose businesses have thrived on the AppExchange.
ABCs of the AppExchange Advantage
From infrastructure to platform decisions, product leaders are faced with many choices on where to build business solutions. With so much choice, it can be difficult to discern advantages from option to option.
Our CPO guide provides an in-depth discussion of the core advantages of building a product and business on the Salesforce AppExchange. Notably, we discuss how the AppExchange offers strategic leverage in specific areas, including:
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Lowering development costs
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Reducing risk
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Increasing speed to market
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Building credibility with prospects and customers
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Selling into the enterprise
The Recipe for Success
The path toward AppExchange success requires more than just platform knowledge. In the second portion of our guide, we dive into what it takes to navigate the partner process with Salesforce itself. From understanding Salesforce’s unique language to the fundamentals of partnership agreements and shared sales processes, we help set expectations for becoming a Salesforce partner.
The Power of Shared Perspectives
Beyond the strategic recommendations contained in our CPO guide, we go a step further to provide keen insights from product leaders who have navigated the course to success with Salesforce. Just as Byron shared his perspective on learning the Salesforce ecosystem, hear from other executives firsthand about the challenges, advantages, and keys to success on the AppExchange.
“I see it [the AppExchange] as a huge opportunity to access a larger base of customers,” says Byron. “The company [Optimizely] started by selling to small businesses, but we’ve moved upmarket, and lots of our new customers already use Salesforce. Now we’re looking at this market of over 160,000 companies where we offer this new use case.”
Echoing this sentiment, Dan Brown, Chief Product & Strategy Officer at FinancialForce, an enterprise resource planning software, shares his perspective on the advantages of operating within the Salesforce ecosystem.
“The traditional problem with back office-front office connections is that you have to pull master data back and forth; you have two sources of truth,” says Dan. “By building on Force.com, we can give you an ERP and your data’s already there. That’s a huge advantage.”
Let these learnings — and insights from other expert CodeScience partners — form the guideposts to help your company just traverse every step of product development, release, and evolution alongside Salesforce.
What are you waiting for? Get started on your AppExchange journey today by downloading our guide!
You don’t have to navigate the AppExchange alone! We’re here to help. Learn more at codescience.com/services.
