An enterprise ISV could not land a single Marketplace transaction for six straight months. We ran the motion end to end, landed all five wins they needed, and pulled an at-risk Microsoft relationship back from the edge.
The situation
To earn a Certified Software Designation, this ISV needed five qualifying Marketplace transactions. After six months of trying, they had zero. Not one deal had transacted, and every month at zero pushed the designation further out of reach.
The real cost was bigger than the designation. Their Microsoft Partner Development Manager was preparing to drop them for lack of performance. Losing that PDM meant losing internal advocacy and executive alignment at Microsoft, the relationship that drives co-sell access, incentives, and exec attention. That is when they came to us.
What Carve did
We analyzed the pipeline and applied our propensity mapping to find the deals most likely to transact through Marketplace without friction, using signals like MACC commitments and past transaction history.
We walked the sellers holding the top accounts through what Marketplace is, why each customer would likely go Marketplace, how to talk about it, and exactly how to execute the private offer.
All five were needed to earn the designation, so we white-gloved every deal end to end. Two ran as multi-party private offers, and we onboarded the client's channel partner to transact through Marketplace alongside them.
The outcome
Five months after we started, all five qualifying transactions were closed and the Certified Software Designation was earned. That designation is not a badge. It unlocks Microsoft funding and puts the company in a different tier of partner, with access to programs that were closed to them while they sat at zero.
The Microsoft Partner Development Manager who was preparing to drop them is re-engaged. A relationship that was weeks from ending is back in motion, with executive alignment restored and a repeatable Marketplace motion the sellers now know how to run themselves.
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