About the author: Trunal Bhanse, CEO, Clazar, brings significant experience as a leader and an innovator across Airbnb and Confluent. At the latter, Trunal led a pioneering team of engineers scaling cloud marketplaces and billing infrastructures. Having witnessed the complexity first-hand,
he launched Clazar to democratize cloud marketplace access for businesses.
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Selling with Microsoft is one of the most effective ways for software development companies to access enterprise pipeline at scale. Co-sell deals close around 30% larger and up to 2x faster than deals without Microsoft involvement. With over 500,000 partners in the ecosystem, the opportunity is real, and so is the competition for it.
The challenge is that most software companies focus on achieving co-sell status and then expect pipeline to follow.
What we see at Clazar, working with hundreds of software companies across Microsoft Marketplace, is that readiness is the starting point. The software companies who actually generate co-sell pipeline invest in the habits and operational processes that turn status into active seller collaboration.
This post shares five things those software companies do differently.
Why reaching Azure IP co-sell eligibility unlocks enterprise opportunity
The co-sell status ladder runs from in market to co-sell ready to Azure IP co-sell eligible. Most conversations focus on the first two steps, but the jump to IP co-sell eligible is where things meaningfully change.
At that tier, your solution appears inside Microsoft's internal sales systems, customers can apply purchases toward their Azure consumption commitments, and Microsoft sellers can bring your solution into enterprise accounts with full program backing. These three factors together accelerate deal velocity in a way that earlier tiers simply cannot.
Getting there requires either $100K USD in trailing 12-month Marketplace billed sales or Azure Consumed Revenue (ACR) or passing Microsoft technical validation. The most direct route is getting your first transactable deals through Marketplace so the Azure consumed revenue (ACR) clock starts running.
What high-performing software companies do differently
The software companies that build a consistent co-sell pipeline tend to share five common behaviors:
1. They build collateral for sellers, not just buyers
A marketing one-pager explains what your product does. That is not the same as content that helps a Microsoft field rep decide whether to bring you into a deal.
A seller asking about your solution wants to know one thing: why should I mention this at my next customer meeting?
Good seller-facing collateral answers that question directly. It covers which Azure services your solution pairs with natively, which customer segments you win in, what problem you solve in plain language, whether your offer is Microsoft Azure Consumption Commitment (MACC)-eligible, and who at your company to contact.
When a seller can see that picture quickly, they are more likely to act on it.
2. They treat their partner development manager (PDM) as a working partner
Your partner development manager is your primary connection to the Microsoft field. Most software companies reach out to their partner development manager when they need something. The ones who get more out of the relationship make it a two-way channel.
That means sharing pipeline updates, not just closes. It means asking for introductions to specific regional or vertical sellers rather than asking for general visibility. It means looping in the partner development manager when Microsoft is already present in an account and you are going into a pre-sales conversation.
When you close a co-sell deal, send a short win summary: customer segment, use case, Azure services involved, deal size, and time to close. That gives your partner development manager a story they can use internally and reinforces that supporting your deals pays off.
3. They respond to referrals quickly and consistently
Microsoft tracks how fast software companies respond to referrals, and response time is one of the clearest signals of operational readiness. The software companies who build strong co-sell relationships show up quickly on every referral, not just the ones that look promising.
A reasonable target is same business day acknowledgment and full qualification within 24 hours. Getting there requires Partner Center referral intake to feed directly into your CRM with automatic routing to the right account executive. The simpler that process is, the more consistently it happens.
It also helps to close the loop. When you accept a referral, let the referring seller know. When you close it, tell them that too. Sellers who feel kept in the loop refer more.
4. They submit outbound referrals, not just receive them
Co-sell works best when it goes in both directions. Many software companies receive referrals but do not submit them for deals they are already working.
Submitting outbound referrals in Partner Center increases your visibility to Microsoft sellers in relevant accounts, signals that you are an active partner, and sometimes surfaces information about whether target accounts have Azure consumption commitments.
Consistent referral activity creates a track record that makes future collaboration easier to initiate.
5. They actively use Microsoft Azure Consumption Commitments eligibility in sales conversations
Enterprise customers with Microsoft Azure Consumption Commitments (MACC) need to deploy their committed spend, and actively look for solutions that count toward it. If your offer is IP co-sell eligible, it qualifies, and that can be a meaningful lever late in a customer's contract period.
Most software companies who are MACC-eligible mention it somewhere in their documentation but do not actually use it in sales conversations. Training your sales team to bring it up, featuring it in your Marketplace listing description, and including it in your seller one-pager are all practical ways to put it to work.
The operational side
Everything above depends on having the right processes in place. Seller-facing collateral needs to be created and kept current.partner development manager relationships need a regular cadence. Referral intake needs to be connected to the CRM. MACC positioning needs to reach the sales team.
Co-sell programs often underperform, not because the strategy is wrong, but because these operational pieces are fragmented. Partner Center sits separate from the CRM. Referrals expire without anyone noticing. The partner development manager relationship runs through one person's inbox.
The software companies who generate repeatable co-sell pipeline have sorted out these operational basics with the right process and co-sell automation workflows.
Three things worth doing immediately
- Read your co-sell one-pager from a seller's perspective. Does it answer the question: why should I bring this up in my next meeting? If not, that is where to start.
- Pull your referral response times from the last 30 days. If your average is over 24 hours, fixing that process is the most immediate lever you have.
- Schedule a working session with your partner development manager. Come with three recent wins, a specific region or vertical where you want introductions, and your 90-day pipeline target. Data makes those conversations more productive.
If you would like to learn more and get your questions answered, join the live webinar on May 7th Turning co-sell readiness into real Microsoft Marketplace revenue - Microsoft Marketplace Community. If you are unable to attend the webinar, you can use the same link to view the recording on demand after the session.
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About Clazar
Clazar is a cloud marketplace automation platform that helps software companies manage their cloud marketplace operations, including co-sell referral routing, private offer workflows, MACC tracking, and revenue reporting. We work with hundreds of software companies turning marketplace readiness into repeatable revenue.
If you are working through any of the challenges above and want to compare notes, reach out to our experts.
