Help customers discover your Marketplace solution with Intelligent Discovery and App Advisor
Technology buying is becoming more self-directed, digital, and AI-assisted. Instead of beginning with a specific product or vendor, customers start with the business problem they want to solve. Microsoft Marketplace is evolving with them. With intelligent discovery in Marketplace, customers describe a business challenge in natural language, receive contextual recommendations, compare solutions, and ask questions as they evaluate options. If you want to see how the experience is changing for customers, start with Accelerating AI adoption with intelligent discovery in Microsoft Marketplace. For software companies, there is another side to the story. If Marketplace is getting better at connecting customer needs with relevant solutions, your listing needs to provide useful, relevant information about what you offer. As the blog points out, that makes the quality of your Marketplace listing part of your growth strategy. Want to skip right to a no-cost, fast listing optimization in App Advisor to improve your listing on six categories that customers care about? Customers start with business needs, not product names Imagine a retail leader looking to improve demand forecasting or an operations team trying to automate repetitive workflows. They may not know your company or product name. Increasingly, they don't need to. Intelligent discovery lets customers describe goals, challenges, or desired outcomes in natural language. Marketplace uses that context to surface relevant solutions. According to Microsoft's early preview results, customers using intelligent discovery were 68% more likely to find solutions that met their needs and take the next step toward purchase. That raises an important question: Does your Marketplace listing clearly communicate the solution your customers are searching for? With Intelligent Discovery, customers can now: Use Smart Search to pinpoint their needs, without even browsing, Start an interactive chat on any Marketplace listing page, with answers grounded on the listing detail, Compare products using a toggle on multiple listings that produces a customer-focused grid with specifics like price, ratings, and plans With these tools, customer browsing can be more targeted. It also allows your Marketplace listing to shine if you have these details. Your Marketplace listing needs to address customer questions Your listing still needs to make the business value case for your solution on Marketplace. A strong listing should make it easy to understand who your solution is for, what problem it solves, how it works, and what outcome a customer can expect. Be specific about the business problems and use cases your solution addresses. Explain important Microsoft integrations, requirements, limitations, deployment options, and the path to buy or get started. Use the language your customers use to describe their needs throughout your title, summary, description, captions, and metadata. Give them enough information to evaluate your solution. Representative screenshots or videos can demonstrate the experience. Current security, privacy, compliance, support, customer evidence, and reviews can help establish trust. This becomes even more important as the buying experience becomes conversational. Customers can use interactive chat on Marketplace product pages to ask about capabilities, integrations, industry use cases, and fit. Your listing supplies important context as customers explore and evaluate your solution. App Advisor can show you where to improve If you have a published Marketplace offer, App Advisor can review your listing and provide personalized, AI-powered recommendations for improving it. Rather than manually comparing your listing against pages of guidance, you can see specific opportunities to make it stronger. Maybe your description focuses on features but doesn't clearly explain outcomes. Your value proposition needs to be sharper. An important Microsoft integration is hard to find. Your screenshots don't give customers enough context. The point is not to add more words or even stuff your listing with keywords. It is to make your information clear, comprehensive, and relevant to a customer deciding whether your solution fits their needs. Intelligent discovery & App Advisor: two sides of the Marketplace experience The connection is simple. Customers describe what they need. Intelligent discovery helps them find and evaluate relevant solutions. You describe what your solution does. App Advisor helps you strengthen the Marketplace listing customers use to understand and evaluate it. Together, those experiences reinforce why a listing optimization in App Advisor can no longer be a one-time publishing task. Your product will likely change—you'll launch new capabilities, reach different industries, add Microsoft integrations, learn more about customers, and sharpen your capabilities and positioning. Your Marketplace listing should evolve with it. Publishing is just the start of your Marketplace growth Getting an offer onto Marketplace is only a starting point. You have to optimize your listing to grow your presence. Look at your listing from the perspective of a potential customer starting with a business need rather than your product name. Can they quickly understand the problem you solve? Can they tell whether your solution fits their environment? Do you give them enough information to confidently take the next step? As Marketplace discovery becomes more intelligent, the answers to those questions become more important. Use App Advisor to review your published Marketplace listing, get personalized recommendations, and make it easier for customers to understand why your solution fits what they need. Ready to get started? Optimize your listing with personalized recommendations.
Looking to Connect with Dynamics 365 Teams for Support & Delivery Collaboration
I’m reaching out on behalf of Array Platforms Pvt. Ltd., a Microsoft solutions team specializing in Dynamics 365 and Power Platform. We’re interested in connecting with businesses and Microsoft implementation partners that need support with existing Dynamics 365 environments, ongoing maintenance, customizations, enhancements, or additional development resources. We’re also open to collaborating with implementation partners who need reliable delivery support to manage project workloads and ongoing client requirements. If your team is exploring ways to strengthen its Dynamics 365 support or delivery capabilities, I’d be happy to connect and explore potential collaboration opportunities. Looking forward to exchanging ideas with the community.Build your SaaS offer with the modernized SaaS Accelerator to sell on Marketplace
Build your SaaS offer for Microsoft Marketplace with coding agent guidance and the modernized SaaS Accelerator. Explore resources that help simplify Marketplace integration and move from development to publishing faster.Calculate your projected Grow benefits by selling through Frontier Accelerate for Marketplace
The Marketplace Value Calculator in App Advisor helps software companies estimate the potential business impact of selling through Microsoft Marketplace. By combining projected revenue, transaction costs, and Frontier Accelerate for Marketplace benefits into a personalized three-year model, the calculator helps teams build a data-driven business case for Marketplace growth.How and when do I use Frontier Accelerate for Marketplace benefits?
The latest App Advisor guidance shows how Frontier Accelerate for Marketplace can help at every stage: 🔨 Build & Publish: Create and optimize your Marketplace offer. 📈 Grow: Increase visibility and accelerate transactions. ⭐ Differentiate: Access advanced benefits that support long-term growth. Whether you're just getting started or scaling an established Marketplace business, App Advisor can help you find the right resources for your stage. 📖 Read the blog: Frontier Accelerate for Marketplace: New App Advisor Guidance for Software Companies Which stage best describes your Marketplace journey today: Build & Publish, Grow, or Differentiate?Explore App Advisor for details on how Frontier Accelerate for Marketplace can help you sell more
Explore the latest Frontier Accelerate for Marketplace updates available through App Advisor. Learn how software development companies can discover relevant Microsoft Marketplace resources, benefits, and commercialization opportunities that help accelerate solution development, reach new customers, and scale revenue growth through Marketplace.Scale repeatable channel sales with Marketplace resale enabled offers (REO) and App Advisor
Learn how resale enabled offers (REO) help scale channel-led sales through Microsoft Marketplace. Authorize eligible partners once, enable repeatable reseller motions, and expand into new markets without adding equivalent internal sales overhead.Grow your sales on Marketplace: App Advisor helps you understand improvements to negotiated deals
Want to dive into the details of negotiated deals and how to create them? Head to App Advisor: https://aka.ms/GrowMySales Not all customers buy apps in the same way. Some need negotiated pricing. Others have specific contract or billing requirements. Some want to buy through a trusted channel partner. Microsoft Marketplace already supports these scenarios through negotiated deals. Now, several new capabilities make those motions more flexible, accessible, and scalable. How do I sell more apps and agents? The best way to sell more apps and agents is to expand your sales footprint, not build more. This means making your apps and agents available through private offers, negotiated deals, and selling through channel partners. These types of deals have always given you flexibility, but new releases have improved their functionality. No matter how you’re selling, chances are good that you could grow your sales with at least one type of private offer (each detailed in App Advisor) Sell directly without another party → To-customer private offer. Bring a channel partner into a direct customer deal → Multiparty private offers (MPO). Authorize partners to repeatedly resell your offer → Resale enabled offers (REO). Sell through a customer's Cloud Solution Provider → CSP private offer. What changed for negotiated deals Over the last two months, Microsoft has improved capabilities and availability of several types of negotiated deals: Request private offer: Customers can now initiate a conversation about customized pricing and terms directly from an eligible Marketplace listing. Partners configure this when publishing an offer and a button appears on the listing for customers to reach out, reducing the gap between discovering an offer and beginning a negotiated sale. Custom contract lengths: Software companies can create eligible private offers with nonstandard contract lengths defined in months, including terms such as 18 months, with support extending up to 10 years for eligible SaaS and Professional Services scenarios. This helps align Marketplace transactions more closely with contracts negotiated with customers. Flexible billing: Eligible private offers can use customized billing schedules rather than forcing the transaction into a standard cadence. Current Microsoft documentation supports up to 70 installments and terms up to 120 months/10 years in supported scenarios. Expanded MPO reach: After expanding into 30 European countries earlier in the year, MPO expanded to Australia, Japan, and South Africa last month, creating more opportunities for software companies and channel partners to collaborate on Marketplace transactions. Expanded REO reach: REO expanded to New Zealand, extending the channel-led resale model into another market. What comes next Interested in expanding your sales footprint with minimal overhead? Follow along in this series as we discuss each type of private offer and advantages of each. To get started today, explore your negotiated selling options with App Advisor: https://aka.ms/GrowMySalesExpand Marketplace sales with MPO and App Advisor
Explore how multiparty private offers (MPO) enable software companies to collaborate with channel partners on Marketplace opportunities. Learn MPO requirements, eligibility, customer scenarios, and how App Advisor helps you navigate and create partner-led Marketplace deals.Close more custom deals on Marketplace with private offers and App Advisor guidance
This is part of a series where we look at improvements to negotiated deals in Microsoft Marketplace and how App Advisor helps you choose the right negotiated deal types for your business. Marketplace customers don’t just buy according to the pricing, terms, billing, and procurement structure of a standard public offer. Sometimes, they need a more customized option. A to-customer private offer gives you more flexibility to meet those requirements, negotiate directly with a specific customer, and keep the transaction in Microsoft Marketplace. Let's look at questions that businesses like you may be asking. Why would I use a to-customer private offer? Private offers give flexibility to particular customers. A private offer can be a good fit when a specific customer: Requires customer-specific terms, Wants to negotiate custom pricing, Needs a billing structure aligned with its budgeting or procurement process. They also give you, the seller, some flexibility because you can: Negotiate directly with my customer without involving a channel partner, Include supported professional services as part of the Marketplace transaction, Keep the negotiated transaction completely in Marketplace (while gaining benefits). For eligible offers, the purchase can also count toward the customer’s Azure cloud consumption commitment, while the sale can contribute toward unlocking benefits after publishing, Certified Software Designations, and Azure IP co-sell. To see more about the benefits of to-customer private offers, go to this deep dive in App Advisor Who can I sell to with a private offer? To-customer private offers support a broad range of Marketplace opportunities. Private offers are: Available globally, Available to all Microsoft partners, Available to MOSA, Enterprise Agreement (EA), and Microsoft Customer Agreement (MCA) customers. How can I find more customers for private offers? Your existing sales pipeline is one place to start. But Marketplace now also helps customers signal when they’re interested in a negotiated deal. With the new Request private offer enabled on an eligible Marketplace listing, customers can initiate a conversation about customized pricing and terms directly from your product page. On your "Offer setup" page, toggle the "Would you like to enable private offer requests from customers?" ON to have a button appear on your listing that interested viewers can initiate a conversation with you. You still own the sales conversation and create the private offer. The difference is that interested customers now have another way to raise their hand. For software companies asking how to generate more app leads, this creates a clearer path: Marketplace discovery → customer interest → negotiated deal → purchase. How do I create a to-customer private offer? Once you have an interested customer, the basic process starts in Partner Center: Gather the customer’s billing information and identify who can accept and purchase the offer. Create a new private offer using your published Marketplace offer as a base. Define the customer, terms, contacts, negotiated pricing, and other deal requirements. Review and submit the private offer. Share the private-offer link so your customer can accept and purchase. Want all the details to consider (from customer permissions and prerequisites to offer setup and acceptance)? That’s where App Advisor can help. Use App Advisor to move your Marketplace deal forward App Advisor brings the detailed, curated guidance together in one place. You can use it to understand: When to use a negotiated deal, Which type of negotiated deal to choose, What you need to know about your customer to start, How to move through the process with customer checklists, walkthroughs, and supporting resources. Ready to customize and close your next deal? Use App Advisor to learn how to create a to-customer private offer and turn customer interest into a Marketplace sale. Next, we’ll look at resale enabled offers (REO) and how they can help you expand your Marketplace sales motion through channel partners.
