To become a successful ISV, you need to 'play' it right: the journey of TechSee

If you are an ISV, just starting your partnership, or thinking of becoming a Salesforce AppExchange partner, This is the precise article to read carefully.

Just like Rome, the Salesforce ISV partnership isn’t built in a day. ISV partners have each embarked on their own journey to success that encompasses activities across sales, marketing, and product development. An ISV that dedicates its resources and drives robust engagement with Salesforce will see these efforts translated into immense business success. A great example of a successful journey comes from TechSee, a company that yesterday announced a strategic partnership with Salesforce for powering a new ‘Remote Visual Assistant’ that will be embedded within Salesforce Service Cloud and Field Service.

 TechSee’s journey as an ISV partner started about a year ago when their offering was launched in the Salesforce AppExchange - a remote visual support solution that is integrated within Salesforce. This solution enables contact center agents or technicians to engage a customer via a video call to see the issue and resolve it remotely without the need to dispatch a technician. This innovative technology has a proven ROI in terms of cost reduction and customer experience.

 As the pandemic unfolded, TechSee identified a business opportunity. Demand for tech support is increasing, yet travel restrictions and safety regulations severely limit the ability for technicians to enter customers’ homes. Enterprises must find ways to keep its customers connected at this critical time while ensuring the safety of their employees.

To leverage this momentum, TechSee had only a short time to raise awareness within Salesforce, and to position itself against competitors already well placed in the AppExchange. How did TechSee succeed in such a short time? What made Salesforce choose TechSee as a strategic partner? Here are the highlights of their journey:

Management Efforts: TechSee CEO, Eitan Cohen, saw the enormous potential of being an ISV partner. Following Salesforce Ventures’ investment round in TechSee and the high market demand, he decided to prioritize this partnership and to dedicate all the required resources to make this partnership successful.

 Sales: TechSee’s sales team, led by Avi Rosenfeld, generated an impressive pipeline of opportunities and closed mutual deals that demonstrated TechSee’s revenue potential, such as Hippo, Lennar, Acuity Brands, Andersen Windows, and LiveWest. Ziv Orr, VP Business Development, engaged with forums frequented by AEs and SEs to introduce them to the product and promote opportunities within existing Salesforce accounts. Very quickly the value of selling TechSee became crystal clear, and more and more AEs created their own opportunities. 

Marketing: TechSee’s marketing team, led by Liad Churchill VP Marketing, established high levels of awareness about TechSee within Salesforce. They developed a community within the Salesforce chatter and provided the audience with constant updates, dedicated sales tools, and collateral, that highlighted their value proposition. TechSee’s team promoted mutual marketing activities such as webinars, PR, and awards. And most importantly, they have promoted the mutual deals with Salesforce to celebrate these wins, which essentially helped to transform account executives into ambassadors.

 Product Development: TechSee’s product team invested resources into developing a seamless integration with Service Cloud, in order to provide the optimal user experience to Salesforce users. They also engaged with the product management teams within Salesforce to explore a joint roadmap around innovative solutions, based on TechSee’s unique computer vision AI technology, that allows technicians or customers to resolve issues by themselves by interacting with a visual tech assistant.

 And to sync all these efforts together, Steve Egan, VP Global Alliances, has led the effort to orchestrate this process, set a strategic plan, and manage it to success.

 TechSee has effectively utilized the Salesforce ecosystem to support its activities. They have leveraged the ISV leadership's work to create mutual opportunities and introduce the company's offering to multiple forums within Salesforce. TechSee also leveraged the visibility in the AppExchange with an optimal listing and got full marketing support from the EMEA marketing team and the Israeli forum of ISV marketers. They were able to deepen the engagement with other Salesforce partners such as Accenture as part of this process. Furthermore, TechSee has wisely used the integration with Salesforce as a significant selling point that has helped to close deals and generate upsell opportunities. 

 And this is just the tip of the iceberg. TechSee’s journey is one example of a startup that created the right plan, found the right opportunity, and dedicated the right resources to maximize the potential of a strategic partnership.

 As we say @Salesforce, If you want the best, prepare to become the best! Those four pillars aligned with the right plan and the biggest WW ecosystem in the cloud space drive win to the one company willing to invest and take it all.

Enjoy!

Bar Israeli

**Please allow me to thank Liad Churchill for making this article valuable as it is.