Find and Create Your Own AppExchange Jewel: Digging for Gold

The possibilities of the Salesforce platform are endless. Numerous business and product opportunities are still to be discovered. Some will be discovered by existing AppExchange partners; others by new, still unknown, partners. And the great news is that you can become one of them by adding value to companies using Salesforce — via the AppExchange Partner Program.

There are many ways and reasons for organizations to join the AppExchange, but particularly there are two:

• Products and ideas that are looking for a platform.
• A platform that needs a new product or feature.

If you have the same starting point as I had, your career is all about Salesforce and you are not on the AppExchange (yet). You are working with, and maybe even dreaming about, Salesforce all the time.

Being so involved in the Salesforce ecosystem by itself already creates a great opportunity. Being a Trailblazer brings you in the perfect position to spot those products and features that the platform has to be extended with. Because you know what Salesforce users are looking for.

Getting excited already? Let’s get started.

Do your job, be excellent.

As a Trailblazer, your job is to maintain a good overview of what you are doing. How multiple smaller tasks or projects serve one big organizational goal. You’ll find yourself in the situation that you are explaining and designing apps or solutions to address complex needs.

Choose your wave — the right one.

Not every app built on Salesforce is AppExchange ready. In some cases, it doesn’t make sense to expose a solution to the world. But it can happen that when working on a specific use case, you just know “this can be useful for many other organisations as well.”

Launching your AppExchange solution can take some time. That is why you cannot choose a new wave every few months. So make sure you choose the right one:

Research & Validate

First, you’ll have to check out if there is an app already available in the AppExchange that you can use. Why build something that is available to the ecosystem already?

You checked that there is nothing available that adequately addresses your use case. Don’t forget to learn from other tools that are not Salesforce-based. Doing your research helps you to start understanding the market, your future competitors, and your unique selling proposition.

Talk & Align

You did your homework and now it’s time to set things in motion. First of all, your focus should be on the organisation you are launching the product with. Inform them about your plans with the product that you are planning to build for them. Explain why it is interesting for them that you want to bring the offer their solution as an app to the AppExchange. Make sure they understand and they support you. It’s very important to make agreements about the ownership (intellectual property) of the code. Ensure that you have agreements in place describing this topic so that everyone is aligned before you start.

Before engaging with the Salesforce ISV team, my advice would be to prepare for your conversations with them. You are excited about the product and launch—but your conversations with Salesforce need more than that. The questions that you should prepare for are related questions like “What are you going to do when the app is ready and published?” “How are you going to scale your team?” And “how are you planning to get your first post-launching-customer customers on board”?

Preparing yourself on the topics related to that question is key. For me, it was useful to make a business plan. It helps you to think about topics you maybe never thought about before starting those conversations.

Move Quickly: 7xP

Everything is aligned and planned. Your customer is on board and Salesforce gave approval on your partnership plan.

Now you want to make sure you keep things going. This process can easily be delayed, but if you are on top of it, you can be on the AppExchange soon. Are you ready to build your product organisation?

Partner with Salesforce — Use your partnership, keep your Account Manager up to date, and ask for help— like when things don’t move as quickly as you wanted. Think ahead and anticipate what is coming.

Use the Partner Community — The Salesforce Partner Community has a lot of resources to keep you going. Use them, and collaborate with others like you using Chatter.

Track progress by checking out your onboarding process status. It keeps you going and helps you to understand what needs to be done next.

Get Paperwork Done — Get it done on time and make sure you understand what it is about and what agreements you are making.

Build Your Excellent Product — Build the product, make your customer happy, and build features in a scalable and extendable way. If you want to check if you are making the right technical decisions, reach out to the community—they are happy to help. When building your product understand that after your launching customer there will be more customers. And new customers need new features. Your product is scalable when it is easy to add new features in the future.

Package — You have to package your product before you can upload your app to the AppExchange. You can package your product before you deliver it to the launching customer, but also afterward.

Pass Security Review — Your app only appears on the AppExchange after passing the security review. There is a lot of information available on how to do that. Collaborate with others who did it before and learn from best practices.

Publish Your App —You’re ready to rock and roll. You can now publish your app. Make sure you invest in the look and feel of your AppExchange listing. That is important to attract potential customers.

Just Getting Started: From Gold to Jewel

Wow, you have your shiny app on the AppExchange. That feels great, doesn’t it?

Now you have gold in your hands. This is a starting point towards creating your jewel. Building your own product business needs investments (time, attention, and budget) in several areas.

Focus the most on sales and marketing after you launch with your launching customer. Create customer cases, visit events (if applicable), present your app everywhere you can. Use as many resources and marketing opportunities as possible. As you get more customers make sure your support processes scale up quickly as well so you can keep your customers happy.