Business Development Director, Marketplace

Role Purpose & Ecosystem Context

As an elite, high-touch commercial overlay and marketplace specialist driving the transactional evolution of the Salesforce ISV ecosystem, the Principal Marketplace Business Development Manager sits at the direct intersection of Revenue, Strategy, and Partner Operations.

This role is responsible for marketplace GMV velocity, owning the adoption of evolved marketplace functionality to deliver meaningful incremental ACV growth and accelerating overall GTM automation and transformation.

Convincing established enterprise partners to commit their core products, services and revenue streams to a nascent marketplace is an exceptionally difficult, deeply sophisticated sales pitch. This role is not a traditional partner management function; it is a senior, strategic co-selling position.

Furthermore, as the GTM App evolves, this individual will architect a brand-new commercial capability for Salesforce: building the end-to-end framework that allows partners to list and transact their entire solutions—comprising both software products and attached professional/managed services —directly with customers.

This role will be responsible for driving incremental revenue through Salesforce’s transactable partners, customers and sellers.

Core Responsibilities & Deliverables

1. High-Touch Marketplace Co-Selling & Deal Architecture

• Elite Partner Overlay: Act as the specialized marketplace execution expert, stepping into high-stakes, complex partner engagements alongside the AgentExchange GTM Transformation team to deliver the marketplace value proposition and secure structural commitments.
• Enforce Marketplace Routing Discipline: Maintain strict ownership over the transaction pipeline, stepping into active enterprise deals to unblock multi-party commercial structures and accelerate deal velocity.
• Custom Commercial Design: Define custom deal mechanics, private offer frameworks, and flexible pricing models, partnering directly with Strategy, Legal, RevOps, and Deal Desk to ensure the field is completely unblocked and ready to transact.

2. Partner Revenue Transformation & Advisory

• C-Suite Business Advisory: Act as a trusted strategic consultant to partner C-suites (CEOs, CFOs, CROs), guiding them through the intense revenue model, billing infrastructure, and internal sales compensation transformations required to successfully shift to a marketplace-first business model.
• Change Management Execution: Treat the roll-out of the GTM App as a profound change management program rather than a simple feature launch, directly addressing partner friction regarding margin preservation and field sales alignment.

3. Feedback Loops & AI-First Operational Governance

• Structured Product Advocacy: Act as the strategic feedback loop between strategic partners and the Product organization. Collect and prioritize input on missing features (especially regarding services monetization), building data-driven business cases that separate true roadmap priorities from one-off requests.
• AI-First Infrastructure: Own the pipeline tracking, KPIs, reporting, and roadmap reviews for this motion. Ensure all internal workflows and program management strategies are AI-first by default, leveraging automation to maximize ecosystem scale.

4. Supporting the "Products + Services" GTM Motion (0-to-1 Blueprint)

• Collaborate on the Complete Solution Motion: Work as part of the team responsible for designing, building, and institutionalizing the net-new commercial playbooks that allow partners to package and sell multi-element offers (core software subscriptions bundled with professional, advisory, implementation, or managed services) via the GTM App.
• Operational Framework Definition: Work cross-functionally to establish the baseline mechanics for how services procurement, milestone tracking, and complex billing allocations are structured and approved within the marketplace ecosystem.
• Execute Lighthouse Pilots: Identify, target, and sign tier-1 anchor partners to pilot the bundled software-and-services model, capturing deep operational learnings to build a scalable, repeatable playbook for the broader Global Partnerships team.

Key Performance Indicators (Success Metrics)

• Marketplace GMV & ACV: Direct, shared accountability for achieving the $5M ISV revenue target .
• Partner Activation Velocity: Ensure the successful adoption and operational change management to ensure partners are prepared to sell through the marketplace.
• Bundled Solution Launch: Successful transactional execution of the first enterprise-grade "Software + Services" bundled listing pilot with a major global partner.
• Sales Velocity: Achieve a measurable, documented reduction in "Time-to-Contract" for complex marketplace transactions.
• Ecosystem Activation: Build and execute comprehensive enablement plans across partner account managers, partners, field sales teams, and end customers. Track and report on readiness milestones to ensure seamless support and execution for marketplace deals..

Candidate Profile & Experience Requirements

• Experience Baseline: 8+ years of professional enterprise software experience, with a minimum of 4–5 years specifically operating as a specialized marketplace overlay, category lead, or business development manager within a software marketplace ecosystem.
• Domain Expertise: Deep, firsthand understanding of hyperscaler marketplace dynamics, including Custom Private Offers, multi-party transactional frameworks, and the monetization of third-party professional services.
• Commercial Track Record: Proven history of managing and driving $5M+ in cloud marketplace transactional volume, with a demonstrated ability to navigate matrixed global sales organizations.
• Transformation Capability: Comfortable operating in high ambiguity and defining net-new business motions from scratch. Proven ability to influence and consult at the partner C-suite level regarding revenue operations and business model shifts.