Nowadays, there are lots of tools that are created to help a business with development, growth, and promotion. However, there is one platform that brings together tools and works for customers and partners, so they are saving & making money in their business. We talked to Olman J. Quesada, who is the Head of Business Development at AppSumo. Thus, we discovered some tips on how to complete the AppSumo partner process. Keep reading!
AppSumo is a deal-of-the-day platform that launches digitally distributed goods and online services. They compare themselves to a “medieval catapult”. We understand this comparison the next way: AppSumo is a platform that like a catapult helps companies to “shoot” on the market. They also say that they transform “starts” into real “startups”.
Benefits of being the AppSumo partner
AppSumo has a strict selection process. Approximately only 8 out of 80 products that send their pitches to this platform become partners. It means that if your startup was chosen as the AppSumo partner, “Sumo-lings” as they call themselves, believe a lot in you. It is also essential that they are a team of professionals who have seen and tested many products. So they will definitely don’t miss something valuable.
Being the AppSumo partner means sharing your product with thousands of entrepreneurs and agency owners who are potentially interested in it.
“The majority of our customers are freelancers, online entrepreneurs, etc. They may be from various fields: lawyers, SEO agencies. Anyone who has an online presence and wants to use SaaS tools for their business”.
Olman J. Quesada,
Head of Business Development at AppSumo
Sumo-lings support their partners in different directions, including marketing, copywriting, and testing. Moreover, there are 2,000+ affiliate partners such as bloggers, video creators, freelancers, consultants, etc. in their team.
We have asked Olman what attracts him mostly in his job. And the answer that we received seems to us interesting and illustrative.
“Honestly, it’s the excitement that I see when partners launch on AppSumo. They have just an amazing experience and the feedback that we get like it was incredible, etc. Usually, it’s my favorite part of the process”.
Due to the attitude of Sumo-lings towards their work, becoming a partner means becoming a member of the supportive family that loves tacos 🙂
Before launching
Define goals. Why do you need AppSumo?
You need to ask yourself the following question: what do you want to receive from this deal? Goals might be different, but they have to be clear. For example, you want to earn two/three times more than last year’s revenue.
The brand-awareness may also be in the first place for you, and profit is secondary. Such well-known businesses as Shopify, Evernote, MailChimp, MobileMonkey, etc. were AppSumo partners. Being among them is a nice perspective, right?
However, this stage is crucial as here you might understand that AppSumo is probably not for you, or at least it is not for you yet. Read the next paragraph that describes products that won’t fit AppSumo.
Are you suitable for AppSumo?
There is a list of benchmarks that won’t let you become the AppSumo partner. Keep them in mind before starting the launching process.
1. If your product is in beta testing or has lots of “coming soon” tools, it won’t match AppSumo. Partner products are the ones that can be used here and now. Moreover, the product is better to have basic integrations, for example, with Zapier or Slack, etc. Thus, if your startup was just created and you haven’t tested it yet — there’s a high probability that you will get a refusal.
2. Narrow specialization. If your target audience is too narrow, the product might not fit the AppSumo. For example, a marketing automation tool for hospitals won’t work. But a marketing automation tool for B2B has better chances.
3. Less than 3 members team. The team has to have 3+ members to deal with tech support issues as well as questions from the AppSumo team.
By the way, we were talking to Olman during the SaaS nation 2019, where he was performing as one of the speakers. Besides, we asked him to share his point of view about products that may receive refuse to show the real picture.
“We would probably deny the product that is a bit saturated like a link shortener, for example. Or if the tool is super buggy. We have a group of testers who test everything so the product has to be solid, to be a good feature”.
Launching process on AppSumo
Step 1. Introduction
Download the official AppSumo launch guide. This is the first and the most important thing to start. All the benefits and detailed instructions are written in this guide so don’t skip it. But pay attention that there is a pop-up form on the website. You need to fill in your email there to get the document. Thus, turn off ad blockers if you have some, otherwise, you won’t be able to download it.
After reading the launch guide you are ready to submit the product. Simply open the same-titled category on the website and click the button so the partner’s application will open for you. Sumo-lings themselves say that there is no way back after the submission: “It’s do or die, eat tacos or be eaten by tacos”. But point out that this process may take some time.
And even if you haven’t received an answer after two months as our friends from Serpstat — don’t get disappointed and try to start the communication with Sumo-lings via Facebook or LinkedIn. You may contact Olman Quesada or Jeff Lurie as usually, they are the ones who call possible partners that passed the first stage.
You can read Serpstat experience of completing the AppSumo partner process in the article “How We Made $250,000 In One Week: A Guide For Successful Appsumo Promotion”.
We have also asked Olman to share with us his favorite product, the extraordinary, the one that he remembered most. And the first one that he mentioned was Ukrainian company 🙂
“I would say it’s Restream, they are pretty awesome. Why? As they give an opportunity to stream simultaneously to Twitter, Facebook, Youtube, etc. That is a dream of any marketer — when you stream, you want to reach as many people as you can. There’s also a product called Heysummit, a cool one. Missinglettr is as well a unique one. I guess these products are among the most interesting that we have launched on AppSumo”.
Step 2. Discussion
The second step is about making a call with Sumo-lings, as we said before, usually, you will talk to Olman or Jeff. The thing here is to make them sure that your product is definitely worth it. You need to show the best capabilities of your startup, its uniqueness. But don’t worry and be convincible and amicable. This might give you some extra points.
However, you need to prepare yourself to discuss your goals in an AppSumo partnership. Remember the first paragraph? Use it here! Marketing initiatives, roadmap, integrations, white labeling features, funding, MRR, etc. are also going to be discussed.
After that, you will be asked to provide 5 testing accounts so your product could be checked by the testing team. Be patient and wait for results. It usually takes about a week.
Step 3. The signing of a contract
After discussing all the important moments like terms, timeline, etc. and sign a contract — you will officially become AppSumo partner. It’s exactly the step when you contact Mel Safi who is a Customer Success Manager. She will provide you with the following information and all the following steps. And voilà! You have successfully launched on AppSumo.
Read the article “What is Customer Success: advantages for client and company” and discover the importance of Customer Success Managers in the B2B sphere.
Alternative conclusions
As a conclusion, we asked Olman to explain what the main points AppSumo gives to its partners.
“I would say it’s training and something more like conditioning yourself as in three weeks your business is operating like it is a huge company. Or it’s onboarding two, three, four, five hundred customers in a very short period. Just a lot of things are happening which gives you a taste of what your company could be like in the future which is everybody’s goal. So I guess AppSumo gives the training altitude”.
