Master AWS Co-Selling: Partners Portal, ACE, and ISV Accelerate Programs

Ready to enhance your AWS Co-Sell strategy? Learn how to leverage ACE & ISV Accelerate Programs effectively. Free Cloud Partnership course access included.

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AWS Engagement Program (“ACE”) & ISV Accelerate (“ISVA”)

As an AWS Partner aiming to develop a co-sell strategy with AWS, it’s a MUST to participate in the following AWS Co-Sell Partner Programs:

1. AWS Engagement Program (“ACE”) — this program enable you to share customer opportunities in the AWS Sales teams via the ACE “Opportunity Submission Tool” in the AWS Partner Network (APN) Portal.
2. ISV Accelerate (“ISVA”) — this program motives AWS Sellers to help you sell your offering, by providing a cash incentive to the AWS Sellers (provided by AWS).

I will dive into each of the programs in this blog post. These two programs go hand in hand. If you are not an AWS yet, follow this Checklist to become an AWS Partner.

All you need to know on: AWS Engagement Program (“ACE”)

AWS ACE Program

The ACE platform helps to increase alignment and collaboration between AWS and its Partners.

The main benefits of submitting opportunities in ACE

• Get deal support by engaging with AWS Seller — when you submit an opportunity, once it is validated, you will get an email back with the details for the AWS sales representative and account manager that cover the relevant account. Understanding who is covering your customer is the first stage in building a co-sell strategy. You will be able to discuss the opportunity with the AWS Seller and leverage his or her relationship with the customer.
• Build relationships with AWS Sellers for future co-selling — when you submit more an more opportunIties, you show your value to AWS customers, which will help you to gain trust among AWS Seller.
• Get Customer referrals — when you have at least 10 “launched opportunities” (see below what is considered as a launched opportunity) in the Partner Portal, you are eligible to get customer referrals from AWS Sellers. Such referrals can even be prospects generated by joint Marketing activities with AWS (as long as such customers consented to be engaged with an APN Partner to assist with their need). Joint marketing activities can be events, webinars, blog posts, etc .Now getting a referral is not that easy, as there are many partners, and it is challenging for AWS Sellers to know which customer is relevant to certain partners. However, this is how you start to build your foundation for potential referrals that will help you grow your revenue.

Below I will share, from my experience, how to submit opportunities, which opportunities to submit, and what is considered as a “launched” opportunity. You will soon find out that “Submitted Opportunities” ≠ “Launch Opportunities.”

Which Opportunities Shall you Submit?

In general, any opportunity that you have with an AWS customer, you can submit in the APN Portal. “Opportunities” may include the following:

• Leads/opportunities — AWS customers that you are engaging with, in different stages (demo, trial, technical evaluation, business discussions, etc.)
• Up-sell opportunities with AWS customers
• New customers that have the potential to extend their AWS adoption with your help.

How to Submit AWS Opportunities on APN Portal?

Once you have an opportunity (as described above), you can go ahead and submit it, following the below steps:

1. Go to the APN Portal ⇒ click “my customers” tab. This is where you can add new opportunities and manage existing customer engagements on AWS.
2. Click — “Add.”
3. Fill out the required fields.
4. Click — “Submit” — a message will display confirming your submission was successful.

In the past few months, AWS made a great effort to make it easier for partners to submit opportunities, introducing a bulk option, and decreasing the number of fields that are required for the submission.

New Opportunity Form

The AWS Validation Phase

After you submitted an opportunity, AWS will review it and will decide whether to validate the opportunity or reject it. Usually, if the opportunity is authentic, it will be validated. If you need the validation process to be expedited due to the nature of the opportunity, your PDM could help you with that.

Once your opportunity is validated — you get an email with the details of the sales representative/ account manager of the specific customer. This is SUPER valuable as this is your way to contact AWS Sales teams directly concerning your opportunities. Connecting with such sales teams can be a great tactic for your AWS co-sale strategy. In my next blog post, I will share a few ways to leverage such engagement — stay tuned!

How to Launched an Opportunity on AWS Partner Portal?

Only when you closed-won an opportunity on your end (i.e., your customer is paying you), you can start working on getting it “launched.” Remember, to launch an opportunity, you first need to get it validated by AWS. Once the opportunity is validated, you can update its status to closed-won, assuming of course that you closed-won the opportunity. After you updated the opportunity’s status, you’ll need to contact the AWS account manager. When you reach out, update that you launched the opportunity and ask him/her to change the status of the opportunity to “launched” on their end too. You will have their email in the portal under this opportunity. Once the account manager flips the opportunity to “launched,” only then this opportunity will be considered as a “launched” opportunity under the APN requirements. From my experience, it takes about 24 hours after the AWS account manager updates the status until it is included in the launched opportunities count on the APN Portal.

How to Track Your Launched Opportunities?

On the home page of the APN Platform, once you log in, and assuming you are the AWS alliance lead, you will find a summary of the tier requirements.

There you could see how many Launched Opportunities you have achieved so far. If the number of Launched Opportunities doesn’t match the opportunities that you have launched, that means that the account manager of the “missing” launched opportunities did not update the status in his/her end. In this case, you would need to reach out to him/her and ask them to update the opportunity’s status to “launched.”

Using the Opportunities Submission Tool to Build Your Co-sell Strategy and Highlight your AWS Business

The Opportunities Submission tool is a great platform to engage with AWS Sales teams and build your co-sell strategy. In my next blog post, I will focus on how to leverage the opportunity Submission tool to co-sell with AWS and drive successful customers outcomes.For my full Co-Sell Playbook, see the Co-Sell module in this course (provided for free to the Medium Community).

AWS ISV Accelerate Program

The ISV Accelerate Program structures the AWS co-sell support and accelerates the joint commitment between AWS and its Partners. It only available for AWS Partners in the Software Path.

As part of this program, AWS provides co-sell support in a few layers:

• Enhanced exposure to AWS Sales teams and prioritized access to the AWS co-sell support team. This access drives more awareness to Partners’ products, which drives deal support and customer referrals.
• Cash incentives for AWS Sales teams for joint wins. These incentives enhance the motivation of field teams to help Partners to close deals.
• Get deal support from AWS Sellers to your current opportunities and reach new AWS customers.
• Reduced AWS Marketplace listing fees. If a deal is closed via the AWS Marketplace, AWS will reduce the listing fee significantly. If you want to learn more about the AWS Marketplace, check out this post.

In order to benefit from the ISV Accelerate program, Partners need to comply with certain requirements, as detailed below.

ISV Accelerate Program Checklist

The program requirements are listed in the AWS ISV Accelerate website (see screenshot below).

https://aws.amazon.com/partners/programs/isv-accelerate/

As the requirement are detailed above, I will only go over the requirements that need further explanation or clarification:

• Product in GA — you have to have at least one product in GA (General Availability), beta versions are not enough.
• Executed NDA with AWS — this is very straight forward and standard, there is no room for negotiation. You need to go over it and check the box and execute.
• AWS Partner business plan — this is a template that you fill out, with the partnerships activities you plan to do. Your Partner Development Manager should help you with that.
• $350,000 in direct AWS revenue OR a minimum of 20 launched opportunities — direct revenue is essentially your AWS annual bill. So you annual consumption should be $350K, OR you should have at least 20 “launched opportunities” with total MRR of $30K. As mentioned above — “launched opportunity” is NOT a “submitted opportunity”.
• 2 publicly referenceable customers — a public reference can be a blog post, an article or any public case study that describe how your product support a specific AWS customer.
• Microsite — this is basically a webpage on your website, where you specifically mention you AWS Partnership, and how your product supports AWS customers/applications.
• Maintain up-to-date field-ready kit for the AWS Sales organization — this is a must when you are selling with AWS Sellers. You need to have crisp briefs that are focused on AWS Sellers (for AWS internal usage), and for AWS customers. More on how to create successful sales brief, see module 3 (“Co-Sell”) in my Cloud Partnerships online course.

Co-Sell KPIs

Tracking co-sell Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) is crucial for success with AWS. Focus on important metrics like engagements with AWS sellers, co-sell program enrollments, and customer referrals. These KPIs help you see how well your sales efforts are working and the overall impact of your partnership.

Frequent interactions with AWS sellers and participation in co-sell programs can show a strong partnership. By monitoring these KPIs, you can improve your sales strategy and strengthen your AWS collaboration. For the full list of Co-Sell KPIs, read my blog post on 13 Metrics You Must Track When You Partner with Cloud Service Providers. Get the insights you need to boost your co-sell success and grow your business.

Key Takeaways

1. Submit opportunities at your earliest convenience, as it may take some time for them to get validated.
2. Connect with AWS sales teams directly to launch an opportunity. Get support as needed.
3. Keep on submitting opportunities as they will be your gate to the AWS Sales team and co-sell initiatives.
4. Enroll in the ISV Accelerate Program, so AWS Sellers will be more motivated (and compensated) to collaborate with you.
5. Start creating your Co-Sell strategy leveraging these 5 co-sell motions.
6. Build your company’s AWS Co-Sell Playbook.

I provide the Medium community a free access to my Cloud Co-Sell Playbook, presented in this course.