AWS Co-Sell Readiness: An Operating Model for ISVs

Getting listed on AWS Marketplace is a milestone but it is NOT the same as being ready to co-sell.

Co-sell starts working when your sales, alliances, operations, marketing, and leadership teams know how to identify the right opportunities, involve AWS at the right time, and keep everyone moving toward the same customer outcome.

In other words, co-sell readiness is not a program status, it is an operating model for your organization to align with AWS.

What does "co-sell ready" mean?

An ISV is ready to co-sell with AWS when it can consistently:

• Identify customer opportunities where AWS has a reason to engage.
• Explain the value the ISV and AWS bring to the customer together.
• Submit complete, qualified opportunities through ACE.
• Give AWS sellers a clear and specific way to help.
• Coordinate responsibilities across internal teams.
• Keep opportunity data current from first submission through close.
• Measure AWS engagement, pipeline progression, Marketplace transactions, and revenue.

AWS points to many of the same fundamentals; its guidance for successful Marketplace sellers includes leadership commitment, sales alignment, ongoing enablement, participation in AWS Partner Network programs, and operational systems that replace one-off processes with repeatable ones.

The technology matters. The program requirements matter. But the operating discipline behind them is what makes the motion repeatable.

Marketplace ready is not co-sell ready by default

These terms are often treated as if they mean the same thing. They do not.

Marketplace is an important part of the route to market. It can make procurement easier and connect transactions to the broader AWS relationship. But the listing will not qualify opportunities, align sellers, update ACE, or run pipeline reviews for you.

That requires a working co-sell model.

Start co-sell with leadership alignment

Before asking whether AWS sellers are engaged, ask whether your own leadership team is aligned: What is the business trying to accomplish with AWS?

The answer needs to be more specific than “grow revenue” or “get AWS to bring us leads.” Those goals do not tell the team what to prioritize or how to measure progress.

A useful co-sell plan starts with defined outcomes. Depending on the business, those may include:

• Increasing AWS-influenced pipeline.
• Moving more qualified deals through AWS Marketplace.
• Expanding into a priority industry or customer segment.
• Improving access to strategic accounts.
• Increasing launched ACE opportunities.
• Shortening procurement for customers that prefer AWS Marketplace.

AWS recommends starting a co-sell program with clear business objectives and connecting individual initiatives to measurable outcomes such as launched opportunities, influenced revenue, Marketplace sales, and shared opportunities.

Leadership also needs to settle a few practical questions. Will sales representatives receive fair credit when a deal transacts through Marketplace? Who owns the AWS relationship? What resources are available? How often will the team review progress?

If those questions do not have clear answers, the motion will depend on individual effort. That may produce a few wins. It will not scale.

Ask this: Have leadership, Sales, and Alliances agreed on what the AWS motion is expected to produce over the next 12 months?

Choose accounts AWS can help advance

Account mapping is not the same as uploading a list of company names.

A strong co-sell target sits at the intersection of four things:

• A real customer problem.
• A strong fit for your solution.
• A relevant AWS relationship, workload, priority, or commercial interest.
• A clear action AWS can take to help advance the opportunity.

Without those elements, “target account” usually means “company we would like to sell to.” That is not enough to build a joint pursuit.

The better approach is to start with the customer. What is changing inside the account? Why does the customer need to act now? What outcome is it trying to achieve? How does your solution help? Where does AWS fit?

Then make the joint value easy to understand.

An AWS seller should not have to study a 30-slide deck to figure out when to bring your company into an account. The seller needs a short explanation of the problem you solve, the customers that are a fit, the AWS relevance, and what success looks like.

AWS recommends developing a field-ready kit and a “better together” story that helps its sales organization connect a partner solution to the right customer opportunity.

Ask this: Can the team explain why AWS should engage in each target account—not just why the account should buy the product?

Treat ACE like a sales process

ACE is the system through which partners share opportunities with AWS, request co-sell support, and manage joint engagement. Current AWS Partner Central workflows assign every submitted opportunity a co-sell motion and an Opportunity Quality Score. Those signals influence how AWS engages with the opportunity. That makes the quality of the opportunity record important.

A useful ACE submission should tell AWS:

• What problem this specific customer is trying to solve.
• Why the customer needs to act now.
• Who is involved in the decision.
• What progress has already been made.
• What the next step is, who owns it, and when it will happen.
• Which AWS services the customer is adopting.
• What specific help the partner needs from AWS.

“Deal support” is not a specific ask.

A useful request might be an introduction to the account team, architectural validation, pricing assistance, or support for a customer presentation. AWS’s current guidance explicitly tells partners to identify a precise need and notes that a general request for deal support does not count as a specific action. 

The record also needs to stay current. An opportunity that has not been updated in weeks tells AWS very little about what is happening now. More submissions will not fix weak qualification. Better information will.

AWS’s Seller Insights guidance makes the point directly: data quality matters more than quantity, and opportunity details should be accurate, specific, and current. 

Ask this: Could an AWS seller read the ACE record, understand the deal, and know what to do next?

Make AWS seller engagement easy

AWS sellers have their own customers, goals, priorities, and timelines. They are not waiting for another general product pitch!

To earn engagement, make the opportunity easy to understand and easy to act on. That usually means providing:

• A clear customer problem.
• A concise use case.
• The business outcome the customer wants.
• The connection to AWS.
• Proof that your solution can deliver.
• Competitive context.
• A specific request.
• A dated next step.

The difference between a weak and strong request is simple.

A weak request says:

Can you introduce us to the account?

A stronger request says:

The customer is evaluating a secure data platform for a public-sector workload and plans to select a vendor this quarter. The technical champion has asked for architectural validation. Can the AWS account team join a 30-minute review next Thursday?

The second request gives the seller context, relevance, timing, and an action.

AWS recommends that partners establish a dedicated co-sell point of contact, share opportunities on an ongoing basis, keep Marketplace listings current, connect relevant listings to opportunities, and collaborate directly with AWS Sales. 

Good seller alignment is not built through occasional emails asking for help. It is built by bringing AWS credible opportunities and following through on commitments.

Ask this: Is the team giving AWS sellers actionable opportunities—or asking AWS to create the opportunity from scratch?

Define internal ownership

Co-sell crosses functions. That does not mean everyone owns everything.

A typical opportunity may involve:

• Sales identifying and qualifying the customer need.
• Alliances coordinating with AWS.
• Revenue Operations maintaining systems and reporting.
• Product or technical teams supporting validation.
• Finance and legal supporting pricing and contracting.
• Marketplace operations creating the private offer.
• Marketing supporting the better-together story and sales materials.

Each handoff needs an owner.

The simplest way to expose gaps is to map the process from beginning to end:

Identify → Qualify → Submit → Engage AWS → Advance the customer → Transact → Report

Who owns each step? Who needs to contribute? What information needs to move with the opportunity? What happens when the deal stalls?

AWS recommends that new partners identify an internal alliance lead while distributing responsibilities across sales, technical, marketing, and other relevant teams. That distinction matters. One person may be accountable for the program, but one person should not be expected to perform every task. 

When ownership is unclear, predictable things happen: ACE records go stale, AWS follow-ups are missed, sales does not know when to use Marketplace, private offers arrive late, and leadership receives inconsistent reporting. Those are operating-model problems, not AWS program problems.

Ask this: Does every stage of the co-sell process have a named owner and a defined handoff?

Enable the people doing the work

A co-sell strategy will not work if it lives only with the executive sponsor or alliance lead.

Your sellers need to know:

• How to recognize an AWS-relevant opportunity.
• What questions to ask during discovery.
• When to involve the alliance team.
• Which opportunities should be submitted to ACE.
• How Marketplace affects procurement and compensation.
• What information AWS needs.
• How to describe the better-together value.

AWS calls sales education one of the most critical projects in building a co-sell program and recommends practical resources such as pitch decks, call scripts, and case studies. Keep enablement useful. Sellers do not need a long explanation of every AWS program before they can act. They need clear triggers, a short process, and support when a live deal appears. A one-page guide that helps a seller recognize and route an opportunity can be more valuable than an hour-long program overview nobody remembers.

Ask this: Could a newly hired seller recognize a co-sell opportunity and take the correct next step without asking five people?

Build one view of the business

If the CRM says one thing and ACE says another, neither system gives leadership a reliable view of the pipeline. Start by deciding which system owns each part of the record. Then define how opportunity stage, value, close date, owner, AWS status, Marketplace route, and next steps will stay aligned.

At low volume, a disciplined manual process may be enough. As volume grows, duplicate entry becomes slow and error-prone. AWS provides APIs that allow partners to connect CRM systems with Partner Central and automate co-sell workflows. So does CloudSmart.

Automation is not the first step, though, because a broken process does not become a good process because it moves faster. Define the workflow first, then automate the parts that create delays, errors, or unnecessary administrative work.

Leadership should be able to see more than the number of records submitted. Useful measures include:

• Qualified opportunities identified.
• Opportunities submitted to ACE.
• Opportunity Quality Score trends.
• AWS introductions and seller meetings.
• Opportunities waiting on an internal or AWS action.
• Stage aging.
• Launched and closed-lost opportunities.
• AWS-influenced pipeline and revenue.
• Marketplace transactions and private-offer conversion.

Activity matters, but activity without progression can create a false sense of momentum.

Ask this: Can leadership see where AWS is helping, where deals are stalled, and what action is required next?

Warning signs your operating model is not ready

Most co-sell problems show up before the revenue report.

Watch for these signs:

• AWS co-sell belongs to one alliance person and is mostly invisible to Sales.
• The team submits account names instead of qualified customer opportunities.
• ACE gets updated only before an AWS review meeting.
• AWS sellers receive product decks without a specific customer context or request.
• No one owns the handoff from ACE submission to AWS follow-up to Marketplace transaction.
• Sales compensation creates friction when a deal moves through Marketplace.
• CRM and ACE show different stages, values, or close dates.
• Leadership can report activity but cannot connect it to pipeline progression or revenue.

None of these issues means AWS co-sell is the wrong strategy. They mean the foundation needs work.

What to fix first

Do not start by adding more tools or submitting more opportunities.

Start with four moves:

1. Assign one accountable owner

Give one person responsibility for the co-sell program. That person should coordinate the motion, maintain the operating cadence, and make sure responsibilities do not fall between teams.

2. Define the qualification standard

Document what must be true before an opportunity is submitted to ACE. Include the customer problem, why now, buyer or champion, current stage, next step, AWS relevance, and specific request.

3. Focus the target list

Choose a manageable group of accounts and active opportunities where joint engagement makes sense. A focused list creates better conversations than a spreadsheet filled with aspirational logos.

4. Establish a review cadence

Review the pipeline regularly. Look at opportunity quality, stale records, AWS requests, customer next steps, Marketplace needs, and internal blockers. Every review should end with named actions and dates.

These steps are not complicated. The hard part is doing them consistently across teams. That is what turns co-sell from a collection of AWS activities into a working route to market.

Frequently asked questions

Is an AWS Marketplace listing enough to start co-selling?

No. A listing gives customers a way to purchase your solution and supports the Marketplace route to market. Effective co-sell also requires qualified opportunities, internal ownership, seller enablement, AWS alignment, current ACE data, and a process for tracking outcomes.

Do we need AWS ISV Accelerate before we can co-sell?

ISV Accelerate is AWS’s co-sell program for software companies that run on or integrate with AWS. Partners can begin building the underlying sales, opportunity-management, and Marketplace disciplines before joining the program. Program eligibility and operational readiness are related, but they are not the same thing.

Who should own AWS co-sell internally?

One person should be accountable for the overall program, but execution should be shared across Sales, Alliances, Revenue Operations, technical teams, Marketing, Finance, and Marketplace operations. Each active opportunity also needs a clear sales owner.

What opportunities should go into ACE?

Submit real customer opportunities with a specific business problem, credible customer engagement, accurate stage and value, dated next steps, relevant AWS products, and a clear need from AWS. Current AWS guidance prioritizes complete, customer-specific information over generic descriptions.

How do we get AWS sellers to engage?

Bring AWS a credible customer opportunity, explain the joint value, and make a specific request. Keep the record current and follow through on agreed actions. A higher Opportunity Quality Score may improve the likelihood of AWS field engagement, but it does not guarantee it.

Do we need CRM integration before we begin?

Not necessarily. A clear manual process can work at low volume. Integration becomes more valuable when duplicate entry, inconsistent records, slow updates, or reporting gaps begin to limit execution.

How should co-sell success be measured?

Track both leading and lagging indicators. Leading indicators include qualified opportunities, opportunity quality, AWS meetings, next-step completion, and stage movement. Lagging indicators include launched opportunities, Marketplace transactions, influenced pipeline, revenue, win rate, and sales-cycle changes.

Build the operating model first

AWS co-sell does not fail only because a company lacks access to the right program or seller. It often fails because the internal motion is fragmented: the right accounts are not selected, opportunities enter ACE without enough context, AWS receives a vague request, follow-up ownership is unclear, Marketplace is introduced too late, or reporting cannot show what happened.

Fixing that does not require more activity everywhere. It requires a clear operating model: the right people, working from the same process and data, with defined responsibilities and a shared view of the customer.

That is what makes an ISV ready to co-sell!

Not sure where your AWS co-sell motion is getting stuck?

CloudSmart helps ISVs build the processes, data, seller alignment, and operating discipline needed to navigate AWS Marketplace and co-sell successfully.