Co-selling with AWS is the commercial practice of building working relationships with specific AWS field team personnel and consistently engaging them in the enterprise customer opportunities where AWS’s presence would meaningfully accelerate the deal — not through formal program participation alone, but through the cadenced personal engagement, high-quality opportunity submissions, and prompt referral follow-up that build the mutual trust that productive co-sell relationships require on both sides.
Co-selling with AWS is the practice of an ISV partner working jointly with Amazon Web Services field teams to pursue shared enterprise customer opportunities — submitting and receiving co-sell referrals through the AWS ACE Pipeline Manager and coordinating joint sales engagement with AWS account teams.
Frequently Asked Questions
What is co-selling with AWS?
Co-selling with AWS is the practice of an ISV partner working jointly with Amazon Web Services field teams to pursue shared enterprise customer opportunities — submitting qualified co-sell opportunity referrals to the relevant AWS account teams through the AWS APN Customer Engagements (ACE) Pipeline Manager, receiving AWS-originated customer referrals from AWS field teams, coordinating joint customer engagement between the ISV’s sales team and the AWS account team assigned to the opportunity, and building the bilateral working relationships with specific AWS field personnel that generate sustained referral flow over time within the AWS Partner Network’s co-sell framework.
What does successful co-selling with AWS look like in practice?
Successful co-selling with AWS is not primarily about formal program enrollment — it is about building genuine working relationships with specific AWS field team personnel and consistently delivering the commercial behaviors that make those relationships valuable to both parties. In practice, it involves several recurring activities: submitting qualified co-sell opportunities only when AWS field engagement would meaningfully accelerate the deal (rather than submitting every opportunity regardless of AWS relevance); responding promptly to AWS referrals within the expected SLA (typically 14 days) and providing meaningful initial customer engagement updates; conducting joint customer engagement where the ISV’s solution engineer and the AWS account team’s technical specialist engage the customer together with clear role delineation; providing strong customer success references for the AWS account team’s existing customers considering the ISV’s product; and maintaining regular cadenced conversations between the ISV’s co-sell program manager and the relevant AWS partner development representative to maintain the program-level relationship that supports individual field team co-sell engagements.
How does an ISV get started co-selling with AWS?
An ISV gets started co-selling with AWS through a defined sequence of program steps. APN enrollment — the ISV must first enroll in the AWS Partner Network (APN) as a software partner if not already enrolled; APN enrollment is the prerequisite for accessing all AWS partner programs including ACE Pipeline Manager co-sell. AWS Marketplace listing — while not technically required for all co-sell activity, an AWS Marketplace listing dramatically increases the commercial value of co-sell engagements by enabling the committed spend consumption mechanism that removes enterprise buyers’ budget authorization barriers. ACE Pipeline Manager access — the ISV’s co-sell program admin accesses ACE Pipeline Manager through the AWS Partner Central portal and configures co-sell opportunity settings and team access permissions. Initial co-sell opportunity submission — the ISV submits its first qualified co-sell opportunities into ACE Pipeline Manager; AWS recommends starting with a small number of genuinely AWS-relevant high-quality opportunities rather than a large volume of lower-quality submissions. And AWS ISV Accelerate designation — ISVs who meet defined revenue and pipeline thresholds and whose product is live on AWS Marketplace can apply for AWS ISV Accelerate designation, which provides dedicated AWS co-sell support and proactive field team engagement.
What are the most common mistakes ISVs make when co-selling with AWS?
Several common mistakes undermine ISV co-selling with AWS. Over-submitting low-quality opportunities — ISVs who submit every opportunity into ACE Pipeline Manager regardless of whether AWS field engagement would genuinely accelerate the deal train AWS field teams to deprioritize or ignore the ISV’s submissions; co-sell submissions should be reserved for opportunities where the customer has a meaningful AWS relationship. Slow follow-up on AWS referrals — ISVs who fail to follow up promptly on AWS-originated referrals signal to the AWS field team that the ISV cannot be trusted with customer introductions; one missed follow-up can damage the field team relationship that took months to build. Treating co-sell as a program rather than as a relationship — formal enrollment is necessary but not sufficient; the actual commercial output comes from the quality of individual working relationships, which requires consistent personal engagement beyond portal submissions. And neglecting the Marketplace listing — without an AWS Marketplace listing, the ISV’s product must go through a separate enterprise procurement process even when the customer is enthusiastic about the solution, losing the committed spend consumption advantage that is often the decisive commercial accelerator.
How does ZINFI support co-selling with AWS?
ZINFI’s UPM platform supports co-selling with AWS through its centralized interconnect module, which provides bidirectional data synchronization between ZINFI’s partner pipeline management environment and the AWS ACE Pipeline Manager. ISV vendors who manage their channel pipeline within ZINFI can submit co-sell opportunities to AWS field teams and receive AWS-originated referrals within the ZINFI platform without needing to manage separate opportunity records in both ZINFI and ACE Pipeline Manager simultaneously. This integration ensures that co-sell opportunity data remains current in both systems, that AWS field engagement activity is visible alongside the ISV’s other channel pipeline data in ZINFI’s pipeline dashboards, and that AWS co-sell revenue attribution is captured in the same analytics framework as the ISV’s reseller channel and direct pipeline revenue data.