Scaling AWS co-sell revenue: Boost engagement in 48 hours

I won’t waste your time on the importance of co-selling with hyperscalers like AWS. But here’s a question to ponder:

Are your AWS relationships really as good as you think they are?

Most partner teams THINK they have a solid relationship with AWS. In reality, they often have great relationships with just a few key decision-makers or fellow PDMs.

In other words, your AWS network looks like this:

On the surface, our AWS relationship looks solid, because that single person-to-person relationship feels solid. In reality, the entire partner relationship is hanging on by a single thread.

Relying on a select few points of contact also means you’re missing out on the opportunity to build relationships with relevant people within AWS, at scale.

The AEs, SAs, PDMs, BDMs, CSMs etc. – these are the people within AWS who already have relationships with your potential customers. These are the people who can bring you into and help you with deals. Lots of deals.

And if you get this right, your AWS contact ecosystem starts to look like this:

Now we’re cooking with gas.

A partner where only a few people know, trust, feel valued, and understand what you do is WAY less powerful than one where hundreds (or thousands!) of these people are activated and willing to bring you into deals.

The reason many companies only have a handful of good relationships at AWS is that most partner contacts are never properly activated.

They do lunch-and-learns, attend re:invent and local events, maybe even show up at AWS offices to take people out. Everyone has a good time. They might send a follow-up email. And that’s it. Here's what that looks like:

The best AWS partners nurture relationships with many people.

So how do we turn five to ten committed AWS contacts into 500 activated and engaged contacts?

If you want to build a sticky, dense web of contacts within AWS, you need an activation strategy that establishes, nurtures, and reinforces these relationships systematically, consistently, and at scale. Like this:

Consider every AWS contact that hasn’t heard from you in four months ‘lost.’

All the effort you invested in getting in front of them was wasted. People forget. Some AEs may attend one to two lunch-and-learns a week. Think they’ll remember you in four months if you don’t stay in touch?

So let’s get to work:

Step 1: How to drive AWS engagement results in 48 Hours

This can be supported by automation, but you can also start manually.

What you should be doing:

Segment your AWS contacts

Not all AWS contacts matter equally. This starts with job titles, might include hierarchical context, last time you engaged them, which region they work in, whether they ever helped you on a deal or submitted a lead, and so on. You should have hundreds of contacts at AWS in your Salesforce, even as a smaller startup. If you don’t, you’re in trouble (or you didn’t put them in, which is also very problematic). Start segmenting, either by creating a report in Salesforce or by using our segmentation and audience creation feature which is way easier to use and helps with step 2. A few examples of audiences you might want to create:

• AWS new contacts (added within the last three months)
• AWS evangelists (your super-fans, people on your side)
• AWS local contacts (e.g. everyone in NYC, though this only makes sense for select cases)
• AWS dormant AEs (probably the majority of your contacts haven’t been engaged in 4-8 months, you might also create an audience for dormant CSMs, etc., depending on who matters to you)
• AWS inactive AEs (similar to ‘Dormant AEs’ but those who have forgotten about you since you haven’t been in touch in over 9-12 months)
• AWS key PDMs (the partner team, especially your key contacts, need to be engaged more holistically and more often)
• AWS co-sell contacts (people you’ve successfully co-sold with, who know your value firsthand and can spread the word)
• AWS senior leaders (those who get the white glove 1:1 treatment)
• You get the gist—this needs to depend on your particular co-sell approach.

Engage your ASW segments

Never send generic messages. Tailor content to each audience and stay in touch consistently. A few use case examples:

• AWS new contacts: A ‘new AWS’ sequence where you share JVP, joint success stories, and which companies you can help them win with (three emails over three weeks).
• AWS local contacts: Invite AWS contacts in NYC to a dinner in Brooklyn.
• AWS dormant AEs: Remind them what you do and who you are, JVP, joint success stories, and which companies you can help them win with, similar to the ‘new contact’ workflow (3-5 emails over 3-5 weeks).
• AWS inactive AEs: Similar to AWS dormant but with more foundational messaging and a ‘you might have forgotten about us’ tone.

And so on—happy to share further best practices.

Good news: Watch me segment, build, and launch an AWS engagement campaign in less than five minutes 👇

You can see results within 48 hours of launching your first AWS engagement campaign. The results will continue to trickle in. Trust me, this works in 90% of cases, as long as companies have a real JVP with AWS and you actually have more than a handful of AWS contacts in your CRM.

Step 2: Co-Sell in more human ways

I love tools like Tackle, Workspan, Suger, and Clazar. They make the marketplace listing process super efficient. While you don’t necessarily need these tools, they can be very helpful and effective.

That said, just following the same process as everyone else makes you look as committed as… yep, everyone else.

What if, on top of the regular process steps, you created a more human and personal engagement approach?

What if every time a deal moved into a relevant stage (or was stuck or some other important event happened), you proactively let your AWS contact know what’s happening? You would be one of VERY FEW companies doing so, sending a massive signal: This company means business, they value me, they keep me posted, they don’t just ask for favors, they involve me.

Via Superglue you can easily create an automated process with smart alerts and very human workflows to actually take all the effort out of this. But you can start this manually: Create repots of deals, set up notifications for key deal stages and events. And reach out to your AWS contacts.

And this level of consistent engagement should continue way beyond the referral. Once a partner contact has brought you into a deal, the work has just begun! You need to keep them constantly updated, get them involved, and (personally!) thank them once the deal is closed. This is where relationships are really solidified, and the results are more referrals, higher win rates, and bigger deal sizes.

Their replies will surprise you! They will remember you, they will help you on your deals, they will spread the word.

Step 3: Better co-selling is the foundation of partner-sourced revenue

Everyone wants to drive the holy grail: Partner sourced revenue. When I speak with partnership leaders, they often see this as the key indicator of a partner program's success.

Driving better co-sell efforts is a key lever to activate and enable partners to generate more revenue. For AWS, this means creating a compelling narrative that shows how you can help their customers 1) improve their customer experience with AWS, and 2) achieve faster business value using AWS.

It's crucial to help your AWS counterparts understand that by partnering with you, their customers will deepen their relationship with AWS, not just purchase your product.

AWS offers co-sell frameworks and content assets designed to support partners in this effort.

By simplifying enablement assets and promoting them across your AWS teams, you can accelerate your partnership journey.

Simplifying enablement, raising awareness, and tracking co-sell engagement are some of the fastest ways to grow AWS co-sell opportunities and generate more AWS-sourced revenue.

Think of it like grabbing a pint with your mates. One of the quickest ways to build a relationship is to "buy the first round" (offer them a co-sell lead), and they'll likely return the favor when you’re trying to break into new accounts.