Co-selling opportunity management

A co-selling opportunity needs a shared operating record. Both teams should be able to see who leads, what happens next and where the deal can break. The co-sell motion is the management decision that sets the rest of the work. Every opportunity receives a co-sell motion and an Opportunity Quality score. Together, they determine how AWS engages on the deal and what the AWS Partner Central agent does to help.^{1, 2} A higher Opportunity Quality score may increase the likelihood of AWS field-seller engagement, but engagement is not guaranteed.³ Use the score to improve the deal, not to plan staffing.

Set the motion

Record who leads before the partner teams start assigning tasks. Each side should know what support it can expect and what work belongs in the shared record.

Every opportunity receives a co-sell motion, and that motion determines who leads it.⁴ Use it to set the working model:

• In the AWS Field-engaged motion, the opportunity is co-sell ready and matched with an AWS sales team for direct collaboration. The agent prepares research, tracks actions and keeps the record current in a supporting role.⁵
• In the Agent-engaged motion, the agent qualifies and enriches the opportunity with the partner, then surfaces insights and recommendations to strengthen the submission.⁶
• In the Partner-led motion, the partner owns and drives the opportunity with support such as sales plays, customer insights and resources.⁷

Ask: "Who leads this opportunity, and what exact support do we need from the other team?" Continue when the answer is recorded in language both teams can use.

Qualify the shared opportunity

Qualification should give the other team enough context to act without reopening the whole discovery conversation. Capture the customer need, the partner contribution and the action the other team is being asked to take.

A co-sell opportunity is a collaboration among multiple parties to sell products that meet a customer's needs.⁸ In a typical services co-sell opportunity, the Partner role field states the role the partner wants to play. Examples include Presales envisioning and Migration.⁹ Use that field to make the request concrete.

Ask:

• What customer need makes this a shared opportunity?
• What role do we want the partner to play?
• What does the other team need to see before it can act?
• Which customer interaction should happen next?

In Partner Center, select the Co-sell opportunities tab in the Referrals workspace to use the co-sell deal path.¹⁰ For a new IP co-sell deal, specify the Solution Area and Solution Play.¹¹ This requirement applies to deals created through the Partner Center portal and bulk upload methods.¹² The record is ready when the role, request and next customer action are clear enough for the other team to use.

Define stages that match the work

A stage should show what is complete and what still blocks movement. Keep the model close to the way your team sells, so a stage change gives the partner a useful signal.

Create opportunity stages that fit the current sales process.¹³ An opportunity stage is a defined phase that an opportunity progresses through from creation to close.¹⁴ For each stage, write the completion condition, the open risk and the action required before movement.

Ask: "What must be complete before we move this opportunity, and who will prove it?" Record the answer before changing the stage. If the answer is vague, keep the opportunity in its current stage and use the next interaction to remove the uncertainty.

Manage the next interaction

The next customer interaction can build momentum or expose risk. End every partner review with an agreed customer action, a person responsible for it and a reason for the follow-up.

During prospecting, maintain mutual agreement and partnership throughout the process.¹⁵ Ask, "What needs to happen in the next customer interaction?" If the person managing the opportunity cannot identify that action, the deal has risk and there is a clear coaching point.¹⁶

For team-selling opportunities, schedule the first additional meeting as a 15-minute pre-call planning meeting and the second as a 10-minute debrief.^{17, 18} Use the planning meeting to agree who will handle each part of the customer conversation. Use the debrief to record what changed, what remains open and what the partner needs next.

The next customer interaction should be specific enough for both teams to prepare. A calendar entry without a customer outcome leaves the opportunity harder to manage.

Keep risk and ownership current

A shared opportunity gets harder to manage when its record falls behind the conversation. Review the signal, the current state and the people responsible whenever the deal changes.

Each opportunity receives an Opportunity Quality score from 0 to 100, shown with a trend indicator, and the score updates continuously as the partner and agent improve the opportunity.¹⁹ Use score movement to decide which part of the record needs work. All outbound opportunities have a confidence score of High, Medium or Low.²⁰ Use that field to prompt an inspection of the opportunity.

Create clarity about where things stand before a partner review.²¹ If a manager is involved, use the review to surface risk while the opportunity is active and plan better while there is still time to act.²²

Where your workflow uses these fields, add the user in the Partner Sales Contact field to the Opportunity Team when the opportunity is created.²³ If the deal is approved, an internal person converts it to an account, contact and opportunity and assigns an internal salesperson as the opportunity owner when co-selling with the partner.²⁴

What not to do

These mistakes can make a shared opportunity look healthier or more coordinated than it is.

• Leaving mandatory deal-completion steps until the final stage ignores the practice of introducing them while you are still selling.²⁵
• Treating a confidence value as a conclusion misses the feature's purpose of improving opportunity creation quality with guidelines from an ML model.²⁶
• Running partner outreach without defined coordination, buying-group nurture and sales-linked next steps leaves the two organizations working from different plans.²⁷

Before the next partner call, fill in the motion, partner role, current stage, score trend and next customer interaction. End the review with each team naming its next action, then update the opportunity while the conversation is still fresh.