Why your AWS co-sell program submissions get ignored (and how to fix them)
Uploading opportunities into AWS Partner Central through the APN Customer Engagements (ACE) program sounds like a winning strategy on paper. You register an opportunity, share it with AWS, and wait for an AWS account manager to step in and help close the deal.
Then the opportunity sits there for weeks.
The problem? AWS account managers need a reason to pay attention. They need to understand what the customer is dealing with, why AWS matters to the opportunity, and how they can help move the deal forward.
But when sales teams focus on getting more opportunities into ACE without providing that context, even promising deals can get overlooked. After all, more submissions won't necessarily get you more engagement.
That's where partner marketing comes in. By giving sales teams stronger messaging and customer context, marketers can help turn opportunities into deals AWS sellers actually want to support.
TL;DR
The problem: ISVs and consulting partners upload opportunities into AWS Partner Central through the APN Customer Engagements (ACE) program without always giving AWS sellers enough context to act on them.
The reframe: ACE isn't just another place to log sales opportunities or another box to check. Treat each submission as a way to show AWS why a deal deserves attention.
The approach: Partner marketers can help sales teams lead with the customer's problem, give AWS sellers useful notes, figure out the purchasing path early, and measure whether AWS reps are actually engaging instead of focusing only on the number of opportunities submitted.
The Pinch ACE Submission Test: Make sure every opportunity answers four questions as it develops: Why this customer? Why now? Why AWS? What should the AWS seller do next?
The ACE pipeline paradox: Why submitting more deals can get you fewer responses
An AWS account manager doesn't have time to figure out why every lightly qualified opportunity matters.
If you submit a generic opportunity with a few vague notes, you're asking the AWS seller to do that work for you. They have to figure out what the customer needs, why AWS matters to the deal, and what they're actually supposed to do next.
AWS's Partner Central guide reinforces the importance of providing strong opportunity information. AWS looks at factors including the customer problem, next steps, expected AWS revenue, AWS products and services, use case, sales stage, and partner solution when calculating an Opportunity's Quality score.
Keep in mind that a higher Opportunity Quality score may increase the likelihood of AWS field seller engagement.
Traditional lead-dump approach:
Upload raw CRM lead → Create ACE entry → Give AWS little context → Deal stalls
Recommended approach:
Explain customer problem → Add useful notes → Keep the opportunity updated → Give AWS a clear next step
The difference is simple: don't make the AWS seller figure out why your opportunity matters. Tell them.
How AWS decides which opportunities get more attention
AWS Partner Central doesn't treat every opportunity the same.
Opportunities can be assigned different types of co-sell support, including AWS Field-engaged, Agent-engaged, and Partner-led. AWS also gives active opportunities an Opportunity Quality score from 0 to 100 based on the quality and completeness of the information provided.
That makes the information you put into your AWS ACE pipeline important.
Clear customer pain, accurate AWS services, realistic revenue estimates, an up-to-date sales stage, specific next steps, and a linked partner solution all help AWS understand the deal so reps can act on it.
A four-step framework for better AWS co-selling
You don't need to make every ACE submission longer. You need to make it more useful.
And you don't need to wait until a deal is fully qualified to get started. AWS encourages partners to submit opportunities early and improve the information as the deal progresses.
Here's how to make that happen.
1. Start with the customer's problem
Don't open an AWS co-sell program submission by listing product features. Start with what the customer is experiencing.
What problem are they dealing with? Why do they need to solve it now? And where does AWS fit into the solution?
AWS's documentation on creating opportunities recommends explaining the customer's specific situation, what is pushing them to act, and what they expect to achieve.
Product-first submission:
"Vendor software integrates with AWS to provide automated database scaling."
Buyer-first submission:
"Customer's legacy database architecture is failing under peak load, threatening uptime. Deploying our SaaS platform would move the workload onto Amazon Aurora, with an estimated $45K in additional annual AWS revenue."
Now the AWS seller knows what the problem is, why it matters, where AWS fits, and what the potential business impact looks like.
Note: This is an illustrative example. Actual AWS revenue estimates should be based on the services the customer expects to use, not the vendor's SaaS revenue.
2. Give AWS sellers notes they can actually use
Don't use the notes field in AWS Partner Central as a dumping ground for whatever happens to be sitting in your CRM. Give the AWS seller the information they'd actually need to understand the opportunity or talk about it with the customer.
Include | What to add | Why it helps the AWS seller |
Customer problem | The specific problem, why the customer needs to act, and target deadline. | Gives AWS a reason to care about the opportunity now. |
AWS impact | The AWS services involved and realistic estimated AWS revenue. | Shows where AWS fits into the deal and its potential business impact. |
Decision-makers | Economic buyer titles, champions, and known stakeholders. | Helps AWS understand who's involved in the buying decision. |
Sales stage & timing | Current stage, expected close date, and recent activity. | Shows how far along the deal is. |
Next step | A specific request, like an introduction or joint discovery call. | Tells the AWS seller exactly how they can help. |
The goal isn't to fill every field with as much information as possible. It's to make the important information easy to find.
The Pinch ACE Submission Test
As you create and update opportunities in ACE, keep coming back to four questions:
Why this customer? What specific business or technical problem are they trying to solve?
Why now? What deadline, pain point, event, or internal priority is pushing them to act?
Why AWS? Which AWS services or workloads are involved, and what could the deal mean for AWS revenue or consumption?
What should the AWS seller do next? Do you need an introduction, account insights, a joint discovery call, or technical validation?
If you can't answer all four yet, you know where your submission needs work.
Fill in what you can, then keep updating the opportunity as the deal progresses. The goal isn't to hold back opportunities until they're perfect. It's to give AWS increasingly useful information as you learn more about the customer.
3. Figure out the purchasing path early
Opportunity registration is only one part of the deal.
If the customer plans to buy your solution through AWS Marketplace, you shouldn't wait until the deal is about to close to figure out how that purchase will work.
Determine early whether the customer will purchase directly from the ISV or through a reseller using a Channel Partner Private Offer (CPPO).
AWS Marketplace purchases may also help eligible customers use certain AWS spending commitments, so how the customer plans to buy can be an important part of the co-sell conversation.
As we explain in our article on AWS Marketplace listing optimization for AI, your listing and offer structure should make it easy for both buyers and AWS sellers to understand what you're selling and how it fits.
4. Measure engagement, not just pipeline volume
A big ACE pipeline looks impressive. But if AWS sellers aren't engaging with those opportunities, what is that number really telling you?
Instead of measuring success only by the number of opportunities registered, look at things like:
AWS engagement rates
Average Opportunity Quality scores
Time between submission and AWS engagement
Joint sales activity and deal progression
Win rates and deal speed by account or campaign type
If one opportunity type consistently gets AWS sellers involved, look for what those submissions have in common.
When opportunities keep stalling, go back to the basics: Is the customer problem clear? Does AWS understand where it fits? Is the timing obvious? Have you told the seller what you need from them?
A pipeline with 100 registered opportunities isn't necessarily stronger than one with 25 opportunities AWS sellers actually want to work.
How partner marketing can support sales through the process
Sales reps and partner account managers typically handle ACE submissions, but they shouldn't have to figure out the messaging from scratch. Partner marketing can make their jobs easier by providing clear customer-focused messaging, useful sales resources, and the information AWS sellers need to understand an opportunity.
Partner marketers can support sales reps across four key areas:
Create ready-to-use AWS messaging: Create a centralized library of pre-formatted, 2-to-3 sentence customer problem descriptions and AWS consumption impact snippets inside your CRM. Reps can simply copy, paste, and customize these snippets during the ACE submission process.
Package role-based talk tracks: Equip reps with buyer-specific talking points (for IT, Security, Finance, or Operations) so they can populate the "Customer Pain" and "Next Steps" fields with concrete, executive-level details.
Make the purchasing options clear: Work with alliances to build clear visual decision trees for reps. Ensure reps know when to pitch a standard listing versus a Channel Partner Private Offer (CPPO) before submitting the opportunity to ACE.
Learn from AWS seller engagement: Partner marketing should monitor ACE acceptance and Opportunity Quality scores. If a specific message template consistently yields higher engagement from AWS account managers, package that format into your next sales enablement toolkit.
Pinch POV: Partner marketing's job isn't just generating the lead. It's also providing the messaging that helps sellers earn an AWS rep's attention.
Connect your co-selling results back to marketing
A strong co-sell process can tell you a lot about which marketing efforts are actually working.
Instead of pointing only to lead volume, you can show which campaigns create qualified opportunities, which messages get AWS sellers interested, and which types of accounts turn into real joint sales activity.
That gives you much better information to work with when deciding where to put your marketing time and budget next.
In our guide on co-marketing with AWS in 2026, we look at a similar idea from a different angle: joint campaigns should create measurable results, not just awareness.
Frequently asked questions about the AWS co-sell program
What is the AWS co-sell program?
AWS co-selling allows AWS partners and sales teams to work together on customer opportunities through AWS Partner Central. Partners can share qualified opportunities with AWS and, depending on the opportunity and the type of co-sell support assigned to it, may receive help from AWS field teams or other AWS resources.
What is AWS ACE?
APN Customer Engagements (ACE) is a program within the AWS Partner Network that allows partners to share and manage customer opportunities with AWS through AWS Partner Central. It helps partners work with AWS sales teams to move potential deals forward.
What is an AWS Opportunity Quality score?
AWS Partner Central gives active opportunities a quality score from 0 to 100. That score considers information such as the customer problem, next steps, AWS revenue, AWS products and services, use case, sales stage, partner solution, and other deal information.
According to AWS, a higher score may increase the likelihood of AWS field seller engagement.
Should you wait until an AWS opportunity is fully qualified before submitting it to ACE?
No. AWS encourages partners to submit opportunities early in the sales cycle and update them as the deal develops.
Start with the information you have, then add more customer details, AWS services, revenue estimates, and next steps as they become clearer. The goal is to keep the opportunity useful and up to date, not wait until every detail is finalized.
How does AWS ACE integration with CRM work?
AWS offers integrations and APIs that help partners sync opportunity information between their CRM and AWS Partner Central.
That can save your team from entering the same information twice, but automation won't fix bad opportunity data. If the information going into your CRM isn't useful, syncing it with ACE just gets bad information there faster.
What is the difference between deal registration and co-selling in ACE?
Opportunity registration gets the customer opportunity into the system.
Co-selling is what happens when the partner and AWS actually work together to help move that opportunity forward.
Getting a deal into Partner Central isn't the end goal. You want to give AWS enough information to understand the opportunity and know where they can help.
The bottom line
The strongest AWS co-sell pipelines aren't necessarily the ones with the most submissions. They're the ones that make it easy for AWS to understand four things: Why this customer? Why now? Why AWS? What happens next?
Treat each ACE opportunity like a quick internal pitch, not another CRM record.
Partner marketers can help sales teams give AWS sellers the customer context they need, show them where AWS fits, and make the next step obvious. Then keep that information current as the deal progresses.
That's how you turn ACE from another pipeline task into something your team can actually benefit from.
