Sharing opportunities before they're qualified
AWS sellers receive many partner co-sell requests every month. They're measured on customer outcomes, so they spend their time on real deals and rarely engage in early prospecting.
When a partner floods ACE with names from a target-account list, AWS sellers learn that its submissions aren't worth opening. That reputation sticks to the good opportunities too.
It also costs you directly. Since June 2026, every opportunity gets an Opportunity Quality score, and a thin, early-stage record scores low and stays partner-led.
How to fix: share an opportunity once the customer has confirmed a real need and a timeline, and state exactly what you want from AWS, whether that's an account introduction, architectural validation, or pricing help.
Submitting thin opportunity records
A business problem like "customer needs better security," or a list of the AWS services your own product runs on, gives the AWS account team nothing to act on.
AWS's own guidance is explicit: describe this customer's specific situation, what's forcing it to act now, and the outcome it expects. List the AWS services the customer will adopt, base estimated monthly revenue on the AWS Pricing Calculator, and choose a real industry and use case instead of "Other."
These fields matter because they're how an AWS seller decides in seconds whether the deal is worth their time. They're also the inputs AWS's agent uses to score the opportunity and choose its co-sell motion.
How to fix: build a short submission template for your reps covering business problem, why now, AWS services adopted, and estimated monthly revenue, and review the first few dozen submissions before letting the team run on its own.
Letting stages go stale
Opportunities often sit in Qualified or Technical Validation long after the deal has closed because no one updates ACE once the CRM shows a win.
That understates your co-sell record where AWS looks. ISV Accelerate eligibility, for example, requires at least five launched opportunities in the past 12 months, and a deal that's billing but still marked Committed doesn't count.
Stale records also hurt how AWS sees you. Next steps with dates that passed months ago signal a partner that doesn't follow through, and AWS's guidance calls for moving opportunities to Launched or Closed lost as soon as the deal closes.
How to fix: tie ACE stage updates to your CRM stage changes, and run a monthly sweep that closes out every opportunity with a past target close date.
Missing AWS referrals
AWS Originated opportunities land in your Opportunity Invitations tab, and you have five business days to accept or reject each one. After that, the referral disappears from your view.
These are the warmest leads AWS sends. The customer has already consented to a partner's help, and AWS has picked you for it.
Referrals go to the partners AWS's matching tools see as active and committed to co-selling. A partner that lets invitations expire gives up pipeline it didn't have to source and gives AWS less reason to choose it next time.
How to fix: name an owner for AWS referrals, route invitation alerts to them and a backup, and decide on every referral within two business days, with a clear rejection reason when it isn't a fit.
Co-selling without a Marketplace path
Co-selling with AWS is possible without a Marketplace listing. But AWS's strongest incentives depend on the deal transacting there.
AWS sellers retire quota when they co-sell an ISV Accelerate partner's SaaS solution through an AWS Marketplace private offer. Customers can apply eligible Marketplace purchases toward their AWS spending commitments. And ISV Accelerate itself requires a generally available Marketplace listing.
Without that path, you're asking AWS sellers to help with a deal that does nothing for their targets and asking the buyer to find new budget. That's a much harder conversation on both sides.
How to fix: publish a transactable AWS Marketplace listing, link it to Partner Central, and attach it to every co-sell opportunity so AWS sellers can see the private offer path from the start.
Running ACE by hand at volume
Copying opportunity data between your CRM and AWS Partner Central works when you share a few deals a month. Past that, the two systems drift apart.
Reps skip fields to save time, stages fall out of sync, and AWS feedback sits in Partner Central where no one in sales sees it. Each mistake above gets worse as manual volume grows.
AWS built the Partner Central API for Selling, and more recently an MCP server for its Partner Central agents, precisely so partners can manage ACE opportunities from their own CRM.
How to fix: connect your CRM to ACE so opportunities are created at a defined stage, fields are filled automatically, and stages, status, and AWS feedback sync both ways.
