Alan Braun: Why Storytelling Wins in the AWS Ecosystem

Chip Rodgers   0:00  
Hey everyone. Chip Rodgers, Chief partner officer at work. Span and gosh, Alan, this has been a fantastic day. Just a great event here in San Francisco.

Alan Braun  0:10  
Yeah, first. Thanks for having me. I'm blown away. I am literally blown away. This is the first time we've ever done an event like this, and just the response has been amazing, the interaction has been awesome, and we've gotten incredible feedback from our partners today. It's

Chip Rodgers   0:24  
been great. It's been it's been phenomenal. So I'm, I'm here today with Alan Braun Alan. Alan is managing director for AWS technology partners and AWS Marketplace North America is that. Did I get that? You nailed it. So Alan, you keynoted, you started, started, kicked things off in the morning, and then, and then also just on a panel here today. Tell us, let's start just a little bit about your role. You have a big job. You got a big team, and it's all about bringing partners together. You know, today has been all about startups, but it's about technology partners working with AWS. Tell us about that.

Alan Braun  1:03  
Yeah, so I'm focused on helping our partners go to market. And I have startups, I have industry partners, I have business app partners, and I also have infrastructure partners, and some of our largest partnerships that are our strategic partners. And I also cover marketplace. What I often tell my team is the most important thing we can do is bring a great AWS experience to our partners and help accelerate them into the market. And it's neat because I get to see partners of all shapes and sizes, and I've learned a ton since being in this role of what do our partners need from

Chip Rodgers   1:35  
us? I loved how you said, make sure that you're as a partner, that you're, you're you're delivering a partner experience like Apple and not like a command line experience. I like that analogy.

Alan Braun  1:48  
Yeah, I talked about the importance of, how does the partner show up with AWS, we'll lean in really hard, but it's really important that the partner brings a great experience back. And I made the joke of, what is your experience? How are you showing up? Like, really challenge yourselves internally. To say, are you doing everything you can to show up? Well, for AWS, that's

Chip Rodgers   2:10  
terrific. I also liked there were some things that you shared earlier in your session. We had seven things. We won't go through all seven, but a few of them, I really thought were resonated really well. One is, learn our language, right? And so you talked about, what are the some of the four areas that are really critical, like really good words and areas to think about, Gen AI, migrations, security and then industries. So, yeah, so tell us about that. What's important about that? Yeah,

Alan Braun  2:48  
it's really important. What I tell partners all the time is storytelling matters. How do you tell a crisp, clean story and speak our language? Why do I say this? Our sellers are incented by these things so generative AI is got huge importance right now. How do you wrap your story around AI, and what is your AI story? In terms of industry, we just pivoted to be an Industry Focus. How do we make sure that we're taking your partner solution and aligning it to the use cases that we're focused on, that we're bringing to market, security is a one importance. How do you wrap security into your story? And migrations continues to be a priority. So what I say is, these words are going to change. It's super important that you continue to ask us, what are our strategic priorities? What are we focused on? And how do you align to maximize the opportunity you're going to get with our sellers.

Chip Rodgers   3:43  
I love that. I love that. The other part of that that you mentioned is so understand AWS strategic priorities, critical, but then also understand how sales the sales teams are compensated, right? How are they incented?

Alan Braun  3:55  
I actually said ask two questions. What are AWS priorities from the highest level down to the level that you're in. And what do the sellers get paid on? If you can align your story to that, that's when you're going to see what the results that you desire and the CO sell that you're really after.

Chip Rodgers   4:13  
Yeah, that's terrific. I also liked the part where you talked about, you know, don't talk about capabilities. Don't go on and on about capabilities, right? Tell a story and and I even liked and you reiterated it just now, make it emotional. Like, if it can, you know, connect, you know, with, with me, with with customers, then that's what is really going to be memorable.

Alan Braun  4:35  
Yeah, I often, I meet with hundreds of partners. I can't remember them all. And people often at these events, they come up to me and they tell me about their capabilities, and they go, that's awesome. It's incredible what you're doing. What's a lot more impactful is if you come up to me and tell me the outcomes that you're driving, tell me about the percentage of cost optimization, tell me how much more productivity you're driving, and if you can even tell me that you're enriching. Someone's life by curing cancer, by creating vaccines, by changing the world. That's memorable. That's the kind of stuff that I will not forget, and for our sellers, they won't forget it either. So the more emotion you can bring to the story, the bigger impact you're gonna make.

Chip Rodgers   5:15  
That's fantastic. Alan, thank you so much for taking a few minutes and sharing, sharing your thoughts and some of the messages you shared earlier today in the keynote and where, I guess we're off to have a little get together and social hour. So let's enjoy

Alan Braun  5:34  
thanks for having me. It's an absolute pleasure. I'm thrilled by this event. It's been amazing. It's been an amazing day, and thanks for having me. I appreciate it

Chip Rodgers   5:41  
fantastic. Thank you Ellen, and thank you all for joining and we'll see you next time you.

Transcribed by https://otter.ai

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