Josh Greene: Scaling Co-Sell Success Through AWS Marketplace

Chip Rodgers  0:00  
All right, welcome back, everyone. We are here on the exhibition expo floor for Catalyst. Things are buzzing. There are sessions going on all over the place. It's all about partnering here. 700 partner folks all meeting in Denver this week, and it's been just fantastic. So I am really excited to be joined right now by Josh Green. Josh is Senior Director of marketplace development, so focusing on the marketplace, which is the hot topic these days, Josh, welcome.

Josh Greene  0:34  
Thank you. It's a senior manager, but that's okay. I'm thrilled to be here with you, and at this event. It's a lot of great energy. Yeah, so

Chip Rodgers  0:46  
marketplace is, you know, it's a, it's a hot topic. You've, you've been with AWS now for about three, two and a half, three years, four years, yeah. And your background, you in technology for quite a while. You were with Shi for a while, a different type of distribution and different so you, you've got a quite a, you know, good background in in technology and and, and getting solutions to market.

Josh Greene  1:13  
Yeah, I spent a lot of time with soft choice early on. So on the reseller side, I did a startup with one login. Was at Shi for a while, so kind of have a 360 view of what's been happening with, you know, go to market, particularly leveraging, you know, channel and and seeing what's been happening, the evolution, but also the disruption. Yeah,

Chip Rodgers  1:32  
well, so Marketplace is a good place. At AWS is a good place to be,

Josh Greene  1:36  
absolutely. I mean, when I when I was thinking about what I wanted to do next, this is four years ago. Before coming, I thought I really want to learn from the best, and I saw AWS is something that I really wanted to participate in, so they reached out, I accepted, and four years later, I'm still learning, and we're doing this every day. So it's been really exciting.

Chip Rodgers  1:56  
Well, it's such, it's such a, you know, it's like, it's on, the minds of everyone. There have been a lot of, you know, changes, like, everyone wants to get connected with with AWS and the field and the AWS field and and make sure that they do that, you know, smoothly and able to transact, you know, in the marketplace. So tell me a little bit about it. Seems like, you know, things are sort of getting tighter. The Marketplace and cosell is getting a lot tighter. To talk a little bit about about that. John,

Josh Greene  2:24  
yeah, well, when, when I started, one of the first task was figure out what's working with some of our biggest, most mature partners, and then, you know, over the last few years, it's been helping to scale that amongst more partners. But there has been a lot of disruption, and I think there's been a lot of evolution of how these things work together. Marketplace is a part is an extension of CO sell, and it has an impact on, you know, channel partners and customers, and our ISP partners and data providers as well. So really, I think the key has been try to figure out what works and then streamline that and replicate that. You know, time and again, I think we've been getting a lot better at understanding what the blueprint looks like to help a partner be successful, and generally, which is they wanna reach AWS customers, that's a big part of it. So we've got a blueprint where I feel like we didn't necessarily before, and it has been coming together.

Chip Rodgers  3:16  
So double click a little bit into that blueprint,

Josh Greene  3:20  
sure. So we when we studied some of the top sellers, we have a framework that we created, and actually Jen Valverde on my team created this framework. It's called characteristics of a successful seller. And we really look at the attributes of partners that have reached a certain level maturity and success, and that leads us to help identify kind of what the key attributes are, and it really becomes a dialog with a partner about, here's where we see you today. And it's not about focusing on everything. It's how do we take concrete steps to focus on the things that will need move the needle the most, to help you achieve what you want? So since implementing that, and it is a bit marketplace specific now, but we're looking to extend that beyond. It's really exciting, because now we have, we're having the same dialog in a repeatable way. So that's, that's a mechanism that we're using to accelerate adoption a marketplace and drive more partner success.

Chip Rodgers  4:12  
So how should partners Think? Think about marketplace? What you know, I think I know, I know it's important, everybody's hearing about it, and, you know, and as a partner, you know, it's a way to sort of get, you know, closer to AWS, get more involved in some of the you know, programs, sales, programs, incentives and things like that. How should partners be thinking about marketplace? Well,

Josh Greene  4:36  
I really depends on the partner type. So I primarily focus on working with infrastructure partners like the Splunk and the crowdstrikes and the snowflakes of the world. But depending on what the what the partner wants to help to accomplish, and like I mentioned a lot of time, it's they want co sell six assistance. They want to reach more AWS customers. They want to leverage. You know, our partner programs to help them be successful. It. It depends a bit, but I think it's the synthesis of marketplace along with CO selling, which is where the magic happens. And these aren't disparate things. They're tightly woven together. And I think everybody's starting to realize that. So there are some benefits to selling through the marketplace as it drives more alignment with the AWS sales organization. And we spend a lot of time, you know, teaching that, yeah, yeah. And

Chip Rodgers  5:20  
there's a lot to learn. I think that's, it's there are some, there are challenges, you know, just sort of getting everybody up to speed, understanding the, you know, the the overall landscape. How do you get connected into, you know, marketing programs, how do you get connected into the right field organizations, to to sort of get noticed,

Josh Greene  5:42  
right? Yeah. I mean, it's, it's, it's not easy to stand out, and therefore, trying to understand what those best practices are learn from ISPs that are seeing the success and replicating that. And there's a lot about technology integration with AWS, how do you complement our native services? That's a that's a big part of that, as well as navigating the different partner programs that we have, like the ISV accelerate program, is a big piece of that, and then to just not boil the ocean. I think a lot of times we see partners may make the mistake of going too broad and too deep and trying to cover all the squares, as opposed to being really focused. So when we, when I work with partners, and my team works with partners a lot of time. We get really focused on, where are we seeing repeatable success today? How do we build a really, you know, great story together and then branch out from there?

Chip Rodgers  6:28  
Yeah, we, one of our customers is seek and Megan. But we had Megan buttain on a session once recently, and she said she was, I just love this, you know, the topic, she was like, if you're gonna go, go, you know, try and connect with with the field organization, put your value, value proposition in a Dixie cup. Yeah,

Josh Greene  6:50  
Dixie cup is hard, and there, it requires a lot of discipline. And that's why, I think there was a time when we saw a lot of investment happening into CO selling resources, let's say, at an ISV. And given the economic slowdown, we've seen some compression on those resources. So the the need to be able to distill it down into the Dixie cup, so that people can carry that message and be successful. So that the first engagement of a sales rep in the field can be can engage in and they can see some, some positive interaction there. That's that's a really important thing to do. We do not want to send people out into the wild alone.

Chip Rodgers  7:27  
Yeah, that's fantastic. So Josh has been great. Thank you so much for sharing so much great information. Maybe one last question, just, you know a lot of partner professionals that you know kind of watching and and want to, want to hear from other peers in the industry, any word of advice that you would have for someone, maybe that's starting out, or that you know, you've had a lot of success in your career, any, any, any sort of word of advice that you would have,

Josh Greene  7:55  
I think seeking out a good mentor early On that can really help you throughout your career and sustaining that. And that takes some work, some willingness on their part, but some work on you on their part. I've been really fortunate to have some phenomenal mentors, and of course, now also try to pay it forward or pay it backward as well. But I think the there's a couple key people that were really relevant to me, and without them, I don't think I where I'd be where I am today. So that would be a recommendation for people out there is try to try to find that mentor

Chip Rodgers  8:28  
and cultivate that relationship. That's a great, great, great advice. Josh, thank you. Thank you. Really appreciate it's been great. We have a session actually tomorrow, so that's going to be fun.

Josh Greene  8:37  
We'll market places, co sell. I'm really looking forward to

Chip Rodgers  8:41  
it, yeah, yeah. So, by the way, you know, if you're, if you're here at catalyst, stop by it for the enterprise Summit. We have great content from nine o'clock until noon. Josh is going to be at 1130 1130 to Yeah, yeah. So fantastic. So thank you all for joining and Josh, thank you, and we'll see you again shortly. Okay, you.

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