New Sales Accreditation Provides AWS Partners the Foundational Skills to Engage with Customers

By Anders Davidson, Sr. Product Manager – AWS Training & Certification

We are excited to announce the new AWS Partner: Sales Accreditation (Business) course.

This new course, available globally in more than eight languages including English, French, Spanish, Japanese, Korean, and Portuguese in both digital and instructor-led options, was developed with Amazon Web Services (AWS) Sales teams and covers best practices for engaging with customers and AWS Sales teams.

We have heard from AWS Partners that you want more training to address customers’ most common objections, and you want to learn how to engage with AWS in the selling process. This new course is designed to help sales specialists, account managers, and consultants become more effective sellers. Foundational content is focused on cloud concepts and business value, objection handling, and co-selling with AWS.

“By taking the AWS Partner: Sales Accreditation (Business) course, I received a good understanding of the overall AWS Cloud ecosystem, various aspects that drive customer cloud adoption, and methodologies to overcome common customer objections related to cloud migration,” says Anusha Parikh, Product Marketing Manager at Amdocs, an AWS Advanced Tier Services Partner.

“Being a product marketer in the cloud space, the takeaways from this course will help me communicate the core business value proposition offered by AWS effectively, as well as deploy a successful cloud go-to-market strategy for effective client engagements,” adds Anusha.

Individuals who earn an 80% on the associated assessment earn their accreditation and the new AWS Sales Accredited partner digital badge.

Here are five reasons for AWS Partners to take the course:

#1 – Sell AWS More Effectively

This course covers two critical topics that AWS Partners value when engaging their customers: cloud objection handling and co-selling with AWS. Individuals will learn about common objections that prospective cloud customers have, and how to respond with facts and benefits to earn customer trust.

You’ll also learn how to co-sell with AWS—including how, when, and why to engage AWS Sales and Partner teams to provide the best solution for the customer—and how to leverage AWS Partner funding programs to help customers reduce the cost of evaluating and migrating to AWS.

#2 – It’s an Essential Reference

Based on foundational AWS Sales principles, this is a course that learners will want to bookmark. It’s a great place to start and come back to again and again. As individuals progress and advance with AWS, they’ll see the course with fresh perspective and learnings they can apply to the broad range of customers, industries, and situations.

#3 – Created for Partner Sales Teams and Their Busy Schedules

To help AWS Partners spend more time with customers, we focused the course on the essentials. The digital course is just over two hours and organized into four 15-30 minute modules, while the instructor-led option is just a half day.

We created a concise training to reduce the time away from your customers, maximize the value you’ll gain, and help you get back to serving customers quickly. You can even complete the assessment without taking the course—or start with the assessment to identify knowledge gaps to help you work backwards.

#4 – Badge Establishes Credibility with Customers

The new AWS Sales Accredited partner digital badge helps AWS Partners’ customers and your organization’s leaders recognize individuals’ commitment to building AWS knowledge. Whether they share the badge on their LinkedIn profiles or email signatures, the AWS Sales Accredited digital badge is a great way to demonstrate AWS knowledge for partner sales roles and earn credibility with stakeholders.

#5 – Counts Towards Tier Requirements for AWS Partners

This course helps meet AWS Partner Network (APN) tier requirements for partner organization in the Services Path. When individuals take the course and pass the assessment, their completion is recorded to their organization’s AWS Partner Scorecard.

Getting Started

Sign up for an upcoming instructor-led class or take the digital course through AWS Skill Builder.