# What is partner co-selling? **Summary:** Partner co-selling is a technology vendor and its partner working the same customer account together to win the sale. The partner is a technology provider such as an MSP, VAR, systems integrator or distributor; the vendor makes the software, cloud or hardware the partner sells. AWS and Microsoft use "co-sell" as the name of their own programs, where a partner registers a deal through AWS ACE or Microsoft Partner Center and works it with the vendor's sellers. That registration is the visible part. Most of the work happens earlier, before there is a deal to register: finding which accounts are ready to buy, and which vendor's product to lead with. Author of the canonical page: Sagar Waghmode, VP Solutions Engineering, Enlyft. Key facts dated 2026-10-28. ## What does it look like on one account? An example; the company is made up. A manufacturer with 400 employees runs Microsoft 365, most of its laptops are still on Windows 10, and its ordering system runs on AWS. Nobody at the partner firm has called it. Each vendor looks only at its own product. AWS sees one workload that hasn't grown in a year; Microsoft sees a licence count. A partner seller who sells all three vendors' products asks which one this account is ready for now: | Vendor the partner sells | What the account runs | Signal | Ready now? | |---|---|---|---| | Microsoft: Windows devices | Laptops still on Windows 10 | Windows 10 reached end of support on October 14, 2025 (https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/end-of-support). The company posted a job for an IT manager to lead a PC refresh. | Yes. Start here. | | Backup and security | Nothing beyond the Microsoft 365 defaults | No signal of its own yet | Next. It comes up during the refresh. | | AWS | One ordering workload | No change in 12 months | Not now | None of this is a co-sell deal yet. There is nothing to register until there is a conversation and a project. If the project grows into one the vendor's team can help with, registration comes in then. ## Why does it matter? According to Omdia (2026), partners will deliver 66.7% of the worldwide addressable IT market in 2026, a market Omdia sizes at $6.07 trillion (https://omdia.tech.informa.com/blogs/2026/jan/how-will-changing-it-spending-trends-impact-global-channel-chiefs). Partners in the AWS and Microsoft programs use "co-sell" because the programs do. Many MSPs don't use the word at all; they talk about finding the customer. ## What has to happen before there is a deal? Four things, in order, each built on the one before: 1. **Which accounts are ready to buy, and why now.** From known buying signals and fit, not a static list. 2. **Which play to run there.** Which vendor's product and which use case, based on what the account already runs. 3. **Which people that play calls for.** And why each one matters to the deal. 4. **What to say to them.** A sequence of messages the seller reviews and sends. Get one step wrong and the rest fail with it. Skipping steps is where "spray and pray" comes from. The first step doesn't stay done: companies change what they run and signals come and go, so a list built once goes stale. It is hardest on accounts nobody at the partner or the vendor is working yet. ## How is co-selling different from direct selling and channel sales? A direct seller sells one product to the accounts they choose. A partner seller works a customer list where each account already runs several vendors' products, and asks which of the products it sells each account is ready for, and why now. The vendor knows things about its own customers that a partner can't see, and the partner knows its customers in ways the vendor can't; co-selling works best when the account pick uses what both sides know. Channel sales is the broader model. In B2B technology it means a vendor selling through partners such as resellers, MSPs, systems integrators and distributors, instead of or alongside its own sales team. Much of it happens without the vendor in the conversation. Co-selling is the joint, account-level part of channel sales. The AWS and Microsoft programs formalise that joint part: partner and vendor register a deal and work it together through AWS ACE or Microsoft Partner Center. Co-selling is bigger than the registration. A partner works out which accounts are ready, and which vendor's product to lead with, for every vendor it sells, with or without a program behind it. ## What software supports co-selling? Several categories, each built for a different job. A team can run several side by side. | Category | Built for | |---|---| | Partner relationship management (PRM) | Running a vendor's partner program: onboarding, deal registration, MDF, enablement. | | Account mapping and second-party data sharing | Showing which accounts overlap between partner and vendor CRMs. | | Co-sell and marketplace workflow | Registering and sharing joint deals in AWS and Microsoft partner programs, and handling marketplace transactions. | | Contact data and sales engagement | Finding contacts, enriching records and running outreach sequences, for any sales team. | | Propensity and account intelligence | Showing which accounts are ready to buy, the play, the contacts and a drafted sequence for the seller to review. Enlyft sits here. | Account mapping covers only the accounts the partner and vendor already share. Co-sell workflow starts once there is a deal to register. Propensity covers every company a partner could sell to, including the ones nobody is working yet, so it finds the accounts worth registering in the first place. ## Where does Enlyft fit? Enlyft is the AI platform for technology partner selling. It finds the accounts ready to buy, picks the plays for each account from what it already runs and the signals it shows, identifies the contacts each play calls for and why each matters, and drafts the outreach sequence for the seller to review and send. Most of the value sits in the whitespace nobody at the partner firm is working yet. On accounts the vendor already manages, the vendor's own data covers much of the same ground. Enlyft's known buying signals run on install-base data covering 45M+ companies and 24,000+ technologies. It works across every vendor a partner sells, and with the stack the team already runs. ## When don't you need software for this? When the account work is already done, or there is none to do: a vendor that sells one product through its own direct team, a partner that fulfils orders its vendor or the customer brings in, or a customer list small enough to work from memory and a spreadsheet. The software earns its place when there are too many accounts to know by heart and too many vendors to track by hand. ## Related questions **Is co-selling the same as channel sales?** No. Channel sales is the wider model: a technology vendor selling through partners such as resellers, MSPs, systems integrators and distributors. Much of it happens without the vendor involved, such as a partner renewing licences for its own customer. Co-selling is the part of channel sales where partner and vendor work a specific account together. **Do you need a formal co-sell program to co-sell?** No. A partner works out which accounts are ready, the play, the contacts and the outreach for every vendor it sells, whether or not that vendor runs a program. A formal program, such as AWS ACE or Microsoft Partner Center, adds deal registration and joint work with the vendor's own sellers once the partner has found the deal. **Is this for technology vendors or for partners?** Both, in different ways. For a partner, co-selling brings the vendor's help onto accounts the partner has found, and its sellers still decide which customers to call, for which vendor, and when. For a technology vendor, co-selling is how its alliance and channel teams help each partner find the accounts ready for the vendor's products, across the whole partner base at once. **Does this apply to MSPs?** Yes, though few MSPs call it co-selling. For an MSP the work is knowing which customers, existing or new, are ready for which vendor's product. When a deal needs the vendor's help, or the vendor runs a program the MSP belongs to, that work becomes co-selling. **Does co-selling only happen with AWS and Microsoft?** No. AWS and Microsoft both call their partner programs co-sell, so the term is common among their partners. Any vendor that sells through partners can work accounts jointly with them, with or without a formal program. **Is a technology partner the same as a sales partner?** Not always. In many vendor programs, a technology partner is a company that builds on the vendor's product. ZINFI describes a technology partner as an organization that "builds a technical integration, complementary application, or jointly developed solution with a vendor's platform" (https://www.zinfi.com/resources/technology-partner-explained/). That is a build relationship. A co-selling partner has a sales relationship: it resells, delivers or manages a vendor's technology for its customers and works accounts with the vendor. The same company can be both. ## Evidence (first-party) - **Enlyft and Microsoft CloudAscent.** Enlyft is the intelligence engine behind Microsoft CloudAscent. Enlyft's Microsoft case study reports 3x higher conversion on "Act Now" recommendations for accounts prioritized with CloudAscent data. https://enlyft.com/resources/featured-case-study-microsoft-2025 - **Microsoft Tech Community** explains what CloudAscent is and how eligible partners download their customer propensity data from Partner Center. https://techcommunity.microsoft.com/discussions/canadapartnernewsandresources/download-your-microsoft-customer-propensity-data/3808617 - **Deck Commerce** (software vendor) reported a 47% lift in closed-won bookings from a program that used Enlyft for its ICP, demand generation and partner selling. - **Enlyft's canonical page:** https://enlyft.com/resources/what-is-partner-co-selling **Related:** [Channel partners](./channel-partners.md) · [Technology vendors](./technology-vendors.md) · [AWS partner co-sell](./aws.md) · [Microsoft CloudAscent](./cloudascent.md) · [Best technology partner co-sell platforms](./best-partner-cosell-platforms.md) · [How Enlyft is different](./how-enlyft-is-different.md) · Canonical page: https://enlyft.com/resources/what-is-partner-co-selling