AWS Partner Network (APN) Blog

Equip Your Sellers for Success: Introducing the Generative AI Sales Course for AWS Partners

By Jacob Newton-Gladstein, Generative AI Center of Excellence Field Enablement Lead – AWS

If 2023 was the year generative AI burst onto the scene, 2024 is the year it transforms how businesses operate. The questions are no longer about what generative artificial intelligence (AI) is, but how to unleash its full potential. Leaders are asking: “I have an idea—how do I turn it into a scalable AI solution that drives real business value?”

For sellers and sales leadership, this market shift demands more than just teaching the building blocks of AI deployment. You must now create accurate ROI estimates and compelling value propositions for AI opportunities. As Andreessen Horowitz states in 16 Changes to the Way Enterprises Are Building and Buying Generative AI, “measuring ROI is an art and a science.”

But it’s not just about ROI. The cross-functional nature of generative AI requires rethinking traditional enablement methods. Training must be faster, more iterative, and scalable to match AI’s rapid innovation pace. Simply training specialized teams won’t cut it, as AI permeates every use case your sellers discuss daily.

The solution? A training and enablement plan laser-focused not just what to sell but how to sell, delivered at scale across your entire sales organization.

Assess your generative AI sales readiness by asking:

  1. Do your sellers understand generative AI services and how they connect to supporting tools like vector databases, visualization, natural language processing?
  2. Do they know the technical differences, costs, scalability, and security considerations across deployment models (managed services, custom models, retrieval-augmented generation, fine-tuning)?
  3. Can they scope proof-of-concepts that clearly link functionality to business value for different use cases?
  4. During implementation and scaling, do they know which metrics and outcomes matter to business leaders in each line of business?

In our discussions with sellers and partner business leaders, we often found sellers need support with at least one of these areas. That’s why the AWS Generative AI Center of Excellence and AWS Training and Certification partnered to create the AWS Partner: Generative AI Sales course.

“As an AWS Premier Tier Services Partner, we are committed to deepening our existing skills and expertise on AWS generative AI services so we can better guide our clients and help them find the right generative AI solutions that will drive their businesses forward. By recommending the AWS Partner: Generative AI sales course to our consultants, we now have an advantage in how we show up with our clients and can better help them build long term scalable generative AI plans using Amazon Web Services (AWS).” – Nisha Bains, Hybrid Cloud Services AWS Strategic Partnership Leader, IBM

This 2-hour course and its supplemental materials build on the AWS Partner: Generative AI Essentials course, helping sellers translate service knowledge into value-driving proof-of-concepts (POCs) and scalable deployments. Each module incorporates partner feedback on what their sellers need, like scoping questions to align data outputs with stakeholder priorities, and evaluating deployment models’ tradeoffs.

The course and its supplemental materials include set of questions and key milestones that sellers can use during the POC scoping phase as well as the implementation, deployment, and scaling phases. These questions help align project deliverables with clearly articulated business value for stakeholders. Additionally, we explore value-based selling with different generative AI deployment options, including managed model as a service, custom trained models, retrieval-augmented generation (RAG) and fine-tuning, and ready-made generative AI applications. We discuss the cost implications and trade-offs associated with each deployment method.

As the first AWS course supplemented by the Generative AI Center of Excellence’s 170+ enablement assets (with more added monthly), it offers a dynamic, future-proof learning experience.

Enroll in the AWS Partner: Generative AI Sales course on AWS Skillbuilder (free tier) today and lead your business into this transformative era. Explore the Generative AI Center of Excellence for more sales enablement resources.