Co-selling strategies for success: How to optimize your go-to-market (GTM) alignment
Updated: February 10, 2026
JUMP TO SECTION
- What is a co-selling opportunity?
- How does Adobe identify partners for a co-selling opportunity?
- What happens after Adobe invites you to a co-selling opportunity?
- What are some co-selling best practices?
- How to leverage Adobe sales plays for co-selling opportunities
- Join Adobe at in-person events for strategic co-selling
- Align with cloud partner marketplaces to unlock budget
- Tracking and taking action on your leads and opportunities
- Tips for successfully collaborating with Adobe sellers
- Incentives for closed deals
Introduction
A key benefit of partnering with Adobe is gaining access to a broad range of sales resources and incentives that help you position the value of Adobe applications with your clients. For Silver, Gold, and Platinum partners, this can include co-selling support from Adobe sellers.
To ensure you’re well-equipped to promote Adobe applications, this guide will walk you through what to expect during a joint sales cycle and how to maximize your Adobe partnership during these opportunities.
What is a co-selling opportunity?
Adobe recognizes several types of co-selling opportunities. The first type is when Adobe executes a sales cycle alongside an existing partner program member, but in other cases, Adobe will enlist a co-selling partner to help accelerate an opportunity.
In addition, partners may be recognized as a co-seller when they originate an opportunity directly with the customer. A partner may also be listed as a co-seller if another co-seller partner brings them into a deal at the customer’s request or based on a customer need. In this scenario, the original partner is the sourcing partner, but both partners are co-sellers.
How does Adobe identify partners for a co-selling opportunity?
When the opportunity arises, Adobe sellers will reach out to our internal partner sales managers for recommendations for a co-selling partner. The seller and the partner manager work together to identify ideal capabilities that will ensure a good match.
This can include assessing a partner’s existing footprint with the customer, relationships with key decision makers, level of influence within the account, depth of experience with the customer’s industry or use cases, and any existing assets, service offerings, or technical integrations that would help accelerate the deal or validate Adobe’s product recommendations.
When it comes to identifying an ideal partner to present to a customer, the program’s Partner Directory is a critical resource. To ensure you’re in the running for these opportunities, partners need to publish and maintain a directory listing (note: this benefit is limited to Silver, Gold, and Platinum partners). The more information we can access about your company’s Adobe expertise, the easier it is to identify and recommend you to our customers.
Located in the managed profile section of the Partner Experience Hub, your directory profile is a public-facing resource that promotes your company to both customers and Adobe sellers. Your profile can include a robust overview of your company, industry experience, a listing of services offered (including pre-packaged Adobe service offerings), and detailed insights into your company’s Adobe expertise as represented by product specializations, workforce credentials, and details of successful deployments.
It can also be valuable to explore the profiles of your competitors to better understand where you may have gaps in your experience or how to best differentiate your company.
Partners are responsible for creating and maintaining their Partner Directory listing. We recommend that your Primary Contact update your organization’s listing each year to accurately reflect your current offerings and capabilities.
Defining your value proposition
What happens after Adobe invites you to a co-selling opportunity?
Once the Adobe seller has identified potential partners, someone from the Adobe team will reach out and invite you to participate in the opportunity. If you accept, you’ll work with Adobe to define a joint sales strategy and also review Adobe’s rules of engagement.
Proof of involvement (POI) documentation is required for partners to be appropriately attributed to an opportunity. Even if Adobe invites you into an opportunity to co-sell, you will still need to upload the documents into the Partner Sales Center for review. Once the deal is closed and booked, the POI is instrumental documentation demonstrating your company’s influence on the opportunity and eligibility to receive incentives.
Co-selling rules of engagement
View deal registration guidelines
What are some co-selling best practices?
The following best practices can help you pursue and execute a strategic and collaborative approach to co-selling opportunities with Adobe.
- Deeply understand and align with Adobe’s end-to-end vision and product messaging.
- Cultivate strong relationships and effective collaboration with Adobe sellers.
- Identify and pursue strategic co-selling opportunities through conversations and use of account-mapping tools.
- Promote the value of Adobe applications and nurture customer success.
How to leverage Adobe sales plays for co-selling opportunities
Each year, Adobe sets revenue and growth targets for specific products and markets. To support these priorities, we package a number of resources into sales plays that detail repeatable go-to-market sales motions. Not only are sales plays extremely valuable for our sellers, they are also great resources for our partners.
Sales plays are organized into three tiers: portfolio, strategic, and application. At the portfolio level, the Sales Play will show how multiple Adobe applications work together to deliver transformational and multi-faceted business solutions that drive engagement. Within each portfolio play are a number of strategic plays that also span multiple Adobe applications while addressing specific strategies that contribute to the larger portfolio play. Finally, application plays show sellers how to promote specific applications while understanding the pathway to unlocking powerful application integrations.
There are several ways to access information on sales plays on the Partner Experience Hub. In addition to the global navigation menu, each product page connects to all relevant Sales plays. The best way to leverage these resources is to understand how your company’s Adobe practice aligns with our go-to-market strategy and demonstrate this alignment with current or prospective customers. When you pursue opportunities that align your strengths and our priorities, we create a win-win-win situation for you, Adobe, and our joint customers.
Explore Adobe Sales Plays
Join Adobe at in-person events for strategic co-selling
Take advantage of key events to get Adobe in front of targeted accounts. These events might be strictly internal to your customer, such as sales meetings or quarter- or year-end business reviews. They might also be public events like Adobe MAX, Adobe Summit, or other Adobe-hosted activities. These events are a great opportunity to coordinate with an Adobe seller to meet with prospective customers.
You might also consider investing your own marketing dollars to hold a customer event of your own or as an adjunct to a larger Adobe event. Alternatively, consider inviting a customer to speak at your organization’s internal or external event, using the event to leverage relationships you have with Adobe sellers or as an opportunity to begin building those relationships.
Visit the Adobe Partners on LinkedIn for updates on events
Align with cloud partner marketplaces to unlock budget
Adobe maintains strategic relationships with Microsoft and AWS that can be used strategically to accelerate sales cycles and overcome customer budget constraints. If a customer or prospect already has a contractual relationship with these cloud partners, it’s possible that they could leverage these contracts to fund the purchase of eligible Adobe applications.
Specifically, try to discern if a customer has a cloud commitment agreement, and if they do, if it’s underutilized. Since these agreements are on a use-it-or-lose-it basis, your customer could be at risk of throwing funds away at the end of their contract. Our partnerships with Microsoft and AWS can offset this risk by allowing customers to purchase eligible Adobe applications through their marketplaces.
Cloud marketplaces offer customers a digital catalog of software that they can purchase by drawing down from previously negotiated agreements for discounted cloud volumes. Partners should take the opportunity to encourage customers to explore if they can use a cloud marketplace to unlock budget and fast-track their development roadmap.
Tracking and taking action on your leads and opportunities
Within the Partner Experience Hub, our Partner Sales Center is a single platform for managing your Adobe leads, opportunities, support cases, and reporting—or anything deal related. If you’ve already registered as a partner at the Silver level or higher, you can access the Sales Center through the main navigation mentions or by clicking the handshake icon on the top row of the screen.
Your Sales Center dashboard and reports will help you track and act on your leads as you move through the sales process. Lead reports for sales stages 1 and 2 include reports for pending or disqualified submissions and a summary of deal creation.
Once you’ve reached sales stages 3 and beyond, the following opportunity reports become available:
- Pending partner information
- Pending AE review and acceptance
- Pending POI (proof of involvement) attachment
- Pending POI review
- Pending payout
- Potential ARR (annual recurring revenue)
- Payout completed
Pay attention to the “Pending POI attachment” report. The most common reason why partners do not receive their deal registration payment is because they have not submitted documentation proving their involvement in the opportunity.
Tips for successfully collaborating with Adobe sellers.
When you have identified a qualified opportunity, take these four actions to ensure a successful partnership with Adobe sellers:
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Connect with an Adobe seller. Be prepared to answer the following questions as you present this opportunity to the Adobe account team:
- Is the company an existing customer?
- Have you identified the business issue?
- Is it a budgeted initiative?
- Do you have access to key decision-makers or influencers?
- Are there any compelling events that impact timing like an imminent contract renewal or other deadline?
- What sales activities have you done with the company to date?
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Provide your point of view on how we can address the customer’s business issue—what is your proposed solution?
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Know if the customer is open to engaging with Adobe. Indicate whether the customer is open to a three-way discovery call with the customer, you, and Adobe.
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Review your deals in the Partner Experience Hub’s Sales Center—the earlier the better!
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Assign a dedicated person to track your deals. Having a single point of contact to manage your deals and Adobe conversations can be a big factor in your success.
Remember that open and transparent conversations with the Adobe sales team allow you to align messaging and strategy for the best chance at a successful deal cycle.
Incentives for closed deals
Successful Adobe bookings that result in subscription fees growth are eligible for the selling incentive. To qualify for a selling incentive, partners must actively position or validate the value of Adobe applications and help define how they align with the customer’s business needs. This can include recommending Adobe, contributing to business or technical cases, or otherwise actively helping to progress the deal.
Ready to co-sell like a pro? Let’s go!
The Adobe Digital Experience Partner Program empowers partners to join forces with Adobe sellers to pursue strategic sales opportunities—whether stepping into an existing deal or being selected to accelerate a new one.
Success hinges on maintaining a standout Partner Directory profile and aligning your strengths with Adobe’s go-to-market priorities through our sales plays.
Partners can boost visibility through key events like Adobe Summit and unlock budgets via cloud marketplaces, while managing leads and opportunities through the Partner Sales Center. To truly maximize your impact, build strong relationships with Adobe sellers, lead with value, and stay in sync with Adobe sales messaging.