When you think about partnerships between two global tech giants, few are as powerful as AWS and Salesforce.

In this episode of Inside Partnering, I sat down with Christopher Mercer, Global Manager of Partner Development for Salesforce at AWS. Christopher’s story is a rare one: he started his career at Salesforce, spent nearly a decade there, and then transitioned to AWS – where he now manages the very partnership between those two companies.

It’s a unique vantage point that gives him insight into both cultures, sales motions, and the intricate web of customer needs that drive collaboration at scale.

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The Perfect Intersection of Two Worlds

Christopher calls his journey “a story of lucky intersections.”

He first joined Salesforce right out of school as an inbound sales rep, then later became a Salesforce system administrator for a healthcare company – an experience that shaped his understanding of how Salesforce’s platform was used in real-world business workflows.

Years later, after joining AWS, a colleague noticed his Salesforce background and asked if he’d be interested in leading the Salesforce partnership.

“It was the perfect cross-section all over again,” he said. “I’d been on both sides—and suddenly had the chance to connect the dots.”

Three Pillars of the Partnership

Christopher breaks down the AWS–Salesforce relationship into three main areas:

* Product Development – How each company’s technology complements the other.

Example: customers building on AWS who want to connect data from Redshift or S3 into Salesforce Data Cloud, enabling richer customer insights and AI capabilities through Agentforce and Amazon Bedrock.

* Co-Marketing and Co-Sell – Educating both Salesforce and AWS sellers on how to jointly tell the story.

As Christopher puts it, “Sometimes it’s as simple as asking a customer, ‘Do you use Salesforce and AWS?’ If the answer’s yes, there’s a great conversation to be had.”

* Customer Enablement – Empowering GSIs and end-customers to bring both ecosystems together.

Many global SIs have separate AWS and Salesforce practices; the partnership aims to bridge those silos and unlock new value through integration.

From Product Integration to Marketplace Momentum

The partnership’s momentum accelerated with the Strategic Collaboration Agreement (SCA) announced in 2023. Within a year, Salesforce reached over $2 billion in AWS Marketplace transactions – a remarkable achievement driven by cross-functional teamwork and customer demand.

But it wasn’t just about procurement efficiency.

Marketplace opened the door for deeper collaboration. Salesforce sellers found new opportunities to engage AWS teams, while customers benefited from simplified purchasing and the ability to apply their AWS spend commitments to Salesforce products.

For AWS, it created a new path to co-sell opportunities and customer conversations around data, AI, and modernization.

Co-Selling in the Age of AI

When Salesforce launched Agentforce, AWS saw an opening for meaningful technical collaboration.

Customers using Agentforce needed access to high-quality, first-party data, often residing in AWS data lakes or Redshift clusters.

That’s where co-selling became essential.

“Salesforce reps were hearing customers say, ‘Our data’s in AWS, can you connect us with our AWS rep?’” Mercer explained. “It was the perfect timing for our two teams to come together.”

The combination of AWS compute, AI services like Bedrock, and Salesforce’s CRM and Data Cloud created an end-to-end story for customers – from infrastructure to insight.

Listening to Customers Drives Innovation

A theme throughout the conversation was customer feedback as the true north.

From early success with Service Cloud Voice (built on Amazon Connect) to the latest integrations with Tableau and Data Cloud, many innovations came directly from customer requests.

“Customers told us they loved both Service Cloud and Amazon Connect,” Mercer said. “They asked us to figure out how to bring them together—and that became Service Cloud Voice, now Agentforce Voice.”

This customer-driven model also extends to roadmap discussions. AWS and Salesforce teams regularly meet with joint customers to identify new integration opportunities and push the boundaries of what’s possible.

The Strategic Collaboration Agreement: Lessons for ISVs

Every ISV dreams of signing a Strategic Collaboration Agreement (SCA) with AWS. Christopher described the process as a disciplined alignment exercise across three questions:

* How will it work for AWS’s field?

* How will it work for Salesforce’s field?

* How will it work for the customer?

“If it doesn’t work in all three areas,” Mercer said, “it doesn’t matter how good your solution is – it has to make sense for the people who sell it and the people who use it.”

That pragmatic focus has helped keep the partnership aligned and durable. Almost everyone who worked on the initial SCA in 2023 is still actively engaged today.

Looking Ahead

As both companies continue to innovate, Christopher’s job remains as dynamic as ever.

“Just when we think we have something figured out,” he laughed, “AWS or Salesforce comes out with a new product – and we have to adapt all over again.”

For Mercer, that’s exactly what makes the partnership exciting. “When you bring together two companies like this – each moving fast and pushing boundaries – it forces everyone to think bigger.”

💡 Key Takeaway

The AWS–Salesforce alliance shows what’s possible when two cloud leaders unite around customer value.

It’s not just co-selling – it’s co-building, co-innovating, and continuously co-adapting.

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