Internal memo reveals new Amazon bonuses for selling flagship AI products

Attendees to AWS’ 2017 conference

Amazon is giving more reasons for its salespeople to hawk AI products.

Amazon Web Services recently put a new incentive program in place for its flagship AI products, Q and Bedrock, according to an internal memo obtained by B-17.

In cloud computing and enterprise software, companies maintain massive sales teams that market to corporate customers and help them integrate technology offerings. When big tech companies change incentives for these salespeople, it often signals new strategies or updated tactics.

For Amazon, it’s facing intense competition from AI and cloud rivals such as Microsoft, Google, and OpenAI. This has put AWS in an all-hands-on-deck situation to beef up its AI business.

For the chatbot Q, AWS is offering a $1,000 bonus for the first 25 licenses sold and retained for three straight months with the same customer. The rewards max out at $20,000 per customer.

Those who sell Bedrock, Amazon’s AI development platform, are given a bonus of $5,000 for small customers and $10,000 for bigger customers when they “achieve 3 consecutive months of specified Bedrock incremental usage in 2024,” the memo explained.

The bonuses are one of the several tactics AWS is using to boost its AI sales, as B-17 previously reported.

Some AWS teams are also considering higher pay for AI specialists in some job categories, B-17 previously reported. At the same time, AWS sales teams now have specific performance targets tied to AI products.

The company also recently rolled out a new internal sales campaign, called “Find One, Launch One, Ramp One,” that encourages traditionally non-sales roles to actively sell AI products.

An AWS spokesperson told B-17 that every major tech company provides similar sales incentives and Amazon continually evaluates compensation against the market.