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Liz Burton: So welcome. Thank you for being here. I'm Liz Burton. I'm Senior Partner Marketing Lead for Global Strategy at AWS. And I want to talk with you a little bit today about how to create your go-to-market framework by working backwards.

It's interesting because every time I come to re:Invent or any AWS Summit, I always get asked by partners, how should we go to market with you? How do you innovate at AWS? And today, I want to share a few of the principles of how we work at Amazon, including our customer centric approach of inventing products and services. I also want to talk about how this can align to your go-to-market framework with AWS.

And we don't claim that what I'm about to share with you is the best form of innovation. Um we've practiced this a lot and over the years, it's led to a lot of successes for us. And so we do feel like it's a good way to invent.

So for our agenda today, we're gonna be talking about innovation at AWS. We're gonna be talking about working backwards and the working backwards document. We're also gonna talk about how to align your go-to-market framework with working backwards process. And then I'm gonna share some resources with you that you can take with you after you leave today if you have more questions around working backwards, or you want to do some more research on how you can take it back to your own organization.

So to understand how we innovated AWS, you really have to understand what it is that guides us. We are guided by our mission statement and that is to be Earth's most customer centric company.

Now, when you look at our mission statement, it looks really, really broad and it is really broad. But the thing about our mission statement is we're not restricted by domains or geographies or markets or industries or technologies. It's intentionally broad because we feel like to innovate, we have to be flexible and it can take many shapes when we're talking about innovation.

However, even though it might appear broad, when you first look at it, it's also really, really specific because when we're in meetings at AWS and we're talking about solutions that we want to go to market and we're trying to evaluate which one of these solutions would be the best for our customers. We always go back to the question of is this, what's right for the customer? Is this really the best solution that we can put out there for our customer?

Also part of our peculiar culture at Amazon are our leadership principles or LP s as we call them. And these help to guide us in our mission of being Earth's most customer centric company. Our LP s describe how we want to do business. It describes how we're going to lead and how we can keep the customer at the center of everything we do.

If you have your mobile phones and you scan this QR code, it'll take you to a website that lists our 16 LP s along with descriptions of each. And you'll see that I'm gonna reference these LP s throughout our session today.

So when we talk about innovation, it's not just about being close to our customers, it's not about asking them what it is that they want. Sometimes they don't know what they want, sometimes um they're looking to us to help them, but we have to deeply understand what it is that they are experiencing as a challenge. What is the context for the problems that they experience innovation at Amazon then comes from working backwards from the customer in everything we do. It's our process for discovery and invention and the ultimate goal is customer delight.

And so I know I, you've probably heard of working backwards, but I'm curious how many of you have heard of working backwards before in Amazon's culture? So some of you? Great. I love that for those of you that haven't. I challenge you to think about what I go through today. And take that back to your companies, focusing on the customer also allows us to be agile and to move quickly. We often times can be heard saying in meetings that if we're focused on competitors or if we're constantly focused on what others are doing, we're already a step behind. And so rather than focus on our competitors or what someone else may be doing in the market, we're going to focus on our customers and what their needs are.

So when you look at this slide, you see here, Alexa and Kendall, what do they have in common? That's right. So a couple of things that really important is these things were created through our working backwards process. Our Amazonians actually did a process with working backwards from the moment that the product or service thinking about it's in their hands until the time that we launched it in market.

So the working backwards framework, it can be used for big or small projects, it could be used for internal or external customers. Um it can be used for small projects, for example, like program improvements that have a very large impact on your customers, it doesn't always have to be aligned to product development.

So for working backwards, if you're a solutions architect or you're in the it in an it role, you've probably heard of working backwards as part of our product development process, but it's not only used for product development, it can also be aligned to other business scenarios and used in the same way. And i will show you today how to align it to marketing because we do that every day at AWS.

So again, it can lead to game changing ideas. It can lead to small changes like program changes or feature changes in a product. It's whatever is going to have meaningful impact on your customers. Products like Alexa and Kendall Amazon Echo Prime Video, all of these products were created using the working backwards process.

So what is that process? It's what we at Amazon call a mechanism which is encoded behaviors that facilitate innovation. We also like to think of it as a virtuous circle. It's something that you can iterate on and it also reinforces or reinvents how it works as you go along.

And there are five stages in working backwards. So the first stage is listen, the second stage, define third stage is invent and then refine and test and iterate. So these are the five stages. But what's interesting about these five stages is they're all connected to customer questions that as we are going through these stages, we asked to get a better um information and data set about our customers.

So the important thing to note about working backwards is we always do this before we ever develop any kind of product feature, any kind of program. We always work through these five stages of the working backwards process.

The other thing I wanted to share with you. I went too far. is that with working backwards, we also align it to our leadership principles and it's something that you'll see as, as you continue to work with working backwards, those leadership principles will come time after time after time.

So who is the customer and what insights do we have about them? This is in the listen stage in the defined stage. We're looking about looking at data sets and really understanding the context of our customer and connecting the dots and finding out what themes can we identify that really present to us an opportunity to address a customer challenge in a new and meaningful way in the event stage. This stage, we're looking at alternatives to addressing the challenge. And so it's not about finding one solution but many and we then evaluate what those solutions are and we look at whether or not they impact our customer in the intended ways that we think that they will, i will also say in this stage that one of the pitfalls you want to avoid is you want to make sure that you don't automatically go to a solution when you're looking to define your problem, because you can reverse engineer a solution to make it fit what you think.

So this is why we always suggest come up with multiple alternatives and then really evaluate which one is going to serve your customer the best in the revin stage. We're looking at an end to end experience for our customers. And so it's really thinking about from the time they have their pro the product in their hands, what is their experience with it and really defining what that looks like?

I think another way you can think about it is how would you describe that experience in 30 seconds or less and then you want to test and iterate. So again, just as you would any other product, you can beta test, you can look at evaluation through quantitative and qualitative methods. Your ux design team making sure that everything's functioning as you would hope there are various ways you can test and iterate. But you want to make sure that your solution is having the intended consequence.

And remember, nobody just buys technology. They are seeking to buy something that impacts their business outcomes.

So the working backwards document, a lot of people think we write documents to document what it is we've already come up with. But we actually use a working backwards document to help us get to the solution that we think is going to work best for our customers.

We call it apr fa q which means press release for pr. And of course, fa q frequently asked questions. So with the press release, we're taking a leap forward and we're thinking about and envisioning where our customers will be if they put the solution that we've, that we've identified in place. The fa qs get into more details and then the visuals are, how can you draw that end to end experience for the customer? What does that look like? And you don't have to be an artist. I've seen them with stick figures. I've seen wire frames, a number of things that you can do to make sure that you're depicting that experience.

Now, the thing about these documents is we debate them, they are never finished. On the first try we discuss, we ask questions and i can tell you from my own perspective, having written documents, they have been torn completely apart. But at the end of it, all, we get to a much better product and a much better solution for the customer so done correctly.

As Jeff Bezos says, it's a huge amount of work. It's, but it saves you even more on the back end. And from a marketing perspective, think of it this way, if you create something that does not address your customer's problem, what do you think will happen in the market? It may not go over very well. You may not sell very much of what it is you're offering.

It doesn't always turn out like we want it to either. I don't know if any of you remember uh the fire phone, but this was a very public failure for Amazon to the tune of 100 and $70 million write down in cost. And so we think of it as a two way door, we can walk in that door. And if it's not working, we walk out that door. And so if you're not failing and you're not failing fast, you're likely not inventing enough.

So aligning your go to market, i was gonna tell you my clock is not working here, so i have no idea what time i have. th thank you. It's still stuck on 20. Um so aligning your go to market with working backwards, what does that look like? And what's the impact of working backwards on your go to market or your marketing strategy?

Well, let's talk about product development. So, on the product development side with working backwards, you're gonna be thinking about who are our customers, what's the problem we're trying to solve and how will we solve it? This is uh everything that we've talked about so far in this session.

How does that translate to go to market if you've done working backwards properly? You've created your go to market plan, you've identified your customer, your customer persona, you know, where they live and where they want to interact with you. Um you know how you're going to message to them, you know what the value proposition is. And so if you've done working backwards, this is already laid out for you and saves you time on the back end.

Another way to look at it is it increases your agility and reduces risk to go through working backwards. And so sometimes we make assumptions about customers, we want to move really fast. Anyone in tech knows that you want to be fast and, and get things out. Um but sometimes if you move too fast and you don't work through all of this process, you can design a solution that's not going to be very attractive. And so why not reduce your risk and yet still be agile by using this process and you can think of it another way.

So do i have any marketers out here? So if you, all right. So some of you marketers will understand this. Um i work a lot with sales teams and i've actually managed sales teams. I'm currently in marketing, but i used to get asks all the time. Go sell 1000 of this project. That's your goal. I need you to sell 1000 and that equates to x revenue.

So the sales person uh in me is going out to see who can i look at my target account list that i can go immediately sell to the marketer side of my brain is thinking i need a lot more people than 1000 people. I need 10,000 qualified leads. No, wait, i need 100,000 prospects to get to that 1000 in sales.

So for us, it's an, it's a funnel, a marketing funnel. You've probably heard about that from time to time. But when we think about how we go to market. We're thinking about all of those customers. You've identified as part of the working backwards process and we're targeting those 100,000 customers.

So another way to think about working backwards is to align it to your marketing planning process. So if this is a typical marketing um funnel that you'll see from time to time. First thing you wanna do is understand your customer. You might hold focus groups, you might do surveys, you might have market research that you're accessing. Um cs a t scores. This all aligns to the listen stage of working backwards. And again, if you've done the working backwards, you have this already same thing on analyze, define is the same thing as analyze. So you've have the data points, you need to create your customer persona on plan plan is the same as invent.

And so with invent, it's looking at things from your marketing mix like your pricing strategy. This is looking at, if you remember working backwards, invent is looking at all of those different alternatives and solutions that you've identified in the data patterns as part of how you want to go to market and then finally test and iterate can be included and execute and measure of marketing.

So looking at tactics and sales plays books and conversion rates. Kpis all of those things aligned to you working backwards.

Yes. All right. So for some resources for you guys, if you're interested in doing a working backwards process for your company. We offer that i would encourage you to reach out if you have an account manager or a partner development manager, reach out to them and tell them that you would like to have a working backwards session in your company. We have an innovation team that does this and we're happy to connect you. You can also reach out to me if you don't currently have an account manager or a partner development manager, and I'm happy to connect you to that team.

In addition, these are two resources that i found really helpful in thinking about working backwards and thinking about go to market frameworks and ways that you can go to market. So i would recommend these two books, i've referenced them a lot and i think they're really helpful, especially for those of you that may just be starting out using a working backwards process.

All right, that's a lot of info in a short amount of time. But i just wanna thank you all for coming and i hope that you'll consider this a challenge to all of you to go back to your companies. Think about how you can execute working backwards in your own organization. And for our part here as part of working backwards, we wanna hear from you. And so if you would take a moment and finish or, or complete our session survey, we would greatly appreciate it because we do use your feedback to iterate upon our programs and make sure that what we're providing you is a value.

So i hope you have a wonderful time at re invent connecting and learning. And please reach out to me with the contact info on the screen here, either by email linkedin or twitter. And i'm happy to help you.

So, thank you all very much.