Reimagined program design includes new economic model and new technology for ISV partners plus elevated expertise for consulting partners
Customer success is at the core of every Salesforce partnership. Together with our partners, we grow, innovate and invest in ways that help customers transform their businesses – and we firmly believe that customer success is strengthened by our ability to create a thriving and connected ecosystem. Our joint success has always been fueled by feedback from our partners, and they’ve recently told us they want us to help them scale faster.
Today, we’re excited to announce the launch of a new partnership model with enhancements for our ISV, consulting and agency partners. Read on to learn more about how we’re making it easier for our partners to collaborate and do business with Salesforce through a new partner program design, a new economic model and elevated product and industry expertise.
New Partner Program Design
In order to provide the best experiences for customers, partners need to know how they’re performing and where they need to focus to grow their business with Salesforce. That’s why we’re introducing a new Partner Trailblazer Score. The Partner Trailblazer Score objectively measures partners on key metrics across the areas of customer success, innovation and engagement. Based on a partner’s score, ISV, consulting and agency partners are aligned to a new tiering structure designed to provide our partners with the benefits they need to grow their business with Salesforce. Every quarter, partners have the opportunity to increase their Trailblazer score to move into a new tier.
New Economic Model and Technology for ISV Partners
For the first time, ISV partners have forward visibility into how they can expand gross margins as their business scales through a new Marginal Royalty Model. Partners that take part in this new offering will benefit from marginal royalty rate decreases as their revenue increases. This program gives partners and investors the potential for gross margin expansion that they need to run a profitable business in the Salesforce ecosystem.
ISVs now have access to more of the Salesforce Customer 360 platform than ever before. There are three exciting new technologies that are now available for partners to distribute to their customers to help drive their digital transformations:
- Einstein Analytics: With Einstein Analytics, partners will be able to deliver sophisticated analytics as part of their solutions and to take advantage of Einstein Predictions to build machine learning into their solutions.
- Platform Services: Partners get access to developer tools that enable them to test code and metadata, deliver connected app experience and improve app performance.
- Salesforce Communities: Partners have access to Communities technology that allows them to extend customer business processes, enhance collaboration, and enable consistent systems of engagement.
In addition, partners can leverage new technology to more efficiently run their businesses and build better products, including:
- AppExchange App Analytics and Einstein Analytics: Partners now have the ability to see how their customers are using their solutions, in addition to the ability to create interactive views to analyze that data.
- Apex and ISV Customer Debugger: Partners can save developers’ time and help them build stronger, faster solutions with the ability to debug Apex in real-time sessions and debug specific customer issues from customer sandbox environments.
- MyTrailhead for Partners: Top tier ISV partners now have the ability to publish a custom Trailhead experience to educate their customers using the engaging and gamified myTrailhead.
Elevated Product and Industry Expertise for Consulting and Agency Partners
We want to empower customers to find the right consulting and agency partner based on their business needs. To do that, we are evolving Salesforce Navigator, making it the customer-facing way our partners can market their Salesforce expertise. Salesforce Partner Navigator enables consulting and agency partners to differentiate their firm based on proven industry expertise, Salesforce product knowledge, and customer success. Expertise is visible within a partner’s Consultants on AppExchange listing, along with their customer rating and project reviews, allowing customers to easily identify a short list of consulting partners that are primed to solve their specific business needs.
We continue to focus on creating more value for our partners through our program and are pleased to share these additional enhancements:
- Salesforce has reduced the cost of participating in our consulting partner program by dropping fees at almost every level.
- Referral fees are now open to all consulting and agency partners in 22 countries across Europe and Asia, with the exception of GSIs. New this year, we added this benefit for partners in Australia and New Zealand.
- Increased investment in Trailhead for Partners to help partners grow their practice through talent programs, in addition to Partner Learning Camp—built exclusively for partners to help them build, sell and implement Salesforce products better and smarter than ever before.
We are excited to bring these features to life for our partners so that they can continue to drive exceptional experiences for customers. These enhancements are effective and available for partners today.
