Note
Most partner plans stop at the partners you can see from inside Salesforce
Ask an ISV for its partner plan and you hear two things: get the AEs to bring us in, and recruit the SIs. Both matter. Neither earns more when your customer stays.
Josh Weckesser · October 2026 · 3 min read
Why the CRM misses them
Most partner maps stop at the Salesforce field and the SIs, because those are the partners you can see from inside the CRM. SIs get paid per project, and the field sells Salesforce first.
The ones paying you, such as the platforms your product connects to, the add-ons you sell in, and the resellers your customers buy through, often show up only in finance actuals. They are also the partners who send the second deal, and the tenth, because they get paid when your customer does.
The five kinds we map
Which ones matter most depends on what you sell. We map all five.
Connected platforms
The systems your product connects to, which your customer already pays for. They earn every time a shared customer uses both products, so they have a reason to keep referring.
Add-ons
Products your customers need that you do not build. You sell them into your base, and they pay a share for as long as the customer stays.
Routes to buy
Resellers, public sector contract holders, and marketplaces past the AppExchange. Some customers can only buy through one of these. If you are not there, you are not in the deal.
SIs
They bring you into the projects that need you, and most bring one deal and move on. That makes the long tail the program. Enablement has to reach the SI on the deal, when the deal needs it, not through a certification track nobody finishes.
Salesforce field
AEs and SEs. Still worth working every week. But a plan that depends on them depends on someone else’s quota.
The SI row has its own write-up: in one program, sixty of sixty five SIs brought exactly one deal. The long tail is the partner program.
The finding
Start the map from who earns when your customer stays, then work back to the field and the SIs. The data for the first group usually sits in finance, not in the CRM, so that is where to look first.