Salesforce will provide more resources to consulting firms that help customers deploy and use its cloud services.

Enterprise technology vendors generate a significant portion of their revenue through consultancies. To foster that sales channel, many vendors actively support the work of their consulting partners with financial incentives. In many cases, they also provide technical resources such as employee training content. Salesforce is among the vendors that have adopted that strategy with their partner programs. 

Today’s partner program update will see the SaaS giant expand the resources that it offers to consulting firms. Additionally, it will streamline the process through which consultancies access those resources.

Qualifying for Salesforce-provided incentives requires partners to meet multiple requirements. Salesforce is streamlining the requirements list by refocusing it on two main parameters. The first is the technical know-how of a partner’s employees, while the other is a business metric known as CSAT. 

Consultancies’ technical know-how will be determined based on the number and type of credentials their employees earn from Salesforce. Until now, the SaaS giant offered 170 credentials. The company has condensed that number to 28 as part of its partner program revamp, a change that it says will benefit not only partners but also customers. A shorter list of credentials means a simpler consultancy assessment process for CIOs looking to buy professional services.

The other core parameter that Salesforce will review when evaluating partners is their CSAT, or customer satisfaction score. It’s an industry-standard business metric that is calculated through a three-step process. First, a vendor asks a set of customers about the quality of the services they received from a consulting partner. It then counts how many customers provide a positive response. In the third step, the vendor distills the responses into a percentage that reflects the ratio of happy customers to unhappy customers. That percentage is the consultancy’s CSAT.

Salesforce is paring the overhaul of its consultancy evaluation workflow with enhanced partner incentives. The company will offer more rewards for lead submissions and various other pre-sales activities. In addition, it will help partners cover the cost of certain post-sales product implementation activities.

Salesforce also plans to provide consulting firms with resources that aren’t tied to specific client projects. It will offer, among others, expanded access to training materials and internal use licenses. Those are Salesforce product licenses that consulting firms can use for tasks such as familiarizing employees with new features.

Photo courtesy of Salesforce