The partners are getting restless / going native
by naisan on Sep.19, 2007, under SaaS, partnership, salesforce.com
A couple of questions here at Dreamforce’s partner session panel discussion have gotten a bunch of laughs from the partners in the audience:
“Last year you said build in Apex, now you’re saying build an independent tool, and now you’re saying get leads for salesforce.com. . .”
“What about AppStore? Where is that going – I haven’t heard anything about it this year.”
and from the panel: “Ask not what salesforce can do for you. . .”
Comments like these are at the heart of partnering, and occupy a bunch of time for me: can you stay with the same message for your partners over a series of years. But I am struck with the misalignment of partners in so many cases: partners want to sell product to salesforce’s users, and salesforce wants new leads. So that’s always going to be difficult.
The trouble is that folks that are willing to go and take on the acquisition costs of winning net new business probably don’t want to give that away with nothing in return, and so in lies the rub.
Business alignment drives everything, so setting up the business with partners at the center makes for a very different world than trying to stick them in the middle of a customer-vendor relationship. Very different.
Bobby Napiltonia also offered free access to the PRM module for all SFDC partners. Good stuff 
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