Show Notes
In today’s episode of How We Got There (which was recorded earlier this year), I talk with Jon Schultz, who is a Director of ISV Sales at Salesforce. Jon has spent his career in partnerships, including the last 6 years at Salesforce. He got a PAM role at Salesforce after moving with his now wife across the country without a job! His team works with horizontal ISV partners who are high growth partners and/or partners who have been in the ecosystem for a long time. His team serves native, high growth, and enterprise partners in the ecosystem.
Jon shares the differences in ISV team alignment from partners just starting out through Summit level partners and how his team works with their partners to align around gtm & technology strategies. I ask Jon about the WIIFM for your PAM as an ISV/OEM and how his team is measured. They are measured based on revenue share from their partners so there is a direct alignment between a partner’s revenue growth for incentive compensation. Beyond revenue, he looks to his PAMs to help them change their business with an example being opening offices overseas from their HQ.
And Mike said this, not Jon…..incentives drive behavior. If you close a big deal at the end of a quarter, submit that order and share it with their PAM as they are aligned with that success. Jon adds to that concept with calling out that as soon as the order is submitted, his team can now share this win story with the direct team via win tiles and slack posts.
From a partnership strategy, expect your PAM to help amplify your message once things get rolling but don’t start by asking them “where are my leads?“. I put Jon on the spot around partners to watch who are doing the right things and although he didn’t share a specific partner with me but did talk about how his counterpart worked with him to analyze data around the value of the Salesforce partnership, showing Salesforce connected customers are worth 1.5x revenue. This lead the leadership team to grow the Salesforce partner team headcount at the ISV to drive incremental capacity to align with the direct teams at Salesforce. From an AppExchange listing point of view, take a look at Accounting Seed, TaskRay and Prolifiq as examples of great from a content perspective including usage of Test Drive for leads.
His team will always lean in when their partners lean in. His advice for all ISVs is to spend time to think through what the goals are for the Salesforce partnership as it relates to your organization.
We talk about Salesforce SDO and Salesforce IDO integration and the right time to consider building an extension package that Salesforce SEs can demo of your solution as part of their demonstrations. Make sure you know your message, your market, and what features align with what is hitting home with customers and Salesforce SEs/AEs. Starting it too early can waste some cycles, so look for signals like SEs asking you to help them install your app into their SDO or IDO.
Here’s a closer look at the episode:
1:00 How did you find your way into the ecosystem?
3:15 What types of ISVs your team serves?
4:50 What are some of the nuances that you see?
7:30. ISV PAMs on your team, what’s important to them, how are they measured?
11:30 what are some realistic asks that ISVs and OEM should be making of their PAMs
14:10 Can you share some great app exchange apps, listings or partners to replicate?
20:00 What is the right time that an ISV should start to think about SDO or IDO integration?
26:00 What are you most proud of from your time with the team?
27:30 What do you think every ISV should do this month?
29:30 The Final Three
Resources:
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You’ve gotta be boots on the ground, doing it yourself first before you build out a team to help you sell. He needed to be the one selling, partnering, and figuring out the messaging before scaling the team.
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