AWS tells software companies in its ISV Accelerate program that they will work with AWS account managers who receive incentives for co-selling their products through AWS Marketplace private offers (AWS ISV Accelerate Program). Microsoft’s partner documentation describes a co-sell status, available for certain Dynamics 365 and Power Apps offers, that gives Microsoft’s sales teams an incentive to sell them (Microsoft co-sell overview). Both companies run marketplaces that list partner software, and both treat a seller incentive as something a partner reaches through a specific program or status, apart from the listing.
That incentive is what I would ask any reseller or systems integrator about before signing: what does one of its salespeople earn when my product is on the order? The partner agreement covers margin, territory, deal registration, marketing funds and termination. The person who decides which products go into next week’s customer meeting works from a quota, a payout schedule and accelerators, and the agreement can leave all three untouched.
So the useful answers are narrow. Does the full contract value retire quota, or only the partner’s margin on my line? Does the credit land with the account rep or with an overlay team? Is commission paid at booking or at customer acceptance? Does a house product in the same catalog pay a better rate? If the plan year is already set, what could change seller behavior before the next one? If nobody can name an exception or an incentive, the launch date belongs to the partner’s planning calendar.
Services partners need a different test, because their people are measured on billable time. A practice with a utilization target has reason to favor software that needs configuration, migration and tuning, and a product that turns a six-week integration into three days takes hours out of its plan. The partnership can still work if the replacement revenue is explicit: a managed service the partner owns, or a fixed-fee implementation whose margin it keeps.
Sellers, the objection goes, sell what buyers ask for, and the buyer’s budget decides more deals than any payout schedule. Microsoft’s documentation gives this some support. For offers with Azure IP co-sell eligible status, the first marketplace benefit it lists is on the buyer’s side: purchases through Microsoft’s marketplace count toward the customer’s Azure consumption commitment, so buying the product helps the customer meet a spending commitment it has already made to Microsoft (Microsoft co-sell overview). If the buyer already wants the product and has committed budget to spend, the partner seller’s comp plan looks like a detail.
I accept the premise and draw a different conclusion. When the buyer arrives already wanting the product, the partner is processing a purchase that the vendor’s own selling created, and the vendor is paying margin for fulfillment. Microsoft’s requirements fit that reading. Among other conditions, a software company reaches Azure IP co-sell eligible status only after generating USD 100,000 of Azure consumed revenue or marketplace billed sales over the trailing twelve months (Microsoft co-sell requirements). The buyer-side benefit goes to companies already bringing Microsoft business, and the sales-team incentive is a different status for different offers. In my judgment, a reseller agreement gets a product into the partner’s catalog, and it takes either the seller’s comp plan or demand the vendor created to get the product into a customer meeting.
Partner pipeline reports should keep three kinds of deal apart. A deal the partner found and brought to the vendor is new distribution. A deal where a named partner action, such as an introduction to a decision maker or technical validation, moved an opportunity the vendor already had is influence. A deal the partner only processed through an existing purchasing vehicle is fulfillment, and I would price the margin on it as a fee for fulfillment. Adding the three together hides which one the channel is producing.
Before funding a channel team, I would want to see the product in the partner’s catalog with a quota retirement rate, a count of the sellers who carry it in their plans and in which segments, a measure for any overlay specialists assigned to it, and an executive sponsor whose own number depends on the category. If the sponsor’s pay has no connection to the category, I would treat the sponsor’s help as access to accounts, and staff the channel with one person who owns these questions and the partner’s planning calendar until the product appears in someone’s quota.