This week marked the launch of the first part of our Road to the AppExchange Series. We’re covering the most essential topics partners need to know to get to market on the AppExchange in a timely manner while getting the most out of Dreamforce ‘19 and beyond. This 8-part series runs from June to October, and you can find the full schedule here.
For the first of our series, we took a look at the partner agreement process with Salesforce. Getting your partner agreement right is vital because it sets the stage for your go to market; and unless you’ve been through it before, there are gotchas along the way that can really slow you down if you are not careful.
We brought together Sean Hogan, CodeScience’s CRO, and Melissa Burnell, Director of AppExchange Partnerships at Salesforce, to share a master’s level session on how to accelerate your partnership agreement.
Follow the Template
When drafting your partnership agreement, you must provide your application name and a description of what your application does. This is very different than what you will eventually provide in your public AppExchange listing. Some partners navigating this process for the first time see this as an opportunity to try and woo Salesforce with marketing messaging, or, even worse, they may not have a good understanding of their capabilities and leave the description too vague to get a sense of what it really does.
Both of these will slow you down and cause the agreement to stall for revisions and review. Melissa recommends talking with your Partner Account Manager (PAM) to review your app name and description before submitting it. To give you a starting point, she provided an example of a description. The bold text is where you would place your own information:
The Partner Application is a voice AI solution. Partner Application enables Reseller Customer with an AI virtual assistant that listens, dictates, and identifies important moments and actions from meetings using voice recognition technology. The Partner Application further provides specific functionality that sends an email with notes from recorded meetings and provides access to the platform where they can be edited and shared across Reseller Customer employees. Partner Application process call recordings off platform on Azure, which provides access to call recordings and notes from within their org.
Salesforce Takes Compliance Seriously
Salesforce takes security seriously when it comes to applications allowed on the AppExchange. So it should come as no surprise for the partner agreement that security and compliance are a focus as well. There are two areas where compliance can slow things down.
The first is around your business model and who is going to sell your application. Most partners will only consider direct sales, but for partners thinking long term, they may consider an indirect sales route. Any company considering indirect sales must have a clause in their partner contract agreeing to indirect sales. Additionally, each reseller of your application has to be approved by Salesforce. The approval process must be factored in your launch plans to ensure you don’t miss any crucial milestones.
The second area where compliance could slow down your process is when discussing where you plan to sell. Most companies believe if they just state that they aren’t selling in non-UN embargoed countries then they will be okay. However, this is not the case. There are many countries where corruption and fraud are prevalent and require additional scrutiny from the Salesforce Compliance team.
To ensure a smooth process, it is best to have a documented code of conduct and ethics training program available for review.
Don’t Miss Out
These were only a few of the insights shared. You can watch the recording in full here. In addition to this recording, you’ll receive continued access to each recording as it releases. Don’t get detoured on your road to the AppExchange.
With 11 years of experience and 220+ commercial applications launched on the Salesforce AppExchange, we know what it takes to help you thrive. If you’re interested to learn what CodeScience can do you for you, drop us a line and we’ll be in touch.
