Dive Brief:
- Salesforce is reshaping its channel program around one priority: what AI agents actually deliver for customers. The changes apply to partners in the consulting track, which shifted its focus from traditional implementation to “a results-driven engine specifically designed for the agentic era,” Andrew Kisslo, SVP of Partner Programs and Strategy, said in a Monday announcement.
- The CRM software vendor pared the program’s structure down to two tiers — Summit and Select — governed by partner specializations and competency certifications, as well as customer satisfaction scores. In addition to targeting $1 billion in partner incentivized revenue, Salesforce further streamlined the consulting track by replacing 170 legacy badges with 28 core certifications.
- “Specialization is the new currency of the agentic era,” Nick Johnston, SVP of global consulting partners and partner sales at Salesforce, said in the announcement. “By streamlining our competencies, we ensure our customers can find the right expert at the right time to turn complex AI potential into a trusted competitive advantage.”
Dive Brief:
Salesforce is mobilizing channel partners to go the extra mile to ensure the successful deployment of its Agentforce 360 agent management platform, as ROI concerns cloud enterprise AI plans.
The channel updates target what Salesforce sees as key customer pain points by “rewarding the experts who ensure agents are secure, compliant and build for verifiable outcomes,” said Kisslo, who pledged the company would increase its investments in certification vouchers and training to help partners deepen their expertise.
“Salesforce, like many other SaaS vendors, is increasingly focused on driving and demonstrating business outcomes and value from AI,” Keith Kirkpatrick, VP and research director at the Futurum Group, said in an email. “While this is no doubt partly due to the chatter around AI-native companies such as OpenAI or Anthropic encroaching upon Salesforce's territory, the larger narrative is that end customers are truly focused on seeing a direct financial impact from their software, and by extension, their AI investments.”
AI adoption pitfalls represent a significant opportunity for the channel. Salesforce’s partner ecosystem has its hand in 70% of Agentforce implementations, according to Kisslo.
Consultants have a particularly crucial role in helping organizations clear implementation hurdles, Omdia GSI Practice Leader Peter Bryant told Channel Dive.
“AI adoption is more an operational problem than a technical problem,” Bryant said. “When you have a C-suite pushing AI transformation that demands evidence of value immediately, everyone needs to be aligned from the start.”
The stakes are high for Salesforce and its peers in a SaaS market plagued by flagging investor confidence. Despite growing revenue 12% year over year to $11.2 billion during the three months ended Jan. 31 and topping $41 billion for the 2026 fiscal year, the company’s stock has lost roughly one-third of its value since March 2025.
Salesforce Chairman and CEO Marc Benioff defended the sales business model against premature reports of its demise last week during an unusual earnings call that included Agentforce testimonials from SharkNinja CEO Mark Barrocas, Wyndham Hotels and Resorts CEO Geoff Ballotti and VC and SaaS industry influencer Jason Lemkin.
“This is not our first SaaSpocalypse,” Benioff said, pointing to a precipitous 2020 software market downturn.
“If there is a SaaSpocalypse, I think it might be being eaten by the SaaSquatch because there are a lot of companies using a lot of SaaS,” said Benioff, noting that subscription-based agentic AI is now the new software on the block.
“SaaS just got a lot better with agents-as-a-service,” he said.
