As Zoom equips its partners to deliver services, it also offers guidance for those who just want to sell: expand wallet share with customers and align with Zoom on marketing.
The vendor simplified its points system to recognize partner performance and participation, according to a program update on Tuesday. Zoom replaced its legacy point bonus, which rewarded partners with a “significant book of business” and growth, with a promise of one point for every $1,000 in monthly recurring revenue partners add to an account. Whereas Zoom previously gave partners points for using its marketing collateral, it will now give five points for each customer-facing activity, such as an event.
The new point opportunities are part of Zoom's ongoing push to get partners working more closely with customers and the company. The communications giant teased a managed service provider specialization set to go live next month, along with telemetry data partners can use to enrich their service practices. By the end of the month, Zoom will assign point values to its partners and assign them to tiers, drawing a line between companies it deems strategic and those it deems transactional.
Zoom’s services push last year sent ripples through the brokerage-based technology advisor channel, which typically doesn’t implement or manage the technology it sells. Small TAs last year said they couldn’t afford to hire staff for professional services and asked Zoom for additional ways to earn points.
“I think there’s got to be a better way where you don’t throw the baby out with the bathwater, because there are partners that don’t want to build a professional services bench,” Rise Technology Advisors Co-founder Eric Ludwig said at the time.
Vendor alignment
The new avenues to points suggest the vendor is listening to the channel.
“We gave them a very clear flow of what needed to be done,” Zoom Head of Channel GTM Nick Tidd told Channel Dive. “We use a points-based system that allows them to be rewarded for performance as well as participation … they need not do anything other than just sell and co-sell with us, because the advisor space is very much about a co-sell, where they're deal-registering opportunities with us and selling.”
Incentives remain in place for the TAs that build out services. As businesses increasingly ask for help integrating AI agents with communications platforms, Tidd believes service-focused TAs will rise to the top.
“You've got the strategic guys like the TCS’s and the Cloud Warriors and the Accelerates that are building their business on managing the workflow; those partners and the MSPs are the ones that are going to do very well in the agentic workflow,” Tidd said.
Zoom is juggling several partner routes to market, including service providers, resellers and independent software vendors, and Tidd says the company wants to meet each type on its own terms. The agency model, which accounts for most of Zoom’s North American channel sales, according to Tidd, has a vendor-neutral flair.
Some TAs are concerned that aligning too closely with a vendor could erode neutrality.
“I understand their concept of rewarding the partners that sell more,” TMG President Seth Marsh said. “But if that's all you're known for, then how are you a trusted advisor if you're just pushing this one thing?”
Marsh said his Ohio-based firm doesn’t compete against fellow TAs. It sells against large value-added resellers and uses their close ties to vendors against them.
“Generally they're focused on their Fortinet, their Cisco, their Nutanix, their whatever and it’s on their paper,” Marsh said. “If TAs start becoming resellers, regardless of paper, you're no different than who you're competing against. You're just a me-too. If they were going to kick us out because we don't sell enough Zoom, I'm fine. I can compete with Dialpad, RingCentral and 8x8. Pick a card, any card at that point.”
Improvements for TAs
Tidd said the company has revamped its tools to help TAs and their technology services distributors get better information about Zoom commissions.
The single biggest concern Tidd hears from TAs is about commissions. Because Zoom pays commissions annually rather than monthly, discrepancies in commission statements have a greater impact.
In addition to creating a commissions dashboard for the TSDs that disburse commission checks, Zoom launched a TA-only dashboard two months ago.
“We've really spent the last 12 months operationalizing the incentives portion because it is very key to that business,” Tidd said.
TAs hope Zoom’s operational improvements will keep pace with its technological improvements. The company has developed and expanded its contact center portfolio at a breakneck pace after Five9 rejected Zoom’s $14.7 billion acquisition offer in 2021.
“They took all that money that they were going to point over there and said, ‘Okay, fine, we'll build our own, and that was the best thing they could have done because they weren't trying to bolt on,” Marsh said. “They just built their own, and I'm telling you right now that Zoom is probably pretty darn close to the Genesys’s and Five9s of the world.”
Zoom’s product innovation is “fantastic,” ATC of Ohio Cofounder and CEO David Goodwin said, but the company has yet to figure out a channel-friendly approach.
“It's not just about commissions; it could be about channel conflict; it could be about all these things that Zoom wants to make you do,” Goodwin said. “They can be heavy lifts to a lot of these trusted advisors… and I think they miss that. You want your business to be easier to deal with across the board, and then you let your innovation really put you at the top.”
