Most ISV partner recruiting is aimed at the wrong person.

You get a meeting with the VAR owner or the VP of sales. They like the product. They sign. You announce the partnership on LinkedIn, and then nothing happens for six months.

I have been on both sides of that. The owner signing means you are allowed to be sold. It does not mean anyone will sell you.

Who actually decides what gets mentioned

Inside a typical mid-market ERP reseller, the people who bring an add-on into a deal are not the owner. They are:

  • The account managers who run discovery calls and renewals with existing customers.
  • The solution consultants (sometimes called presales or SEs) who build the demo and scope the project.

Those people have their own incentives. The account manager is measured on closing the ERP deal this quarter. The solution consultant is measured on not blowing up the implementation estimate. Neither of them is measured on how many of the owner's new ISV partners they mention.

So when a prospect describes a problem your product solves, the AM makes a split second call. Do I bring up that new add-on, or do I keep the deal simple? Unless they know you, trust you, and see a clear upside, simple wins every time.

What account managers need from you

An AM needs to know two things: when to bring you up, and what happens to their deal when they do.

A trigger, not a pitch

Your 40 slide partner deck does not help an AM. What helps is a short list of things a customer says that should make them think of you.

"We're doing that in a spreadsheet after month end." "Our auditors keep asking for this." "We tried to customize it and the consultant quoted us 80 hours."

If you can give an AM four or five of those phrases, tied to the ERP modules they already sell, you have done more enablement than any certification course.

Proof it will not slow the deal

AMs worry that adding a third party product means another approval, another contract, another reason for the prospect to stall. You have to answer that directly.

Tell them how long your quote takes to turn around. Tell them whether the customer signs one agreement or two. Tell them what you will do if your product becomes the thing holding up their close. Then actually do it on the first deal.

Money they can see

If your margin goes to the VAR but none of it shows up in the AM's commission, you are asking them to do extra work for free. Some VARs pay reps on add-on revenue and some do not. Ask the owner how their comp plan treats ISV products before you build anything else.

If the answer is "it doesn't," a small spiff paid directly to the rep (where the VAR allows it) often does more than a margin point. I have seen a $250 spiff per closed deal change behavior faster than a 5 percent margin increase.

What solution consultants need from you

Solution consultants are a different audience. They are skeptical by job description. Their reputation rides on the demo working and the estimate holding.

A demo environment that just works

If an SC has to file a ticket to get a sandbox, they will not demo you. Give them a ready instance on the ERP version their customers run, with data that looks like a real distributor or manufacturer. Keep it updated when the publisher ships a new release.

Honest scoping guidance

Tell them exactly how many hours a typical implementation of your product takes, and what makes it run long. If your product adds 10 to 20 hours of services to the project, say so. SCs remember the ISV who told them the truth about a messy integration. They also remember the one who did not.

A direct line

The best thing I ever did for a partner's SC team was give them my cell number and a named technical contact on our side. Not a support portal. A person who answered during a live demo prep.

How to actually reach these people

You usually cannot just email a VAR's sales team. The owner controls access, and many owners are protective of their reps' time. Here is what tends to work.

Ask the owner for 30 minutes at their weekly sales meeting. Not to pitch. To walk through two customer stories in their ecosystem and the trigger phrases that came up in those deals. Keep it under 20 minutes and leave time for questions.

Then find the one AM or SC who asks the best question in that meeting. Follow up with them directly. Offer to join their next relevant call as a quiet technical resource.

Your first deal with a partner usually comes from one person inside it, not from the firm. Find that person and make them look good.

Keep showing up after the first deal

Reps move on. AMs change territories, SCs get promoted, and the person who championed you leaves for a competitor. I have lost entire partner relationships because the one rep who knew us took a job somewhere else.

So build relationships with more than one person per partner. Track who at each VAR has mentioned you, demoed you, or closed with you. If that list is one name long, you have a single point of failure.

A short, useful touch every month or so keeps you in their head. A new customer story from their region. A heads up on a publisher release that affects your integration. An invite to a 20 minute call where you answer the questions their customers are asking.

The owner still matters

None of this means you ignore the owner. The owner sets comp, approves spend, and decides whether your product goes on the price list.

But the owner signs once. The account managers and solution consultants decide, call by call, whether you exist. That is where your enablement time should go.