This editorial appeared in the June 19th, 2025, issue of the Topline newsletter.
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Salesforce just made a bet that a dead billionaire's favorite obsession holds the key to their future growth. And they might be right.
"Show me the incentive and I'll show you the outcome," Charlie Munger famously declared. Yesterday, Salesforce took that wisdom and turned it into software.
The history of business is littered with companies that ignored this truth at their peril. Early in Xerox's history, a catastrophically misaligned sales commission plan nearly killed their best innovation. Reps were pushing an older, inferior copier over a superior new model—not because they were stupid or stubborn, but because the payouts were richer on the legacy product. Customers got screwed. Innovation died on the vine. All because someone forgot to check the comp plan.
This pattern shows up everywhere you look: FedEx's overnight workers magically sped up the moment pay shifted from hourly to per-shift. Brian Halligan built HubSpot into a juggernaut by declaring the sales team's commission plan "the most important document in the company."
The pattern is so consistent it's almost boring: incentives drive behavior. Not leadership mantras. Not reorgs. Not all-hands pep talks. Just incentives.
So when Salesforce announced Partner Cloud yesterday, I almost scrolled past. Another product launch, another portal, another press release. Then I read the details and realized what they're actually doing.
The Incentive Machine
Here's what Partner Cloud actually does: It gives partners a unified portal ("Partner Hub") featuring deal registration, lead sharing, AI-powered guidance (Agentforce), and—crucially—a partner scoreboard that tracks everything. But calling it a "portal" misses the point entirely. This is an incentive engine disguised as software.
Salesforce built an empire on direct sales excellence. They literally wrote the playbook that thousands of SaaS companies still follow. So why the sudden pivot to partners? Because they've realized what Munger knew all along: the right incentives can turn even your competitors into your sales force.
Two features reveal their true intent:
- Co-Sell Collaboration Spaces: Using Partner Connect, Salesforce reps and partner sellers can securely manage opportunities across both companies' CRM systems. Every update, every task, every win is tracked and—here's the key—attributed properly for compensation.
- Slack-First Architecture: No coincidence that Slack announced new AI pricing tiers the same week. Marc Benioff doesn't believe in coincidences, and neither should you.
As Asher Mathew, CEO of Partnership Leaders, notes: "Partner Cloud is built for the full indirect motion—from recruit to reward." That last word matters most. Reward. Because without it, everything else is just expensive theater.
Why Everyone Gets This Wrong
Here's the thing: while everyone's been arguing about direct sales versus PLG for the past decade, they've been missing what's actually happening. Channel partners already drive 30-50% of revenue in mature B2B categories. The ecosystem isn't coming—it's here.
Most companies know these stats. Yet operationally, they treat partners like second-class citizens. The predictable result? Hundreds of "partnerships" on paper that generate approximately zero dollars.
Then you look at how people actually get paid: The sales rep's entire quota comes from direct sales. Share a deal with a partner? That's less money in their pocket. Meanwhile, the partner's reps aren't getting compensated on this vendor's products either. So nobody wins.
Both sides give the partnership lip service while systematically avoiding it. Management scratches their heads, blaming "alignment issues" or demanding more "enablement." But Munger would diagnose it instantly: You've created a system where doing the right thing punishes both parties. Of course it fails.
As Munger warned, incentive-caused bias can cause even decent people to "drift into immoral behavior"—or at least self-defeating behavior—to achieve their goals.
The Tipping Point Nobody Saw Coming
Salesforce's move signals something bigger than a product launch. When the CRM category giant, whose very playbook shaped the modern SaaS sales org, declares that partner co-selling deserves first-class tooling, it sends a powerful signal: Partner-Led Growth has arrived as the third major GTM motion.
The evidence is mounting:
- VCs are pouring money into partnership tech (Crossbeam enables automated account mapping that would have been impossible years ago)
- Companies are appointing Chief Partner Officers where alliance managers once toiled in obscurity
- As Satya Nadella noted: "Our business model fundamentally is about creating more surplus outside us... We will only be long-term successful if people are making more money around us."
Bob Moore, CEO of Crossbeam, captures it perfectly: "The GTM side of partnerships was historically underserved, but new playbooks are emerging now that data and technology allow ecosystems to be operationalized."
Translation: What was once relationship-driven art is becoming data-driven science.
The Arms Race Begins
Salesforce raising the bar forces everyone else to respond. HubSpot has been championing the platform ecosystem approach for years (boasting that partners and app integrations drive a $6.4B ecosystem, nearly 6x its own revenue), but Salesforce has taken the clear lead in the co-sell motion.
Microsoft and AWS have long had co-sell programs, and ServiceNow runs extensive partner certifications. But Salesforce packaging a comprehensive, incentive-aligned partner management suite raises the stakes for everyone.
Expect the predictable scramble:
- CRM competitors racing to emphasize their partner-friendly features
- A broader industry conversation about "Partner-Led Growth"
- Much like Salesforce's Revenue Cloud pushed everyone to consolidate quote-to-cash processes, Partner Cloud will push others to provide better ecosystem revenue orchestration
Most companies will copy the features and miss the point. They'll build portals and dashboards and AI assistants. But Salesforce isn't betting on technology—they're betting on human nature. Get the incentives right, and the right behaviors follow.
The Ghost in the Machine
Salesforce's Partner Cloud represents more than a product launch—it's an ethos launch. It heralds a future where GTM strategies are not just data-driven but behaviorally engineered. And it comes at a time when non-AI-first "Point Solutions" are DOA.
In a world where AI threatens to commoditize everything, Salesforce is betting that a properly incentivized ecosystem might be the last defensible moat.
The ghost of Charlie Munger can rest easy knowing his incentive gospel is being applied in enterprise software. Which means the winners in this new world won't be the companies with the most partners. They'll be the ones who figure out how to make those partners actually care.
After all, as Munger always knew: Show me the incentive, and I'll show you the outcome.
