‘I’m just really fired up about where we’re going,’ says Phil Samenuk, Salesforce senior vice president of alliances and channels for the Americas.
Salesforce is at work on a revamped partner program set to launch early in its 2027 fiscal year with components that include an annual review process to make sure solution providers are current on certifications and are delivering outcomes for customers while also “tripling down” on partner enablement, an evolved incentives model and more efficient product access.
Phil Samenuk, senior vice president of alliances and channels for the Americas at the San Francisco-based artificial intelligence and enterprise applications software vendor, told CRN in an interview that this will mark some of the biggest changes to the program in 10 years to help build a better ecosystem for the agentic AI era.
“I’m just really fired up about where we’re going,” said Samenuk (pictured above).
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Salesforce Partner Program Changes
Salesforce joins a host of other technology vendors rolling out changes for their programs in the first weeks of 2026, with January seeing program updates announced by Google Cloud, Extreme Networks, Cisco and ServiceNow.
The Salesforce ecosystem is at around 16,000-plus partners, according to the vendor. The company is now at more than 165,000 AI-certified experts and 9,000 pre-built applications available for customers. Samenuk expects the new program to launch early in the next fiscal year, which starts Feb. 1.
The vendor has seen partners take on an important role in driving customer consumption of Salesforce products and bringing the agentic AI era to life, he said. Partners are leading more than 50 percent of Agentforce client engagements, and 72 percent of customers continue to actively use agents following a partner-led implementation.
The company continues to welcome new partners while investing in its traditional solution providers, he said. Salesforce will communicate with partners on how to stay compliant with the new annual partner program reviews. The vendor will seek information such as the number of certifications a partner has, what types, what leads are internal sellers working on with partners, what qualified projects are submitted and other factors.
The reviews are in answer to customer requirements plus a way to evaluate expertise in the ecosystem, he said. Partners who don’t meet the program’s requirements will have a chance to remediate issues.
“This is a net good thing,” he said. “Our No. 1 value is trust. So if we’re going to go take this journey, and we need our ecosystem like we never have before, we need everyone oriented around that No. 1 value of trust.”
In enablement, partners can expect more intentionality around industry, architectural and integration knowledge of the Salesforce platform, he said. New incentive details are coming. And Samenuk pledged improved access to Salesforce product teams, roadmapping, sales and account planning discussions when possible and more.
“We are driving agentic success with partners, big, small, regional, product focused, industry focused,” he said. “Everyone has the opportunity to win right now.”
