Who Benefits When Someone Recommends a Technology Product to You?

Canalys reported that in 2024, 72% of enterprise software revenue globally flowed through the channel — resellers, managed service providers, system integrators, and referral partners. That means nearly three-quarters of the time a business buys enterprise software, the person recommending it has a financial relationship with the vendor. This isn't hidden. It's the structure of the industry. But it creates dynamics that buyers should understand before treating a recommendation as neutral advice.

In The Problem with Generic Tech Recommendations, I identified incentive misalignment as a red flag worth examining — not because channel relationships are inherently corrupt, but because they create structural pressure that changes what gets recommended and why. The recommendation might still be right. The process that produced it deserves more scrutiny.

How the incentive structures work

Why this doesn't make every recommendation wrong

It would be convenient if incentive misalignment were a reliable indicator of bad advice. It isn't. Many resellers, referral partners, and implementation consultancies do excellent work and genuinely recommend products that fit their clients' needs. Their partnerships give them deeper product knowledge, better support access, and implementation experience that generalist advisors don't have. A partner who has deployed a platform two hundred times knows things about it that no amount of independent research can replicate.

The issue isn't that channel incentives exist. It's that they create a gravitational pull toward specific products that operates independently of the customer's requirements. The partner may overcome that pull through professional integrity and rigorous process. Or the pull may be strong enough — especially when a quarterly target is at stake — that the recommendation reflects the incentive structure more than the customer's needs. From the outside, both scenarios look the same. The recommendation sounds confident and informed either way.

This is why the discovery process matters more than the recommendation itself.

Evaluating the discovery, not just the conclusion

If you can't reliably determine whether a recommendation is influenced by incentives just by looking at the recommendation, what can you evaluate? The process that produced it.

• Was the problem defined before the solution? A discovery process that begins with questions about your environment, constraints, and goals — and continues asking until the advisor has a substantive understanding of your situation — is doing the work. A process that arrives at a product recommendation after a single conversation — essentially, generic comparison dressed as guidance —, or that begins with a product overview before the problem has been fully explored, has compressed the diagnostic phase in a way that favors speed over accuracy.
• Were alternatives genuinely considered? Ask directly: "What other options did you evaluate for our situation, and why did you rule them out?" If the answer is specific and grounded in your constraints — "Platform B has better analytics, but their API doesn't support the integration with your ERP system, and the migration cost from your current platform would be 40% higher" — the evaluation was substantive. If the answer is vague — "We've found that Platform A is the best fit for companies like yours" — the comparison was superficial or didn't happen.
• Is the advisor transparent about their commercial relationships? Ask whether they have a reseller agreement, referral arrangement, or partnership with the vendor they're recommending. This isn't an accusation — it's due diligence. Advisors who are confident in their recommendation will disclose the relationship without defensiveness, because they know the recommendation stands on its own merits. Advisors who deflect, minimize, or don't disclose are telling you something about how they view the relationship between their commercial interests and their advisory role.
• Does the recommendation account for your specific constraints? A recommendation that references your actual tech stack, your actual team capabilities, your actual budget, and your actual operational environment is grounded in discovery. A recommendation that could apply to any company in your broad industry category hasn't been customized — it's been categorized. The difference is the level of specificity in the rationale, not just the confidence of the conclusion.

What this means practically

You don't need to avoid channel partners or refuse to work with anyone who has a vendor relationship. The channel exists because it creates value — access to expertise, implementation support, ongoing management, and volume pricing that direct purchases often can't match.

What you should do is treat the discovery phase as the quality signal. A partner whose discovery process is thorough, whose questions are specific to your environment, who considers alternatives substantively, and who is transparent about their commercial relationships is likely to produce a recommendation worth following — even though the incentive exists. A partner whose discovery is superficial, whose recommendation arrives quickly, and who is opaque about their vendor relationships is producing a recommendation that reflects the incentive structure more than your needs — even if the recommendation happens to be correct.

The incentive doesn't determine the quality of the advice. It determines how carefully you should evaluate the process that produced it.

Related reading

• Stop Watching What Everyone Else Is Building
• What I Tell Every CEO Who Asks Me About AI

Frequently asked questions

Should I avoid working with technology resellers entirely?

No. Resellers and channel partners frequently provide valuable expertise, better pricing, and implementation support that direct purchases don't include. The key is to evaluate the quality of their discovery process — how thoroughly they assess your environment before making a recommendation — rather than assuming the commercial relationship makes their advice unreliable. The best partners are transparent about their vendor relationships and rigorous about understanding your constraints before recommending a solution.

How do I find out if an advisor has a financial relationship with the vendor they recommend?

Ask directly. "Do you have a reseller agreement, referral arrangement, or partnership with this vendor?" is a reasonable due diligence question. Many partners will disclose proactively. If the question creates discomfort or deflection, that response is informative. You can also check the vendor's partner directory — most major software vendors publish a list of authorized partners, resellers, and referral partners on their website.

Does incentive misalignment only apply to external advisors?

No. Internal recommendations can carry similar dynamics. An IT team that has built deep expertise in a specific platform ecosystem has a professional incentive to recommend products within that ecosystem — expanding the platform validates their skills and job security. A department head who championed a previous technology decision has a reputational incentive to recommend additions that validate the original choice rather than alternatives that implicitly question it. Incentive structures exist in every recommendation context, internal and external.