I am trying to figure out how to structure payouts/commissions for partners that are doing some type of resell or participating in the contracting process.. what would you recommend as a general way to set this up?

Reward your partners early and often. The best way to keep them engaged is to make them feel valued. I recommend using a Partner Relationship Management tool to directly tie deals and commissions to partners. This gives them direct insight to where they are attributed and can accurately forecast their payouts.

If the partners sourced the deal and/or is running it, they should get a preferred / deal reg approved discount off of list pricing to enable them to sell to the customer themselves. Example: List price is $100. Your average deal size today is $80 after discount. Give your partners 40% discount off list on deals they source / have deal reg approval on. Split the difference with your partners so they are making enough margin to (1) build a meaningful revenue stream for their overall business in partnering with you (2) partner reps have incentive to stay focused on you instead of wandering to a partner that nets them a much better margin. For fulfillment deals where your company has run the deal without any partner involvement and the partner is only being added to the deal as a transaction vehicle, it is common place for your company to negotiate pricing with the customer and then send a quote for the agreed upon price with a 5% discount to the partner. Note that you can NOT dictate to the partner what they have to charge (price fixing) but you are realistically giving them far less discount to work off of to make any substantial margin. If the partner is simply referring, common practice is to spiff the partner 10% commission on the backend.