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The power of an incentive platform
As a tech vendor, your channel marketing team are directly responsible for delivering incentives that fuel your organisation’s drive to achieve growth year on year. And, as a channel marketing and sales leader at those vendors, you hold the purse strings, ensuring these incentives are adequately funded and achieve a good return on investment R(OI). And, let’s not forget your channel sales teams.
Your channel sales teams form the focus of your incentive strategies within your business, paving the way for increased sales, enhanced enablement and behavioural change.
Is simply ‘running’ an incentive enough?
Running channel incentives is not for the faint-hearted. The complexity of these programmes, with their numerous moving parts, can be daunting. Achieving your goals requires significant time and effort, hinging on the choice of incentive type, timing and how it is delivered.
What do you mean by incentives?
Some might call them channel incentives, some may call them partner incentives or sales incentives – But, we ultimately mean the same thing. When we talk about incentives, we are talking about working with channel sales teams (by incentivising them) to drive deal registrations, accelerate sales or increase enablement to sell and train. They reward participants in ways that benefit them and align with your business goals.
What is an incentives platform?
Incentive platforms are tools designed to simplify the process of running an incentive.
Participants can register, log in, input information and check their progress on the incentives they have signed up for.
By knowing exactly where they are at with each incentive, participants are motivated to complete their tasks, register or close more deals, beat their peers and reach the top of the leaderboard.
Vendor managers can check the status of the incentives within the platform and report on their progress whilst organisers can update the platform with the latest data manually or through data integrations with external systems.
Some platforms also act as a means of communicating with their channel partners either via email or via posts in the application.
Incentive platforms centralise all aspects of an incentive, making it easier for both vendors and participants to stay engaged, energised and focused.
So, what are the benefits?
Using a platform isn’t just about perks for you Mr Vendor! It’s a comprehensive package that benefits everyone involved. It’s a win-win for everyone involved!
Vendor benefits
You want to be as efficient as possible when you run an incentive, ensuring the programme runs smoothly. You want participants focused on sales activity and enablement tasks, not bogged down by understanding the incentive details or how it works.
Platforms can act as tools to achieve this by providing personalised experiences. The benefits are;
- Simplicity: Simple incentive setup, reporting, navigation, accessibility and the ability to query information. Keeping it simple to maximise effectiveness
- Automation: Automating processes through a platform reduces the need for manual intervention, saving time and effort
- Ease of use: A user-friendly platform ensures managers and participants can easily engage with the incentive without confusion
- Data management: The platform will handle data presentation and analysis, reducing the time spent on these tasks
- Reduced communication burden: Using a platform minimises the need for constant communication with participants, freeing up more time for other tasks
- Participant prioritisation: Our experience shows that participants are more likely to prioritise and engage with incentives that are managed through a dedicated platform
Participant Benefits
As we said before, it’s beneficial for those who run sales incentives, it benefits participants too!
- Simplicity: Participants can register easily, understand the incentive structure and track their process allowing them to focus on their primary tasks
- Automation: Automated processes reduce the time participants spend on administrative tasks, freeing them to concentrate on selling and learning
- Ease of use: A user-friendly platform ensures participants engage with the incentive effortlessly, without confusion or frustration.
- Clear data presentation: The platform displays relevant data in an easy-to-understand format, eliminating participants need to analyse data daily. Participants can track performance themselves via sales leaderboards. These insightful analytics are provided with little effort as the data is running already.
- Time efficiency: By reducing the need for manual tracking and analysis, participants can spend more time on productive activities
- Reduced communication load: Less back-and-forth communication about incentive details means participants have more time for their core responsibilities
- Enhanced engagement: Participants are more likely to remain motivated and engaged with well-organised and easy-to-navigate incentives.
- Increased productivity: With less administrative burden, participants can focus on achieving their sales targets and participating in learning programmes, leading to higher overall productivity
Is it easy to use an incentive platform?
Absolutely! At least, with our platform…
Does an incentive platform take a long time to set up?
No! At least, with our platform… We get your brief on what you want to achieve and with whom. We will then build a Scope of Work (SOW) and assemble the platform to your needs. It’s quick and it’s custom.
Can we gamify an incentive?
Yes, our experience shows that gamification significantly boosts participation and engagement.
How does a platform help with that?
Typically, this can be done using a point system (points programmes) to award prizes. Rewarding participants by using the leaderboard aspect has a positive impact on motivation.
My sales team is global, can you serve this?
Our platform is available globally, including prize fulfilment, ensuring a seamless operation regardless of everyone’s location.
Can I get a demo?
Yes, it is simple enough to do, click the button below to book a demo at your convenience.
What are the key differences between running an incentive on a platform vs. not?
The biggest difference is ease and efficiency. Without a platform, managing incentives can become overwhelmingly complex, particularly on the data side. This can take time away from other important tasks.
The next key difference is the amount of queries you get from participants. With the platform, participants can track their progress online and see the details of each task or deal. This reduces the number of queries they make to a handful at most.
The third key difference is continuity. With all incentives taking place on the same platform, participants only need to sign up for the platform once, everything is there and they know where to go each time. Recent analysis has shown that participants visit the platform at least once a day – often more traffic than a vendor’s partner portal!
You can read more about the differences between our solution vs. others in our blog ‘Incentive solutions compared‘.
Research Insights
We asked a mix of vendors, partners and participants, a variety of questions related to their incentive programmes. Our research shows significant benefits for those using incentive platforms;
- 100% of those without a platform report less than 50% participation
- 50% of those with an incentive platform, report over 50% participation
- 60% of those with a platform without gamification, don’t hit their ROI target
- 67% of those with a platform using gamification smashed their ROI target
Can I get a copy of the research insights?
Our research was launched earlier this year and is still available to download, you can access the channel incentive benchmark report by clicking on the button below.
Summary & recommendations
Summary
Our experts have been running channel incentives for years, and are passionate about them.
However, our experience has shown us that sales incentives are often used reactively rather than strategically. This approach limits their potential effectiveness.
Harnessing the power of sales incentive platforms is crucial for tech vendors aiming to drive outstanding results through their channel marketing efforts. These platforms streamline the complex process of managing incentives, making it easier for vendors and participants to stay engaged and focused.
Incentives, whether termed channel, partner, or sales incentives, are essential for motivating deal registrations, accelerating sales and enhancing sales and product knowledge.
By centralising all aspects of incentive management, platforms offer significant benefits, including simplicity, automation, ease of use, data management, and reduced communication burdens.
Participants also gain from clearer data presentation, time efficiency, enhanced engagement and increased productivity.
Additionally, incentive gamification through platforms further boosts participation and motivation. Research shows that vendors using incentive platforms report higher participation rates and better ROI, emphasising the strategic advantage of integrating these tools into long-term channel marketing plans.
Expert Recommendations
We recommend that you follow these top tips
- Consider the entirety of channel incentive management – from concept to completion. Planning through to prizes.
- Regularly run incentives to deliver channel growth, revenue and satisfaction over time – Make incentives part of your longer-term plans
- Choosing the right incentive platform is key to a seamless experience
- Budget for incentives over the long term. Not just one-off activities
- Harness data from both previous and new (projected) incentives to form part of planning. Insights are critical
- Manage different incentives and incentive activities that target different audiences. With a platform, this becomes a breeze
- Adopt a platform approach to simplify incentive complexity for both the vendor and channel partners
- Broaden incentives reach into the channel, to grow mind share and share of partner wallet
- Work with a team that provides the whole package, and don’t forget global prize fulfilment
- Read out Channel Incentive Best Practise Guide