Are you looking to boost your channel sales?
A motivated and engaged channel is critical to success in today’s competitive landscape. One of the most effective ways to achieve this is through the implementation of Kick-Ass Channel Incentive Programmes. They are a powerful tool to stimulate sales growth and promote your products or services.
Explore our Channel Incentive FAQs to fuel your success.
Also known as a Channel Partner Incentive, Channel Sales Incentive, or Sales Programme Incentive Fund (SPIF), a channel incentive is a programme designed to motivate and reward channel partners, such as resellers, managed services providers, system integrators, and distributors.
These programmes can vary in duration; some are short-term, like a 3-month campaign. However, a more strategic approach, which involves an ongoing commitment to the programme, is often recommended.
Channel incentives are designed to achieve specific goals, which typically include driving lasting behaviour, encouraging channel partners to meet or exceed sales targets, and enabling participants with training and knowledge.
Essentially, a channel incentive is an initiative aimed at motivating channel partners to achieve desired outcomes, fostering a mutually beneficial relationship between the company and its partners.
When it comes to channel incentives, several common types are widely used to motivate and reward channel partners. These include deal registration, accelerating sales and enablement (training).
Each type of incentive serves a specific purpose and can be strategically implemented to drive or change behaviour among partners.
Deal registration incentives encourage partners to register and close as many deals as possible.
This helps in identifying and tracking potential sales opportunities early in the sales cycle as well as closing them to secure the deal.
By incentivising deal registration, companies can ensure that partners are actively seeking out and securing new business opportunities.
Accelerating sales incentives are designed to motivate partners to close sales deals faster than they would without the incentive.
This type of incentive can help boost short-term sales performance and achieve quarterly targets.
However, it’s important to be cautious with this approach, as focusing too much on closing deals within a specific quarter can lead to an empty pipeline for the next quarter.
Enablement incentives focus on training and educating partners. By incentivising partners to complete training programmes and gain certifications, companies can ensure that their partners are well-equipped with the knowledge and skills needed to sell their products effectively. This type of incentive not only improves the partners’ capabilities but also enhances their confidence in promoting the products.
When it comes to determining which rewards are most effective for channel incentives, several factors come into play.
Cash itself can be challenging to manage due to the complexities of payout processes and compliance issues.
Cash equivalents offer a practical alternative. Amazon vouchers are particularly popular because they are easy to distribute and use.
Even in regions without local Amazon marketplaces, residents can still access Amazon.com, making these vouchers a versatile and appealing reward option.
Digital rewards are becoming increasingly popular, as they align well with the growing preference for environmentally friendly options, as they do not involve physical production or shipping.
These include e-vouchers, prepaid credit cards and online versions of traditional rewards. They are also convenient as they can be distributed quickly and easily.
Branded merchandise, often referred to as “swag,” is becoming less appealing due to environmental concerns. Both vendors and channel partners are becoming more conscientious about the impact of producing and shipping physical items. As a result, there is a shift towards more sustainable and digital reward options.
So, yes, Amazon vouchers work best, but it is crucial to tailor the rewards to align with your partners’ interests and aspirations.
Important note: It is crucial to understand that some companies may have rules about acceptable gifts and rewards. Educating yourself about these guidelines can prevent any legal consequences.
To effectively incentivise channel partners, we create effective and motivating channel incentive programmes that drive engagement, align with partners’ existing work, and ensure a smooth and rewarding experience for all involved.
Engagement is crucial for maintaining a strong relationship with channel partners. By keeping partners actively involved and motivated, you can ensure they remain committed to promoting and selling your products or services.
To ensure that partners are motivated to engage and participate in incentive programmes, it’s important to make the tasks easy to understand and appealing to complete.
So, keep your instructions clear and your guidelines straightforward. Use Simple language and visual aids to support the process.
Utilise an intuitive and easy-to-navigate platform (like ours!). This allows partners to track progress and submit their claims. When it comes to incentives, gamification is pivotal. Incorporate elements of gamification, such as leaderboards, badges and/or challenges, to make the tasks more engaging and fun.
Aligning incentives with the partners’ existing work ensures that the programme complements their current efforts rather than adding extra burdens. This alignment can be achieved through:
A fast and straightforward process is essential to keep partners motivated and prevent frustration. Here are some tips to streamline the process:
High participation levels are crucial for success.
You can run an incentive in virtually any territory globally. Our bespoke platform and translation services make it easy to manage and distribute incentives worldwide. Here are the key points:
This means you can effectively run incentive programmes anywhere in the world, making your campaigns inclusive and engaging for all your partners.
At Essential, we know It’s crucial to think of channel incentives more strategically rather than reactively.
Instead of using incentives as a quick fix to address immediate sales shortfalls, companies should leverage them to drive long-term behavioural changes and achieve broader business goals.
Here are some key considerations for strategic implementation:
By focusing on the common types of channel incentives and implementing them strategically, companies can effectively motivate their partners, drive sales and achieve their business goals.
From a vendor perspective, channel incentives offer several significant benefits. Here are the key advantages:
Elevate Vendor Standing
Running effective incentive programmes helps elevate a vendor’s standing within their channel partner network.
By offering well-rewarded, easy-to-consume, and well-communicated incentive programmes, vendors can position themselves favorably among their partners.
Drive Popularity
Channel incentives can significantly drive a vendor’s popularity within the channel.
With numerous vendors competing for mind share, a well-structured incentive programme can make a vendor more attractive to partners. This increased popularity can lead to a greater share of voice as partners are more likely to promote and sell products from vendors they favour.
Become a Vendor of Choice
By running incentive programmes that are well-rewarded, easy to understand and effectively communicated, vendors can become the preferred choice for their channel partners.
Our incentive programmes help build strong, lasting relationships with partners, making it easier for vendors to achieve their business goals.
Long-Term Relationship Building
While one-off incentives can be successful, long-term programmes are more effective in building and maintaining relationships.
A longer-term approach allows vendors to educate their partners, market the incentives effectively, and ensure that partners are familiar with the processes and behaviours that the vendor wants to drive.
This continuous engagement helps in fostering a deeper connection and loyalty.
Strategic Engagement
Incentive programmes provide an opportunity for vendors to engage with their partners strategically. Instead of reacting to immediate sales shortfalls, vendors can use incentives to drive long-term behavioural changes and align partners’ efforts with their overall business objectives.
This holistic approach ensures that the incentives are not just a quick fix but a part of a broader strategy to achieve sustained success.
To maximise participation in incentives, we focus on several key strategies.
First, we work closely with vendors to ensure we are targeting the right partners with the right communication. This involves identifying the key players who will benefit most from the incentive and tailoring the programme to their needs.
Effective communication is crucial. We make sure that the incentive message is well-marketed through all the right channels and in all the right places. A solid communication plan is essential, ensuring that everyone on the vendor side is on board and fully understands the incentive. This includes providing them with the necessary information to respond to questions and support their channel partner contacts.
We excel at creating and distributing the necessary materials, building a comprehensive marketing plan to push the incentive out effectively. By ensuring that the message is clear, well-communicated, and easily accessible, we can drive higher engagement and participation levels.
Additionally, we focus on continuous engagement and support. This means regularly updating partners on their progress, providing ongoing training and resources, and maintaining open lines of communication to address any questions or concerns they may have. By keeping partners informed and engaged throughout the incentive programme, we can maximise their participation and drive the desired outcomes.
The measure of effectiveness starts with high participation levels, which are crucial for success. You need to track how many partners are registered and have participated in the incentive.
Then you focus on the measurement of success, which is indicative of your incentive type.
With deal registrations, you would recognise the number of deals registered and the value of deals registered and compare these numbers with past data to see the impact.
For sales accelerators, you need to recognise the number of closed deals and the revenue generated. Comparing this to a snapshot of your pipeline before the incentive began.
An enablement incentive enables you to track how many partners have attended workshops, have used training materials and monitor the number of certifications or exams taken and passed.
By focusing on these metrics, you can effectively measure the success of your incentive programme. With a long-term strategic programme, there are many more metrics that can be analysed to identify the insights that can really elevate your sales pipelines.
Additionally, asking for feedback from your channel partners via surveys or interviews can yield valuable insights into their satisfaction and perception of the incentive programme.
Market dynamics, partner needs and competitive landscape can change over time, so it’s important to keep your incentives fresh and relevant. Consider conducting surveys or gathering feedback from your channel partners to ensure your programmes continue to drive motivation and meet their expectations.
It is a balancing act! We recommend that you review and update your channel incentive programmes regularly – no more than monthly. By doing so, you can adapt to changing circumstances and ensure your incentives continue to inspire and encourage your partners to achieve their goals, whilst helping you to achieve your business goals.
Communication is key to the success of your channel incentive programme.
Establishing a clear communication plan will help. Ensure you consider when, and what you need to communicate to your channel partners and how you will do it. Don’t forget to include internal stakeholders and promote the programme internally to your Account Managers. To maximise engagement with your incentive programme, communicating performance is key. We recommend updating at regular intervals (not just at the end of the programme). Providing this information throughout the incentive gives the participants time to respond to the intelligence you share with them.
To maximise engagement, carefully choose the delivery method across various channels such as email, partner portals, webinars, and internal communication platforms.
When implementing an incentive programme, it is critical to comply with relevant local laws and regulations, including competition laws, tax regulations and data privacy regulations. It is advisable to seek legal guidance to ensure that the incentive programme is 100% compliant.
Ensuring that your incentive programme ignites interest and engagement within your channel partners can be challenging, it is vital to design a fair and attractive incentive structure that motivates people to engage but also aligns with the goals you want to achieve. Other challenges can include ensuring accurate tracking and reporting of sales data, addressing potential conflicts or disputes that may arise, and managing the enablement needs of partners at different levels.
In our experience, smaller partner organisations often lose out with poorly designed incentives – particularly when the incentive is designed to pit one partner against another (i.e. “the best partner wins”) this can be VERY demotivating and drive down engagement.
Many components need to be combined to deliver the best incentive programme and to achieve the greatest possible return.
Channel partners want to spend their time selling, not reading up or doing admin for incentives (and you want them selling too!) Make sure it’s easy to grasp what the incentive programme is all about and painless to claim their rewards!
Plan communications and give partners regular updates on where they are versus their goals. Make it visual – a clear leaderboard will encourage friendly competition more than an Excel spreadsheet full of numbers!
It is crucial that all relevant individuals, including account managers and support staff, are well-informed about the incentive and its objectives. It is important to help them understand their role in the incentive programme’s success. By ensuring everyone is on the same page, you can guarantee a positive outcome!
Relax, we’re the experts who have got your back! Release the full potential of your next incentive programme by booking a kick-ass incentive platform demo. Get in touch and let us pave the path to incredible engagement and unstoppable profitability.
