It’s Time to Look Beyond Sales Incentives and Partner Programs
If you want to make sure that your sales incentives and your partner programs are the best that they can be then you first need to make sure that you are doing everything you can to look beyond the basic elements so that you can effectively refine your process.
What Is A Sales Incentive Program?
A sales incentive plan is a fantastic way for you to motivate and eventually reward salespeople for reaching their target. They are normally used in addition to a compensation plan.
What Are The Types Of Incentives?
Channel incentives are usually performance-based and they aim to improve the overall yield or mix of a group of partners. Some incentives include volume rebates, commission, customer bonuses, performance incentive funds or even market development funds.
How do you Make an Effective Program?
If you want to make sure that your program is successful then you have three main cornerstones that you need to explore. First of all, you need to make sure that there are relevant or interesting incentives that aren’t complex or hard to understand. You also need to make sure that you explain them well through your partner portal. Second of all, you need to make sure that you have content and training material on your portals so that you can then help your partners to make sales. Thirdly, you need to have gamification elements. You need something to keep your partners active and you also need to keep them both interested and informed. You need to make sure that you push the available material and that you are aware of how everything is coming together. Of course, you can only do this if you have the program running and if you have a user base already. A new portal has to be communicated well first, and you also need to list all of your advantages so that you can ultimately give your partners a good reason to sign up with you.
Channel Leaders and Underestimated Sales Incentives
There are numerous aspects that are usually underestimated whenever an incentive program is launched for the first time. At the end of the day, it’s very easy for you to focus on a single incentive scheme first. You may have incentives that drive loyalty and you may also choose to keep to this only. With this approach, the vast range of possibilities will often fade and some of them may become completely forgotten. When you have a focus on a single approach first, you can then involve cross-incentives or even frequent purchase incentives. Incentive schemes should really be diversified so that they can serve multiple goals. Another aspect that is usually very underestimated is the elements that are required to ultimately keep your program interesting for your partners. Partners need to be engaged and they need to be active throughout. This could be done through incentive updates or even quarterly updates. Incentives are vitally important. Imagine a rep earns 5% of every product and they get this up to the value of $100,000 in total sales. At 5%, they would earn $4,500 based on the $90,000 profit that has been made. Incentives are powerful, so update them and use them to your advantage.
Another aspect that should be considered is the user view and their general experience of the program. With so many incentives running and varying functionalities- it’s safe to say that it is so important that you keep your program easy to navigate. You also need to make sure that you provide a good level of usability as well. Even with all of this, you have to know that there will always be questions. It doesn’t matter how good your portal is, because the questions themselves are usually underestimated. That being said, you can solve them by having a good and updated FAQ section. Explanatory webinars are also important, along with having a quality support team.
Finally, the value of data and insights can easily provide you with everything you need while a program is active. Data can easily answer the following questions and it can also tell you what products are selling and why not. Are your sales increasing when you give a bigger bonus? What regions are incentives actually performing well with the development of your program? By considering things like this, you can be sure to come out on top.
Automation is More Important than Ever
B2B marketers really cannot succeed anymore with human-centric or manual processes. At the end of the day, automation makes it much easier for you to try and handle much more complex partner programs. Sometimes you can do this with thousands of users. One of the great things about automation is that you can personalise everything so that you can make it easier to cluster or approach certain groups. Communication can be much more focused this way and you may even find that you can have a much bigger impact overall. It’s even possible for you to implement aspects that include training suggestions for any users that may need individual marketing support.
Why Localisation is Important
Localisation is really required in order to fulfil a need and to meet the characteristics of a certain market. Markets can vary quite a lot and good incentive programs really do have the possibility of driving specialised incentives for the market so that they can fit every peculiarity.