Channel partners such as resellers, referral partners, and affiliates are invaluable for helping drive new sales and expand market reach. Nonetheless, it can sometimes be challenging to keep these partners actively engaged and motivated to promote your products. Implementing a compelling channel incentive program is one of the most effective ways to spur partners to maximize sales activities.
What Makes a Good Channel Incentive Program?
According to the experts at Motivation Excellence, the most successful channel incentives incorporate rewards that appeal directly to what motivates sales partners. Relying solely on financial incentives may not be enough. It’s important to understand partners’ goals and incorporate relevant rewards into your program. Great programs also clearly communicate expectations and make it easy for partners to track progress and earn rewards.
Offer Flexible Financial Incentives
Performance-based financial compensation, such as commissions and SPIFFs (short-term sales incentives), connects partner earnings directly to sales numbers. Offer tiered commission rates to reward higher sales volumes. Set realistic but ambitious sales targets for SPIFFs rewards to motivate partners to push themselves. Consider bonuses, contests, and incentive trips as additional financial motivators.
Structure Programs for Sales Enablement
Make sure your program provides partners with the sales resources they need. Distribute product kits, including brochures, samples, and presentation materials. Provide regular product training and sales strategy coaching. Assign individual partner managers for support. Enabling open communication, sharing best practices guidance, and supplying sales assets all empower partners and remove obstacles to selling your products.
Promote Partner Status
Besides financial incentives, public recognition and status designations often motivate partners based on their sales achievements. Programs that have status tiers such as Gold, Platinum, and Diamond partners reward higher performers with premier designations. Promote top partners on your website and in communications. Feature a “partner spotlight” in newsletters. Offer badges, icons, and other visual markers of status levels that partners can display.
Make It Simple to Understand and Achieve Goals
Transparency around program qualification details, requirements, and rewards is key to driving participation. Document program policies and objectives clearly. Set unambiguous sales goals and communicate precisely what activities count towards tier advancement. Make progress tracking simple through accurate and visible metrics partners can monitor themselves.
Incentives Should Align to Partners’ Values
Take time to understand what matters most to your partners beyond monetary gains and incorporate relevant rewards. Some may be motivated by opportunities for professional development such as training and certifications. Offer these to nurture partners’ skills and value to your program long-term. For partners focused on status, include VIP events and other exclusive benefits for top tiers. Public recognition is also very powerful for many partners.
Monitor and Optimize
Continuously collect feedback from partners and monitor analytics to understand which incentives drive the best results in your channel. Identify when engagement drops and respond with tweaks to realign. Be prepared to shift and add new rewards that resonate. Keep evaluating and optimizing to maximize the win-win value for both your partners and your business.
The Most Important Incentive is Your Product
While channel incentives provide external motivation, what ultimately fuels partners’ success is an excellent product that meets customers’ needs. If your product delivers outstanding value, partners will enthusiastically sell it with little pushing. Great products aligned to market demand make it easy for channel partners to achieve their sales goals. So above all, stay laser focused on product quality and improvement to enable partners’ sales growth and rewards.
Conclusion
Implementing a well-planned channel incentive program with compelling financial and non-financial rewards inspires partners and feeds their internal drive to succeed. Thoughtfully structured incentives aligned to what matters most to partners delivers massive returns by empowering channel sales growth.
