For businesses to thrive and grow sustainably, they must build strong partnerships and collaborations, particularly with channel partners. A recent Forrester study disclosed that over 73% of global trade flows through channel partners. These stats further affirm the crucial role that channel partnerships play in enhancing business sales and revenues. Since these partnerships run on channel partner incentives, companies must devise incentive programs that motivate, engage, and appreciate the efforts that these sales partners make.
In this blog post, we will understand the role of channel partner incentives in building a mutually beneficial relationship between an organization and its channel partners.
What are channel partner incentives?
Channel partner incentives are a form of reward that is offered to channel partners to engage and encourage them to promote, sell, and distribute a company’s products or services. These partners can be distributors, resellers, brokers, or agents who will work on behalf of the company taking the brand to newer and niche markets.
Given their contributions to driving business growth, organizations incentivize their efforts to build and nurture strong associations with these partners to ensure increased sales and accelerated growth.
Significance of Channel Partner Incentives
Channel partners bring unique strengths and sales strategies that benefit your business. Every partner from reseller to affiliate forms a bridge that connects your products and services to new, unexplored territories without any extra cost. These channel partners possess expertise in regional market dynamics and have established networks, which greatly benefit your business.
To ensure you utilize this additional support to its fullest, it is essential to keep channel partners satisfied and motivated with channel partner incentives. Let’s discuss the key advantages of offering inventive channel incentives.
Develops solid relationships with partners
Incentive programs allow you to strengthen your relationship with your partners through regular communication. It gives you the opportunity to generate anticipation and interest in turning in better sales numbers. However, for this to work, your incentive must be relevant and of enough value to justify their efforts.
Gamify training process for channel partners
To make effective sales, your channel partners must be well-trained and have access to all the necessary training materials. Organizations often create elaborate training and certification programs that can cause more confusion and less participation. With a channel partner incentive program. you can help improve participation. That is, you can gamify the process of getting certified by creating milestones and associated benefits.
Takes your brand to newer markets
Exploring a new market or a customer segment often involves upfront investment. Due to the uncertainty of its success, companies often choose not to pursue it. However, with channel partners, you can expand your brand to new audiences that you may have yet to explore. By offering better channel partner incentives, you can enhance your brand visibility piggybacking on the partner’s reach.
Different types of channel partner incentives
Offering channel partner incentives has no fixed method. You can create your own incentive program based on your business model. Some of the popularly adopted types of channel partner incentives are,
Rebates: Some companies refund the money channel partners spend on promotions of products or services that result in sales. In addition, partners also receive a cut from the sales value as a rеward.
Discounts on wholesale purchases: Companies that sell products like beverages, computer units, and such equipment give generous discounts as incentives for partners who place bulk orders. This channel partner incentive often depends on the type of partner and the size of the purchase.
Rewarding performance: In some channel partner incentive programs, companies link the rewards with sales performance. It involves direct compensation for resellers who turn in better sales revenue for a given period. This incentive type creates healthy competition between the sales partners, which in turn benefits you.
Offer channel partner incentives seamlessly with Zaggle Propel
As much as it is important to plan and implement a channel partner incentive program, it is equally challenging. The process involves regular management approvals, tracking sales performance, and enabling seamless communication among other things. Running this operation without any hiccups requires a digital solution like Zaggle Propel. It is an all-in-one channel partner incentive platform that automates a range of tasks including:
- Offering a seamless onboarding experience for faster adoption
- Automated workflows to claim rewards under different schemes
- Features to customize channel partner incentive criteria and metrics
- AI-generated reports and insights for better visibility
Learn more about Zaggle Propel here.
