How To Drive Exponential Sales Growth With Channel Incentives
Introduction
Selling is no longer limited to internal sales and business development teams. Organizations sell products through diverse, multi-level channels today. In fact, attracting efficient channel partners and building rewarding relationships has become a highly effective method of crafting an evolving growth strategy.
As a result, tracking critical metrics like sales and operations effectiveness for different channels is crucial to ensuring continuous growth and expansion of sales outreach.
But why take the channel approach?
Expanding sales outreach with new channel partners is the most effective way to address the modern volatile selling environment. These channel partners shouldn’t be directed as to what to do. Instead, they should feel motivated to reflect on behaviors that take them closer to your sales objectives.
Thoughtful incentives provide this motivation and drive the sales force towards one goal- increased revenue. In fact, when stacked against advertisements, channel incentive programs prove to be 50% more impactful on sales revenue.
Best practices for managing channel partners
Managing diverse channels requires a detailed strategy to ensure enough incentives are offered without compromising on profit margins. It involves regular attempts to mitigate complexities and establish clear communication. As a result, channel managers are constantly striving to optimize channel cost efficiency and enhance productivity in most organizations.
Research shows that channel incentive programs can increase revenue by as much as 32%. However, these results are achieved by careful management of all channels involved.
We have identified three crucial KPIs that businesses dependent on multiple channel partners should track and measure regularly. Also, we have outlined the best practices to accomplish these objectives effectively.
These KPIs are directly linked to four highly important and fundamental business objectives:
- Increase revenue generated by channels
- Enhance communication with channel partners
- Optimize costs involved in channel sales
- Track program effectiveness
A proven method to facilitate these ten best practices is the enterprise-wide adoption of a purpose-oriented platform that can enable managers to deal with channel partners with precision and efficiency.
| KPIs to measure | Key business outcomes | Required best practice |
|---|---|---|
| Forecast Gross Margin to Cost Ratio | Return on revenue per incentive given to channel partners For each dollar spent on rewards, there is an average return of ‘X’ dollars in revenue |
Optimize and advertise incentives to channel partners Track incentives/behaviors with higher returns and boost specific incentive spending Implement regular review of incentives taking account of channel partners’ considerations |
| Revenue uplift driven by training | Training channel partners begets revenue Training ensures pre-and post-sales service, refining brand image and accelerating revenue |
Incentivize and review channel partners and their employees’ training Ensure their awareness and engagement in pre-and post-sales behaviors Regularize training and brand engagement to optimize ownership of sales/revenue |
| Level of engagement (based on transactions overactive members) | Engagement results are directly proportional to the number of transactions Higher the engagement, higher the sales and, therefore, revenue |
Increase brand interactions with engaging product- and brand-related activities Streamline the onboarding process to speed partner productivity Communicate business data insights to partners to support improved sales planning and increase partner engagement Increase partner satisfaction with faster and more accurate claims processing |
Over the years, Fielo has been successfully helping partners optimize their channel programs. It has been evident that companies that identify these key KPIs and implement planned strategies end up witnessing enviable results.
Here’s a glimpse of the kind of success Fielo has helped partners achieve on these significant KPIs.
- With an incentive program powered by Fielo, Pentair has incentivized training opportunities and seen a 23% jump in revenue through its channel partners over three years.
- At Consumer First Financial Group, effective incentive programs implemented with Fielo have led to the company generating 25X returns on incentive spending.
- Moreover, with incentive programs focused on product purchase, the CEAT group has stimulated remarkable growth and is seeing each channel partner involved in as many as 54 transactions per month, on average.
Conclusion
When organizations work to achieve set objectives, accomplishing the maximum value from incentive programs becomes easier. However, with multiple channel partners and information scattered over different avenues, companies worldwide struggle with complexities and find it difficult to ensure success.
Setting core objectives help organizations with multi-level sales channels optimize the usage of their resources and derive maximum value. The adoption of an enterprise-scale channel management solution brings an organization closer to achieving these core objectives.
With such a platform in place, companies can implement incentive strategies effectively. Also, such a solution makes it easy to evaluate channel performances and build strategies to meet the targets.
Fielo offers a channel management solution that helps companies enhance processes and work coherently with channel partners while keeping pace with evolving selling requirements.
