According to Loyalty Works, creating a sustainable bond with your channels can complement achieving your business goals. It solidify the foundation of your relationship with your internal and external partners as you build loyalty program for them. Your value proposition in the industry becomes grounded and solid as you create a better partnership with them.
Here are some recommended ways to incentivize your partners to improve your channel marketing strategies:
1. Collectively upgrade the engagement of your B2B market with your loyalty rewards
More than being involved in business planning review, or engaging them through sales or volume updates, it is also important that you also reward them for their loyalty. Sustaining their exclusivity to you is also critical in creating a more sustainable partnership. It is important that you differentiate your value proposition to any other marketing channels. By rewarding them, you are acknowledging their presence, effort, and investment to your company.
2. Create a customer loyalty program
Once your value proposition has already a strong message, make sure you own and sustain that space. Better you explore the opportunity by creating a loyalty program coalition. This is where you create a loyalty program for which partners will see it as a solution to their problem. You become a though leader in a certain field that you really adds value. It can bring you brand trust as a partner and relevance to your channel.
3. Promote personal and brand values
Values realignment is very critical to any partnerships. We have to make sure that our partners are well aware to the things we want to impose and advocate. 42% of the decision making units decides based on their personal values such as career advancement, social, emotional, and self-image benefits). That’s why company thrust is one of the integral parts in creating loyalty with your partners.
4. Try group incentive trips
It feels good when you are achieving your goals with your team. That’s why collective sales incentives are highly encouraged especially to those businesses who works in teams such as inbounds or outbound sales. If you try sales incentive trips, you are giving them a good break from their work and as well as they can personally recognize their good performance.
5. Increase sales incentives to push high-margin offers
This is a best practice mostly done by FMCG (Fast-Moving Consumer Goods) companies, retail consumer companies. They offer added sales incentives to their sales partners once they were able to push high-margin offers. You can actually augment their incentives by using gift cards or gift certificates for short-term achieved KPIs. An easy grab sales reward is best fit for this kind of push tactic.
6. Increase warranties, registrations and post-sales services
To better improve relationship with your partners, make sure you have flexible terms and arrangements. Rewarding product sales isn’t the only way to acknowledge their performance. By just enhancing your processes and terms, you are somehow helping them improve their daily work, making them more efficient and effective for their day-to-day operations.
7. Educate channel partners on your offers
More than monetary sales incentives and providing a better tool of trade, a practical way to motivate them is making them empowered using your offers. By just educating them on your offers, you are empowering them with knowledge they can share to their clients. It’s a better way to help them to be more credible in front of their clients.
8. Acknowledge their Good Performance
In the recent years, monetary sales incentives is no longer a better way to incentivize people for their sales performance award. Gift certificates and vouchers are emerging as it gives the receiver an autonomy to buy gift for themselves or for their loved ones. If you give them money as a form of sales reward, your gift won’t be memorable long enough. It won’t give your gift a significance as a sales performance award.
Here in the Philippines, Sodexo Benefits and rewards offers wide range of gift certificates and vouchers. Just like their widely used Sodexo Premium Pass where you can use it in over 10,000 and counting merchants across the Philippines. The Sodexo Premium Pass is the best way for sales reward more than anything else.
