Launching a new product in the channel is a big deal for any vendor. A new product should drive sales, as well as market share and brand awareness to make your business profitable. So, it’s worth putting measures in place to ensure that your launch is successful and these channel incentive program ideas are sure to make an impact.
Most vendors sell through channel sales partners, which means that the success or failure of any new product hinges on their enthusiasm and performance. So when it comes to creative ideas for launching a new product, what can you do to help your channel sales team sell?
Standing out with these five channel sales incentive program ideas
One way to do this is to launch a points-based channel sales incentive scheme. This can help ensure that your channel partners are passionate, knowledgeable and incentivized to sell your new product over competitive brands.
With such a scheme, there are things you can do to make sure it’s fully effective when launching a new product. The following five channel incentive program ideas will help you choose beneficial features to optimize your program and help your channel partner successfully sell your latest products:
1. Theme your scheme
Your incentive period could be anything from three months to a year, so you’ve got to find a way to keep partners engaged throughout. A theme is a great way to maintain interest. This could be a sports or a superhero theme, or a country theme, like France or Japan. It can be supported by a visually impressive online portal or microsite to keep your channel sales team revisiting, with themed rewards to capture interest. For this, communication is key; the more compelling you can make, for instance, your website or how you give out your rewards, the more effective your theme should be.
2. Make it interesting for all individuals to achieve
It’s important to engage with your partners as individuals rather than just as a team. A sales department is usually competitive by nature, so you need to ensure that everyone has a chance to achieve, rather than just the standard high performers. Consider tiering rewards, so that people with different capabilities and selling skills have a chance to win rewards too. This way they shouldn’t feel demotivated if they’re low on a leader board, while feeling their achievements are appreciated. This should give them the incentive to want to achieve more.
3. Incentivize with rewards
Quite simply, the rewards on offer should be desirable if you want individuals to make an effort to win them. You should either offer a range of different rewards within a reward catalog to appeal to more people on your channel sales team, or an alluring end goal that will get everybody excited across the board, like a chance to win a trip to an exotic destination. The more points earned through the incentive, the bigger the prize value redeemed.
4. Drive focus with a sales hype day
Consider holding a sales hype day to launch your channel sales incentive program with a bang. A presence of clever branding, product information, instant prizes and games, as well as complementary food and drink, can really create interest. If the incentive period is lengthy, it’s worth reminding the team of the incentives available with a momentum sales floor day midway through the scheme. This can help maintain motivation and engagement. Sales activation days can be applied across multiple venues and locations and held virtually or in person, ensuring that all sales teams can participate.