What is the main reason channel organizations are implementing Channel Incentive Programs?
To motivate the channel? To engage partners? To reward for incremental growth or proven Steps-to-the-Sale (STTS)? Surely it must be to gain loyalty by impacting future buying behaviors?
Nope. All of these used to be leading drivers of investment in channel rewards programs, but in today’s channel ecosystem they have become merely residual benefits.
Manufacturers and distributors have started to realize that in order to more effectively achieve all of these residual benefits, they need to design custom messaging and communications to the channel members who are responsible for buying or selling their solutions. And to accomplish this, or to do so successfully, they need to take advantage of the vast troves of end-user data that have become accessible in our digitized world.
Here, then, might be the evolving function of channel rewards programs. By utilizing a channel program to discover and target the right partner salespeople and sales engineers, channel pros (or “Channeleers,” as I like to call them) can get right up next to the sale and end-user. The nestling can be achieved through a well thought out claims process. A claims solution creates an opportunity to gather key information about the sale and end-user, and, armed with this information, a channeleer can put custom messages directly into their audiences’ hands (in the case of mobile, literally).
As always, please feel free to share your challenges with communicating to your channel partner employees or the end-user. I look forward to the dialogue.
Move the Channel,
Travis