Your channel sales incentive program will most likely fail. Here’s why.
Your channel sales incentive program will most likely fail. Here’s why.
Are you investing in a program to incentivize your channel sales team without seeing strong results or ROI? Here are some of the reasons why we have seen channel programs fail 🚫📈
A channel sales incentive program is a proven method of driving and engaging your channel partners to achieve higher sales. However, that said, having a channel incentive program is one thing, and making it successful is another ballgame altogether. In 2020, SiriusDecisions which is now a part of Forrester Research carried out a survey covering 10,000 business leaders in the US. The purpose was to understand how their channel partner incentive programs are faring. The results are eye-opening:
- 58% of the incentive programs had failed miserably
- Only a mere 5% achieved the set objectives
- The remaining 37% could only achieve the objectives partly
Unfortunately for us, there are no such detailed surveys conducted in India or data available for easy reference.
But it won’t be wrong to assume that, even in India, many channel sales incentive programs are failing miserably.
The solution then isn’t in abandoning your sales incentives programs completely. If you understand the possible reasons behind the failure of your channel sales incentive programs, you’ll be able to curate a more efficient program. Explore the requisite best practices in the designing and deployment of a futuristic incentive program for better ROIs, payoffs, and of course, increased sales and that’s what we’ll help you with here!
Five reasons your channel incentive program is likely to fail
- Your channel partners lack knowledge of the program
Maybe you do have an excellent program in hand. It’s designed by the best of the brains. It promises fair rewards to the ground team. But unfortunately, it has turned into a recipe for failure because somewhere down the line, someone forgets to inform the concerned people about it.
Globally, one of the top reasons for the failure of a channel partner incentive program is that the partners do not have complete information about the program.
Communication or the lack of it is the real culprit in such cases, not necessarily the program itself. Organizations unwittingly miss sharing important product and campaign information with their dealer networks and other channel partners. As a result, in the absence of the right tools and resources, the programs become ineffective.
Therefore, the clearer the communication, the better empowered the team would be to deliver. Emailing may be one of the ways to inform your partners but we encourage you to look beyond traditional channels. Take the help of modern communication tools including text messages, desk drops, WhatsApp groups, and Slack messaging, to keep broadcasting the program on a continued basis.
You could possibly also use an app like My Incentives. This will not only automate the sales incentives program for you, it will also enable communication and sharing of information with your channel partners on a single platform.
- Assuming that everything is fine with the incentive program
You have built a great incentive program and also invested in the right tools so that your channel partners are informed, motivated and empowered to sell. The communication channels are open, and you have ensured that there is no lag between the actual incentive program and how the ground team interprets it. So far, so good.
Your team too may be happy with the design of a stellar incentive program and making sure that the last person from the channel sales team is well aware of the details. But, if you become complacent thinking that everything will now run on auto-pilot, it would be a big mistake.
Assuming that the program needs no revisiting in between or needs no tweak here and there can very well become one of the reasons for its failure. Ongoing and persistent monitoring is necessary to ensure consistent results. Your admin needs to work towards the optimization of the program on a regular basis so that it becomes a result-driven endeavor.
- Unrealistic targets & unmeasurable results
If the targets assigned are unachievable and too idealistic, the program is doomed. While your team would be eager to allocate bigger targets to channel partners for increased sales and revenues, doing so without an understanding of the capabilities of the channel partner can be an unwise decision. In many cases, manual or semi-automated systems make measuring a tough challenge.
Targets and rewards should be such that they resonate with your partners. Not only should the program be fair, but it also needs to be realistic. Else, channel partners can become disheartened pretty soon and switch to selling your competitor’s products with renewed aggressiveness, thus, causing your sales to downslide with a spiraling effect.
Here’s an idea. Ensure that the targets are SMART for your incentive program to be a success.
- One program made to fit all sizes
Another common mistake that organizations commit when designing their incentive programs is that they launch a generic program for all. In most cases, this may not work. If you are not tailoring your channel sales incentive program as per the operations of the channel partner, you could be making a big mistake. Personalized programs are the need of the hour. Ensure that key people from the channel partners’ side are involved while the program is being designed for them.
This level of partnership can make the incentive program truly effective.
- Lastly, the incentive program is not engaging and motivating
Engagement is the key that can make a difference between a successful and failed channel sales incentive program. If the rewards and incentives lack to thrill the people on the ground, then, however modernized the program is, it will definitely fail.
Try to add elements of gamification with leader boards, target meters, quizzes, etc., to keep the sales team motivated and inspired.
Final note…
To make your incentive program for channel partners successful, ensure that you go slow in the beginning. Pick up speed as the program starts to generate results. And, accelerate even faster when you are sure that the program is moving as per expectations and all set to achieve the grand goals.
Want to evaluate your sales incentive program for channel partners and also automate it? My Incentives can help. Book a one-on-one demo today.
Are you investing in a program to incentivize your channel sales team without seeing strong results or ROI? Here are some of the reasons why we have seen channel programs fail 🚫📈
A channel sales incentive program is a proven method of driving and engaging your channel partners to achieve higher sales. However, that said, having a channel incentive program is one thing, and making it successful is another ballgame altogether. In 2020, SiriusDecisions which is now a part of Forrester Research carried out a survey covering 10,000 business leaders in the US. The purpose was to understand how their channel partner incentive programs are faring. The results are eye-opening:
- 58% of the incentive programs had failed miserably
- Only a mere 5% achieved the set objectives
- The remaining 37% could only achieve the objectives partly
Unfortunately for us, there are no such detailed surveys conducted in India or data available for easy reference.
But it won’t be wrong to assume that, even in India, many channel sales incentive programs are failing miserably.
The solution then isn’t in abandoning your sales incentives programs completely. If you understand the possible reasons behind the failure of your channel sales incentive programs, you’ll be able to curate a more efficient program. Explore the requisite best practices in the designing and deployment of a futuristic incentive program for better ROIs, payoffs, and of course, increased sales and that’s what we’ll help you with here!
Five reasons your channel incentive program is likely to fail
- Your channel partners lack knowledge of the program
Maybe you do have an excellent program in hand. It’s designed by the best of the brains. It promises fair rewards to the ground team. But unfortunately, it has turned into a recipe for failure because somewhere down the line, someone forgets to inform the concerned people about it.
Globally, one of the top reasons for the failure of a channel partner incentive program is that the partners do not have complete information about the program.
Communication or the lack of it is the real culprit in such cases, not necessarily the program itself. Organizations unwittingly miss sharing important product and campaign information with their dealer networks and other channel partners. As a result, in the absence of the right tools and resources, the programs become ineffective.
Therefore, the clearer the communication, the better empowered the team would be to deliver. Emailing may be one of the ways to inform your partners but we encourage you to look beyond traditional channels. Take the help of modern communication tools including text messages, desk drops, WhatsApp groups, and Slack messaging, to keep broadcasting the program on a continued basis.
You could possibly also use an app like My Incentives. This will not only automate the sales incentives program for you, it will also enable communication and sharing of information with your channel partners on a single platform.
- Assuming that everything is fine with the incentive program
You have built a great incentive program and also invested in the right tools so that your channel partners are informed, motivated and empowered to sell. The communication channels are open, and you have ensured that there is no lag between the actual incentive program and how the ground team interprets it. So far, so good.
Your team too may be happy with the design of a stellar incentive program and making sure that the last person from the channel sales team is well aware of the details. But, if you become complacent thinking that everything will now run on auto-pilot, it would be a big mistake.
Assuming that the program needs no revisiting in between or needs no tweak here and there can very well become one of the reasons for its failure. Ongoing and persistent monitoring is necessary to ensure consistent results. Your admin needs to work towards the optimization of the program on a regular basis so that it becomes a result-driven endeavor.
- Unrealistic targets & unmeasurable results
If the targets assigned are unachievable and too idealistic, the program is doomed. While your team would be eager to allocate bigger targets to channel partners for increased sales and revenues, doing so without an understanding of the capabilities of the channel partner can be an unwise decision. In many cases, manual or semi-automated systems make measuring a tough challenge.
Targets and rewards should be such that they resonate with your partners. Not only should the program be fair, but it also needs to be realistic. Else, channel partners can become disheartened pretty soon and switch to selling your competitor’s products with renewed aggressiveness, thus, causing your sales to downslide with a spiraling effect.
Here’s an idea. Ensure that the targets are SMART for your incentive program to be a success.
- One program made to fit all sizes
Another common mistake that organizations commit when designing their incentive programs is that they launch a generic program for all. In most cases, this may not work. If you are not tailoring your channel sales incentive program as per the operations of the channel partner, you could be making a big mistake. Personalized programs are the need of the hour. Ensure that key people from the channel partners’ side are involved while the program is being designed for them.
This level of partnership can make the incentive program truly effective.
- Lastly, the incentive program is not engaging and motivating
Engagement is the key that can make a difference between a successful and failed channel sales incentive program. If the rewards and incentives lack to thrill the people on the ground, then, however modernized the program is, it will definitely fail.
Try to add elements of gamification with leader boards, target meters, quizzes, etc., to keep the sales team motivated and inspired.
Final note…
To make your incentive program for channel partners successful, ensure that you go slow in the beginning. Pick up speed as the program starts to generate results. And, accelerate even faster when you are sure that the program is moving as per expectations and all set to achieve the grand goals.
Want to evaluate your sales incentive program for channel partners and also automate it? My Incentives can help. Book a one-on-one demo today.