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Partner-Preferred Incentives: Top Rewards to Offer & Best Practices
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Introduction
Why are Partner Incentives Critical?
Today, many of your partners will likely be members of multiple channel programs. With limited time and resources, it’s critical to ensure your partners prioritize working with you over the other programs they’re a part of. Creating valuable incentives is a great way to do this while encouraging loyalty from your partners.
Which Incentives Do Partners Prefer?
With that in mind, a few incentives tend to be winners all around.
MDF
Typically, partners must report on the ROI of activities conducted through MDF to prove the value of their efforts. In an ideal world, you’ll manage the distribution of MDF through your PRM, making it easy to track your results.
SPIFFs
SPIFFs are typically provided directly to the sales rep or individual team member at your partner’s organization who completed the activity. This can be a great way to get your partner’s team excited about and bought in on working with you.
Discounts
Gift Cards
A Useful Physical Gift
When Should You Deliver Incentives to Partners?
Different milestones to reward include:
- Training completion
- Webinar/event attendance
- Deal registration
- Prospect conversion
- Reaching a new partner tier
- Hitting a sales milestone
Best Practices for Partner Incentives
Ensure Rewards are Attainable
Partners should have to work to earn incentives, but they should still be attainable — don’t create incentives that are intentionally out of reach. If, months after launching your partner incentive program, no one has earned any rewards, this is a clear sign your incentives are too challenging to earn.
Consider Automation
Leverage your PRM to automate incentive distribution. Your PRM should already track all of the required partner activities, making it easy to send out rewards once they’re earned. This will save your team tons of time and ensure your partners are rewarded accordingly.
Make it Easy to Understand
Promote Incentives
Market potential incentives to partners, so they are aware of potential rewards. For example, anytime you launch new or limited edition incentives, send out an alert to partners via your partner portal or email. When running limited edition incentives, send periodic updates on your partner’s progress toward rewards and reminders before the incentive closes.
Work with channel partners to craft relevant marketing materials educating customers about new product capabilities, promotional deals, and why you’re simply the best of the best!
Keep it Consistent
No one likes when the goalposts move. Ensure the terms of your partner incentives stay consistent to help build trust. It’s okay to launch limited edition incentives, just make sure you share the timeline for them so your partners know what to expect.
Engage Your Partners
Incentives are a fantastic way to keep your partners engaged when leveraged correctly. Remember to keep your partners in mind when selecting rewards and leverage automation to streamline your distribution efforts.
To further boost program engagement and satisfaction, consider these other articles from the Allbound team:
Channel Partner Commission Structure Practices — Commissions are another strategy for incentivizing your partners to conduct desired activities. Discover best practices for establishing a channel partner commission structure, including partner revenue share, tier-based commissions, and more.
Channel Partner Engagement Strategies Guide — Partner engagement is essential for forging loyalty and achieving key results. Explore the seven engagement strategies to consider implementing in your program, including incentives and sales rewards, celebrating wins, and developing fresh content.
Partner Performance and Engagement Metrics — Measuring your partner engagement is critical to maintaining partner loyalty and continuing to drive results. Explore the key metrics you need to track to discover which partners are engaged and worth extra efforts vs. which partners aren’t worth investing in.
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