How to use channel incentives to address reseller grievances

Resellers and vendors can encounter a number of strains to their channel partnership over time. It is important to maintain the good health of your sales channels, so you need to ensure you address any grievances resellers may have with a channel incentive program.

The key to maintaining a healthy and streamlined partnership is minimising any issues your resellers may have with your sales strategy. Identifying the common problems is easy - and with Power2Motivate Australia, addressing their grievances is easier. Minimise the risk of your resellers finding another vendor by delivering an industry-leading Channel Partner Incentive Program.

What vendor behaviour annoys your channel partners?

IT industry channel experts CRN Australia identified four irritating vendor habits that will frustrate the channel partnership:

1. Unsurprisingly, lack of communication/cutting out partners was identified as off-putting behaviour in a channel partnership. If you're eager to target new customer markets or to change sales tactics slightly, it's vital you keep your resellers in the loop. Otherwise, they will identify new vendors they can work with.

2. Consistency is key within a channel partnership. If your sales strategy is constantly changing every quarter, channel partners will quickly become tired of rethinking how to market your products. Trust in your sales channels - if revenue is building slowly, it often takes time for your reseller's efforts to be reflected in the numbers.

3. Breaking deal registrations is a big no for channel partners. The process was introduced to give resellers the chance to target their strategy exclusively at one market with no external factors affecting them. If you break a registration deal to try and go for the sale yourself, you will be seen as untrustworthy.

4. As a vendor, you are likely to have more than one channel partner. The same is true of resellers - and vendors who try to negotiate exclusive sales channels that only work one way is a major red flag.

How to use Channel Incentives to address these issues

Addressing your resellers' potential grievances is vital to developing a stronger and more long-lasting channel partnership. No matter the cause, if you can demonstrate to your resellers that they are a valued part of your sales strategy, then you are already on your way to a more effective channel relationship.

Rewarding your partners for meeting revenue goals or sales quotas is easier if you choose a dedicated Channel Partner Incentive Program to manage it.

Power2Motivate Australia's online Channel Partner Incentive platform offers users unparalleled access to a range of rewards for completing targets you set, all housed in one easy-to-use online program.

Features include:

• The Global Rewards Gallery is the centre of our whole incentive strategy. Users can choose from thousands of different options, including vouchers and discounts or electronics from big-name brands like Apple. And if our expansive gallery doesn't have the reward your reseller wants, we are able to source the prize for them.

• Using the interactive online platform, you can decide on the goals you want your channel partners to meet and assign points values for goals attained. This way, you can demonstrate your commitment to working your resellers into your channel strategy and checking their performance against KPIs.

• We can also use engagement data on the platform to generate a picture of what your channel partners want from their Incentive Program. Using the Survey tool, resellers have a forum to voice their feelings and suggestions for changes to your program, and our Reporting feature means we can access usage data to indicate what your channel partners enjoy about their program and what they don't.

For more information on designing a Channel Partners Incentive Program that will turn any negativity in your reseller relationship to positivity, contact the Power2Motivate team today.