Channel partners need to be incentivized as much as your in-house sales team. Do cookie-cutter programs work in this case? Of course not. Ensure that the programs are personalized to keep the partner motivated so that they prefer to sell your products vis-a-vis your competition.  

These are the different types of Channel Partner Incentive Programs widely used:  

Sales-based Incentives: A traditional method of incentivizing, this model is based on sales volumes and revenues generated by the channel partner.   

SPIFFS: In this model, the salespeople of the partner are rewarded and are mostly short-term vis-a-vis sales-based incentives.  

VARs: In this model, partners sell the product or service on a turnkey basis by adding services and features to the brand’s products from their end.  

Activity-Linked Incentives: When a partner does more than expected and desired, it’s time to incentivize them through activity-based incentives. 

Marketing Incentives: This model includes MDFs or Co-Op incentives. MDF is a marketing resource that you offer to partners to empower them in their marketing campaigns. The latter is offered to your loyal partners who invest in marketing to promote your brands.  

Rebates: When partners sell larger volumes or produce higher revenues than they are offered discounts or rebates so that they can earn loyalty from customers by passing a percentage of the rebate to the end users.  

Warranty Registrations & Bundling: These incentives are offered to partners who register a higher number of customer data through warranty registrations or partners who bundle certain services with your products for the end customer.    

Loyalty Incentives: It is important to customize incentives for channel partners who have remained loyal to your brand through loyalty incentives.  

Training & Enablement Incentives: Conferences, workshops, tradeshows, roadshows, etc., are all different forms of training programs that help motivate your partners.