Implementing a trade sales incentive program is a great way to maintain strong relationships with B2B trade partners, which is required for continued growth and success. These programs have been quickly adopted and are synonymous with successful engagement strategies, working to assist brands with fostering loyalty, aligning goals, and achieving sales growth while keeping margins low.
How can these trade sales incentive programs deliver tangible results? Let’s explore their benefits and how to tailor a program to meet your business’s unique needs.
What Are Trade Sales Incentive Programs?
Trade sales incentive programs are initiatives designed to reward trade partners, distributors, and resellers for achieving specific goals. These programs have a variety of forms, from points-based systems to tiered rewards and exclusive promotions only for top-performing customers. They aim to drive engagement, enhance loyalty, and align partner efforts with your business objectives.
The trade market is competitive, with savings being a strong motivator and brand loyalty even more substantial. Customers generally stick with what they know works and works well. Finding a way to sway potential customers away from their brand of choice by providing a strong value incentive can create lifelong supporters and retain valuable customers you’ve already won over.
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The Benefits of Trade Sales Incentive Programs
There are many lasting benefits that come with running a successful trade sales incentive program – here are five of the most impactful:
1. Boost engagement
Trade partners are likelier to stay actively involved when their efforts are recognised and rewarded. For example, a supplier could offer points for every dollar spent, which customers can then redeem for premium rewards and reloadable gift cards, or reward top performers with an exclusive travel experience.
These rewards have a two-pronged benefit, not only increasing participation but also drive higher order volumes.
2. Strengthen Relationships
Incentives that show appreciation go a long way in building lasting trust and loyalty, while providing a lasting emotional connection to the brand. By offering personalised rewards or exclusive experiences, your business can provide value to your trade partners and leave them committed to your brand.
3. Drive Revenue Growth
Trade programs encourage repeat purchases and upselling by aligning incentives with sales objectives. Businesses often see measurable ROI, such as a 20% increase in high-margin product sales after introducing a rewards system.
4. Encourage Desired Behaviour
Do you want to promote early payments or bulk orders? Structuring rewards around these behaviours ensures partners align their activities with your goals, creating a win-win scenario. This way of reinforcing the habits you want in your customers can create specific behaviours that reward your brand with long-term loyalty.
5. Gain Competitive Advantage
Offering a well-designed incentive program provides a unique selling point to differentiate your brand from others in a crowded market. It positions you as a partner who invests in mutual growth, giving trade partners a compelling reason to choose you over competitors.
Program Showcase – The Power of Trade Sales Incentive Programs
The program in this showcase is a thriving trade distributor brand that sells its material through dealers in the commercial trade market. The program requirements are as follows:
- Earning Points: Partners earn points achieving sales targets by purchasing specific product lines and quantities.
- Achieving Rewards: The program ran over 12 months. Each dealer is placed on a leaderboard hosted on an online program portal for easy access, with targets set around specific product lines and quantities moved. At the end of the program, the top-performing dealers who achieved each sales target were rewarded with an exclusive incentive travel experience.
Using a leaderboard on the online program portal promotes a competitive spirit in participants while also providing visibility on where each stands in the program and public recognition of the efforts of those who are achieving exceptionally. The leader board is supported with regular, monthly emails to keep the program front-of-mind and quarterly catchups with sales reps and BDMs, who can work with the participants to drive engagement and help them achieve success within the program.
These factors worked together incredibly, with the 90 participating dealers achieving each sales target and earning their space on the trip.
These communications and meetings also provide a tremendous relationship-building tool, as the dealers who went on the trip were given face-to-face time with the brand representatives and provided an emotional connection with the brand that lasted long after returning home.
The program was seen as a great success, with sales growth achieving a 20% boost and creating long-term, lasting brand loyalty with the participants. Their stock remained front-and-centre in dealers after the program had concluded.
The power of an incentive program structured like this is that the reward cost can be entirely self-funded through the specific sales targets met through customer sales. These factors mean that the program can provide valuable, long-term benefits to the brand and its customers without requiring additional investment from the business.
Essential Features for a Successful Trade Sales Incentive Program
No two businesses are the same for each sales incentive program. The program must be authentic to your brand and business practices while providing customers with what they need to succeed in an easily accessible and understandable format.
The best programs are fluid, allowing optimisation based on how your customers respond to them. They also provide invaluable customer data on usage and purchase habits and allow frequent, relevant, and personalised communication with these customers to keep your brand in the front of their minds without seeming generic.
- Customisable Dashboards: Allowing partners to track their points and rewards in real-time.
- Seamless Integration: Programs designed to work with your existing CRM or sales platforms.
- Scalable Solutions: From small-scale promotions to nationwide campaigns, our programs grow with your needs.
- Personalised Communications: Using our Engagement Loyalty Model (ELM), Incremental provides ways to communicate one-on-one with each customer, allowing them to feel recognised and valued using in-depth reporting and data gains from their activity within the program.
If your business is ready to unlock the full potential of its trade relationships, a tailored trade sales incentive program could be the solution you’ve been searching for. Contact us today to meet with our experienced sales team and find out how we can design a program that drives engagement, boosts revenue, and sets you apart from the competition.
