Distribution Network Incentive: 7 Tips for Developing an Action Plan

First, let’s agree that while there is a science to motivation, it is not an exact science. It’s certainly difficult, but with good planning, you can increase participation rates in your incentive programs and achieve the necessary ROI to reach your business objectives.

One of the best pieces of advice we can give you is not to rush or skip the planning stage of your incentive program for your distribution network.

A program that works for all distributors and stakeholders takes time to plan. It involves conducting surveys, gathering information, segmenting, determining the budget, and implementing an action plan that utilizes all levers of motivation.

You need to think about your distribution network incentive programs in advance and not simply be content with attributing gifts for sales that would or would not have happened without an incentive. It’s about asking how to help your distributors improve their relationship with your organization. The starting point of your program must be the development of an action plan that begins by very clearly identifying the objectives.

Your success and the success of your distributors in the program depend on a well-thought-out plan with a clear objective. You need to understand what problem you are truly trying to solve. Simply saying you want to increase sales is not a true objective. The real question is:

• How to increase sales?
• What should be done differently in this new program?
• Is additional training needed?
• Are your network managers sufficiently focused on helping your distributors succeed?
• Or are hundreds of unmanaged sales representatives not participating, and without them, you cannot achieve your growth objective?

Once you have identified the real stakes of your incentive program and clarified its goals, you can move on to the concrete planning of your program.

Here is a list of priority points to check when organizing a motivation program.

1. Your Incentive Must Comply with Current Tax Regulations

Find out about the legislation for the taxation of incentives in your country.

In France, the tax treatment of endowments was specified by the interministerial circular n° dss/5b/2012/56 of March 5, 2012. For example, employee and employer contributions are due on 46% of the amount of endowments paid to your own employees.

2. Choose Rewards that Motivate your Distributors

Your rewards should depend on your goals and the structure of your program. Are you addressing a population of low-income telemarketers for whom a challenge primarily serves to win gift vouchers to fill their shopping cart? In this case, prioritize gift vouchers.

But generally, the most impactful rewards are experiences (trips, stays, tastings).

3. Define a Strategy Adapted to your Network

The strategy to adopt for your incentive program may vary depending on your company’s overall motivation strategy and the participants.

You need to define and segment participants by region, hierarchical position, and participation or non-participation in other company programs.

4. Your Network Incentive Must be Supported by Good Communication

Too many motivation programs fail because they don’t manage to engage participants. It’s about building communication that reaches all participants as often as possible and is relevant and personalized. This involves developing a detailed communication plan that specifies who publishes what and when. It’s about ensuring a continuous flow of communication and engagement throughout the challenge and making sure that enthusiasm is maintained. Because that’s how the program will have a real impact on your business.

We also advise you to delegate as much of the engagement as possible to field management, who know their sales representatives better and can truly personalize the engagement. Finally, consider a multi-channel approach to best reach the sales representatives to engage: emails, challenge platform, or even SMS.

5. The Success of a Network Incentive Relies on Quality Content

As with any marketing operation, it’s about producing regular and interesting content to maintain participants’ interest and keep them coming back for more. Offer videos, FAQs, Success Stories, quizzes, testimonials… A challenge is an ideal opportunity to offer training content that will help sales representatives achieve their objectives. Look at which content is most successful and offer more of that type.

6. Smartly Integrate your Incentive Tools

Use single sign-on (SSO), meaning a sales representative should be able to log in with the same username and password to all company services. And consider which other tools it would be useful to integrate with to present a simple and practical program for everyone from day one of the challenge.

7. An Incentive is an Opportunity to Draw Inspiration from Competitors

Your distributors probably participate in incentive programs from your competitors. Observe how they operate. If your distributors are used to operating in a certain way, go along with it. Draw inspiration from the best ideas of the programs your distributors are subject to. The points to check are: how rewards are attributed, how registration works, who can participate, and how training is conducted.

Developing an action plan to implement an incentive in a distribution network means taking into account taxation and rewards, developing an adapted strategy, ensuring that its tools are well integrated, and learning from its competitors.

And you, how do you manage your network’s incentives? What difficulties do you encounter?

Other Articles You might be Interested in:

• The Complete Guide to B2B Partner Loyalty Programs
  
• Managing a Distribution Network: 14 Challenges to Overcome
• Distribution Network Incentives: How to Make Them Simpler?