Much like the consumer loyalty programs we operate, engaging the hearts and minds of the sales associates that handle your product and touch your potential customers is critical to maintaining a consistent and meaningful brand experience. Once your product leaves your warehouse, how can you make sure your brand is top of mind when a salesperson makes recommendations to customers? Furthermore, how can you ensure that the product is presented knowledgeably and consistent with your brand identity?

Just as you spend millions of dollars in creating a powerful brand experience for consumers, your channel engagement solution must do the same for the sales associates that influence the end-customer's final purchase decision. And we can help.

We take a collaborative, in-depth approach to establishing a program to engage sales associates throughout your distribution channel, including your internal sales force, distributors, resellers and retail floor salespeople. An incentive program is more than a financial lure for a sales associate. It's an opportunity to exert influence and ensure your brand has a presence during the customer's purchase decision, and must be designed to complement your marketing efforts.

We thoroughly examine what your competitors are doing by contacting dealers and distributors in your channel. During these discussions, we also ask what rewards or incentives would motivate them and their salespeople, so we have a solid foundation to build upon.

We'll work with you to understand the financial implications of introducing an incentive strategy, and what reward values you can offer that maintain the profitability goals of your organization. In addition, we will position these parameters against what the competition is offering to determine a final value proposition.

Based on the value you can offer, we will work in tandem to develop a program structure that aligns the desired behavior of your sales channel with the rewards you wish to offer.

Once the structure is defined, we will develop a communication strategy that employs the avenues you use to communicate, as well as one-to-one communications with the participants in the program. Starting with an introductory launch communication, we will align the branding of the program with your corporate identity to create a consistent approach, and couple the launch materials with ongoing support communications to continually reinforce the program.

It's important to recognize that channel incentive programs also introduce an opportunity to communicate directly with sales representatives, which would not be the case in the absence of an incentive program. This offers you the chance to extend additional communications regarding product launches, training, and more — directly to the enrolled members.