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Powerful resources for industries engaged in indirect sales, incentive campaigns are a crucial part of the success of various organizations.
To give you an idea, in the U.S. alone, incentive campaigns in the consumer goods industry generate around $200 billion annually, according to PwC data.
In Brazil, the scenario is no different: incentive campaigns drive the market across its various fronts, encouraging distributors to sell more and assisting in the targets set by the manufacturer.
Still, there is a vast opportunity for innovation and improvement, right? One of the major challenges, for instance, is understanding whether incentive campaigns truly reward the partners who deserve it the most.
Stop and think: in your company, is this data compilation actually effective? Or are there doubts about whether Distribution Channel A sold more than Distribution Channel B? Or worse, are all the sellers in Channel A truly rewarded for their performance?
In this market, there is no room for error. After all, actions must be accurately measured.
With the volatility of consumption, it’s essential to focus not only on structuring effective incentive campaigns but also on their correct awarding. And this is the topic we aim to discuss in this content.
Did you know there is a way to optimize your data analysis, which will enhance your market knowledge and improve the awarding of your incentive campaigns?
How about learning more about the market reality and the solution that Implanta offers for your business? Just keep reading!
Why Are Incentive Campaigns Important?
As we discussed earlier, motivating good results, whether individual or collective, is essential in today’s highly competitive market. Therefore, incentive campaigns emerge as a way to encourage sales in a manner that benefits all parties involved: companies, partners, employees, and consumers.
But why are incentive campaigns so important? As an extremely versatile strategy, incentive campaigns can adapt to a range of objectives and goals across various sectors of the production chain. A good example is incentive campaigns aimed at salespeople in a distribution channel.
By adopting well-structured incentive campaigns, you not only enable an increase in sales for the industry’s products or the distributor’s portfolio but also align goals between the production and sales chain and facilitate the viability of diverse strategies.
Campaigns can have either an individual and meritocratic focus or a collective approach that prioritizes teams and larger goals.
Increasing sales, prioritizing distribution, fostering partner loyalty, and achieving other specific goals are just a few of the objectives that can be reached with the right incentive campaign.
Incentive campaigns are also great allies for high-performing companies. According to a 2017 study by the IRF, an American foundation specializing in the subject, high-performing companies have one thing in common: confidence in incentive campaigns.
The study, conducted with over 900 companies, showed that high-performance companies reward their sales staff, employees, and partners.
Not only that, but incentive campaigns with non-monetary rewards allowed these companies to achieve positive results in their objectives and, consequently, greater growth.
Knowing this, it is clear that incentive campaigns are more than just a viable option; they are proven to be part of efficient and effective companies.
But after all, how can you create effective incentive campaigns, and what are the main criteria to consider in the process? Moreover, how can you obtain reliable data to ensure that campaigns meet their objectives?
How Are Your Current Incentive Campaigns?
Currently, how does your industry develop and apply incentive campaigns? Probably, the incentive strategy is devised in collaboration with a marketing agency or your marketing department.
The timeline and key performance indicators to be evaluated are also defined. This way, the team finds and develops ways to encourage distribution channel salespeople to prioritize your products.
In this manner, your company sells more, and the salespeople, in addition to contributing to their goals, end up being rewarded. However, when it comes time to evaluate, where do the data you access come from?
This is a potential gap that can lead to misinformation and undermine the integrity of all the trade marketing structured by your company.
Furthermore, it could be the reason for the enormous costs. A study referenced in a Forbes article found that 63% of executives in the packaged consumer goods (CPG) industry stated that current levels of trade marketing spending are nearly unsustainable.
Some Criteria for Creating Effective Incentive Campaignsentivo Eficazes
Many managers still struggle or make mistakes when trying to create incentive campaigns that are effective and yield the desired return. From setting goals and collecting campaign data to analyzing results after the campaign ends, constructing an incentive campaign requires a series of criteria that vary according to each objective.
1. Define the Campaign Goals
Perhaps the most important part of planning, defining goals and objectives is the foundation of any incentive campaign.
What percentage of growth (in sales and distribution, for example) do you project for the end of the campaign? What strategies are most suitable for your company’s size and market position? One helpful activity is to use the company's annual planning as a basis to review the main short- and long-term objectives and set the goals for the incentive campaigns.
Another important aspect is that, although incentive campaigns have a primary goal, it is also possible to have smaller objectives that help you achieve the larger goal. Defining primary objectives will help track the process and identify which elements of the campaign are delivering the previously projected results.
2. Choose the Incentive and Approach
While monetary rewards for salespeople and commercial representatives are common, the use of non-monetary rewards is on the rise.
Many companies are forming partnerships that allow them to reward employees and partners with products and services tailored to their profiles. To facilitate this, these companies invest in either in-house or outsourced platforms that offer a catalog of rewards for employees to choose from.
The type of reward—whether cash, gifts, or services—should be determined based on the profile of your partners, sales team, or employees to be rewarded.
The process of selecting the platform or reward method should also consider the cost-benefit for the company. It is important to find a balance between the chosen reward and the allocated budget.
3. Monitor the Process
As seen in the goal-setting stage of the campaign, monitoring the implementation and performance of the campaign is essential.
To do this, you can use up-to-date software that provides accurate data to determine which partners and employees to reward. Decisions based on inaccurate data lead to errors in awarding, unnecessary allocation of resources, and, in the worst-case scenario, losses rather than gains in sales.
Therefore, monitoring throughout the campaign is crucial for understanding its progress and final performance. More precise information at all stages of the cycle allows you to identify which employees are selling more, which partners are prioritizing your product, and whether your campaign is effective.
In this case, data intelligence can help and is an essential element for controlling incentive campaigns. It’s not enough to excel in planning and rewarding if there is no reliable daily data for evaluating the campaigns.
4. Analyze the Results
At the end of a campaign, whether it yielded positive or negative results, the instinct might be to move on and change the strategy, right? Wrong! It is true that negative results often require changes, but simply altering the strategy and format without concrete data to justify the changes is not effective. This applies to successful campaigns as well, as it is impossible to identify the strengths of an incentive campaign without properly collected and controlled data.
Whenever possible, compare data to previous periods (month and year) to assess the growth driven by the campaign and determine which aspects were effective.
The conclusion of an incentive campaign is a learning opportunity for the company, which is why the stages of goal setting and campaign control are so important.
It is during these stages that the final assessment of each incentive campaign is made, through tracking and processing the necessary data to determine which parts of the campaign were successful.
How Can Your Incentive Campaigns Benefit from Accurate Data Support?
So, what is the ideal scenario for ensuring your incentive campaigns are a success from start to finish? That is, from the moment of planning to the correct awarding of partners at the end?
The answer lies in obtaining accurate, up-to-date data on sales statistics at a low cost. Often, relying solely on current industry software is not sufficient, as the products shipped to the distributor (sell-in) do not necessarily correspond to the sales volume to the end customer (sell-out).
This can affect the entire incentive campaign, as the method of awarding may also change.
Regarding incentive campaigns, besides rewarding only the top performers, some companies prefer to conduct raffles: thus, top-performing salespeople across all distribution channels receive tickets to participate.
But how can you ensure accurate data collection related to sales, making the rewards fairer and reducing costs? After all, accurate evaluation of incentive campaigns is not only used for directing rewards.
In fact, we’re talking about an evolution that aligns with the goal of continuously improving business results. This is where technology, the main solution to this issue, can be crucial.
Implanta provides you with reports containing sell-out data (by channel/salesperson) with the highest accuracy in the market.
How Does Implanta Help You Create Better Campaigns?
So, how do you resolve this issue and which technological solution should you use? Is there a specific tool to enhance the evaluation of incentive campaign results?
The Distribution Visibility solution provides this depth of data analysis. The platform, developed by Implanta, allows your team to analyze and share performance data from various sales channels on a daily basis with an accuracy of over 99.8%, meaning that who sold will be identified each day.
All data is automatically updated, as Implanta's solution integrates with the distributors' ERPs.
Among the data and information available to improve not only your strategies and the evaluation of incentive campaigns but also your entire business, are:
- Stock position;
- Customer activation;
- Sell Out information;
- Channel customer data;
- Product prices at retail;
- Product Lot Traceability;
- Product Performance Analysis, including ranking, margin, turnover, and shortages.
In this way, your company has greater control over the information, all at a global level regarding the operation.
Among the various benefits for your business—such as for the sales and production departments—the Distribution Visibility solution allows the team responsible for incentive campaigns to better manage the entire process.
This means both improving the effectiveness of the actions taken—by extracting insights from the data to enhance your planning—and distributing rewards more effectively. It’s a way to revolutionize all your processes, starting with the one that most impacts your results.
So, how about learning more about the Distribution Visibility solution developed by Implanta?
