How can you give resellers and business partners in your distribution channel a competitive edge and persuade them to sell your products rather than those of a rival vendor?

The answer is ‘enablement’ – in other words, you need to give your resellers the skills and product knowledge to sell your solution or services effectively to their end customer. But how do you convince stakeholders to invest?

Internal misalignment often begins with a lack of a strategic vision, while clarity starts with a clear sales, marketing and loyalty strategy. Developing a cohesive strategy educates the entire company on the expectations. A clear and complete vision of the program will pre-empt a “let’s-slash-the-loyalty-budget” attitude. Educating company stakeholders is an ongoing process. Like anything else, if they don’t understand its value, you are not going to get their buy-in.

A GOOD PLACE TO START IS TO IDENTIFY A NUMBER OF COMMON MISCONCEPTIONS;

Gamification is the use of game-play mechanics for non-game applications and there are many case studies illustrating the increased motivation when game elements are incorporated into work activities. The closed nature of the audience and our access to detailed analytics allows us to precisely manage the effectiveness of the use of games in our programmes.  

One of the growing challenges facing all loyalty practitioners is how to drive higher levels of engagement. Traditional methods such as bonus points and bespoke communications, whilst still effective, are losing their impact, particularly when competitor loyalty programs are also engaging in these tactics.

In today’s markets company success seems to depend increasingly on the capabilities of their business partners. The proliferation of online courses and just-in-time knowledge available through mobile is prompting organizations to pay attention to innovative modes of instruction. Yet, we often see that too many enablement programs focus on the wrong content. When we point this out to clients, we invariably get asked the question ‘But how can we design programs that link to our strategic channel priorities?’ Here’s input for starting that very strategic conversation.

The development of online education modules continues to be a growth market for Motivforce. While we keep expanding our enablement portfolio with some of our accounts in conjunction with the latest social loyalty tools (such as gamification), others are simply all about business partner learning. We often get asked to come up with a convincing business case that outlines how clients will start earning by learning.

We think there are four key benefits, all with direct important bottom-line implications. 

Over the past 20 years, the structure of B2B loyalty programs has grown from simple sales incentives that reward for achieving sales targets to rewarding for profile performance.  Profile performance is the concept of creating the ideal participant profile and rewarding for all behaviours that a participant demonstrates in adopting this profile.

There are many variables to consider when creating the ideal channel loyalty program participant profile and these are broadly classified into the following 5 types of loyalty program participant profiles:

Our research has shown greater loyalty (measured by sales and other valued added behaviours) amongst program participants who are active in enablement tasks, compared to those who are not.  In looking at correlations between those participants who have undertaken enablement tasks, versus those who have not, we have observed three traits....

Technology is now defining the route which companies need to take in order to stay relevant and is changing at a rate so fast that organisations and to some extent, society is struggling to keep up.

And whilst digital transformation can start with the introduction of new tech, business transformation is inevitable, which can mean a complete overhaul in a company's products, positioning and ultimately, business goals.

How does your company approach enablement with your resellers and is your incentive strategy driving the right performance behaviours?  

Personal development is recognised as the most effective way in which business relationships with business partners can be nurtured. And while business schools are having trouble to keep pace with these developments, this is presenting a very bright business future for online enablement. It is proven that certified business partners sell more...

Most companies have come to realise that offering online education modules continues to be an important driving force in establishing successful channel partner relationships. At Motivforce R&D, we often are asked to come up with a convincing business case that outlines how clients will start earning by learning, simply by making the switch to online enablement. These are the four key benefits on which we think such a case can be built:

In today’s markets, your company’s success depends hugely on the motivation and abilities of your business partners. Willingness is often fuelled by elaborate incentive structures, but ability is a different cookie. More and more firms are experimenting with online modules across multiple (mobile) platforms, so there are ample and innovative opportunities to work on your business partners’ tech, marketing and sales skills. Yet, we often see that the message cannot keep up with the medium. In other words, content is offered that is out of line or, at best, loosely coupled to strategic channel objectives.

Follow our 5 step process: