Category: Sales Incentives

Sales Incentive programs

Shh! It’s a Secret

shh! its a secretThis article describes a secret loyalty program for Chick-Fil-A where customers are invited to participate and gain access to unique reward items such as free food and special tours.  What makes this loyalty program special is not all Chick-Fil-A customers are invited to participate.  They are made to feel like they are gaining access to a secret society and in fact they are.

While this particular scenario is an example of a consumer-based incentive program, this same technique is just as applicable for B2B programs – as mentioned in other QIC posts and best practices literature. It pays to be selective with your participant audience.  Often, your best customers or channel sales partners are not the most beneficial participants in a loyalty or channel sales program.  They are already spending all or the majority of their money with you, so it is difficult for them to provide the incremental revenue that your company needs to grow.

However, the second tier of channel partners that are currently spending more with your competitors have the ability to shift their buying behavior to purchase more of your products.  They may not spend one dollar more than they did in the prior year, but if the majority of your product that they buy goes up, you win!

You probably already know who this second tier group is that is going on trips with your competitors every year, so why not spice up the excitement a little by giving them access to your “secret” loyalty program?  Provide them with access to special events or faster access to your new product offerings. QIC’s concierge redemption service (it’s call Just for You) makes offering unique gift opportunities convenient and seamless.  Participants tell us what they are dreaming of, and if it is legal and ethical – we’ll get it for them.  Whether paying a child’s tuition, landscaping their property, or a remodeling project, we supply specific rewards that motivate and engage.

Contact us today to get the process started.  But remember, it’s a secret!

Keep Momentum Going

As you may have read from many of my colleagues, a well-designed program is the foundation to any Incentive Program’s success.  You have designed the perfect key performance indicators, put together a communication strategy, and even finished configuring your site – but what happens after the launch?  How do you maintain strong momentum? During the… Read more »

Make No Mistake – Valuable Program Advice

I’ll open today’s post with a confession. While I regularly read and digest materials from industry publications, I don’t necessarily do so in a timely fashion. So, I hope that you’ll excuse me as I reference an article that appeared in the MarketingProfs newsletter several months ago. This article, Seven Common Mistakes Marketers Make ,… Read more »

Effective Sales Training

I recently read an article entitled How Effective Was That Sales Training which described a strategy of replacing metrics-based sales training with a program of post-training communication between the sales team.  While I agree with the author’s opinion that the post-training communication between the sales team is important, I believe the metrics-based sales training can be… Read more »

Customer Loyalty Basics

In a recent business.com article entitled The Perks of Being Loyal:  How to Build a Customer Loyalty Program That Works, Lucinda Watrous explains some of the many benefits of building a customer loyalty program.  While the specific programs highlighted are consumer-facing by nature, the principles can be applied to B to B environments as well.… Read more »

A Program Design Dilemma

Here at QIC we’ve had a recent surge in requests for channel sales programs, and this brings to mind one of the primary program design challenges common to these types of solutions. Channel Sales Background Before discussing that specific challenge, let’s briefly review the characteristics of channel sales programs. First, these programs are typically used… Read more »