You’ve got to love the world of channels.

In the 2010 State of Partnering study conducted by Amazon Consulting, pay-for-performance incentive programs are the second highest investment priority for vendors behind increasing partner facing staff:

“Pay-for-performance incentives and variable cost programs rank a strong second behind people as having the highest value. These include tiered reselling discounts, deal registration program incentives and performance incentives or rebates.”  

What’s the alternative to pay for performance—paying for “non-performance” or how about paying for “the promise of performance”? Neither option sounds good but due to the limited availability of data it’s what channel leaders are often inadvertently doing.

Performance-based execution within the channel is what Channel Performance Optimization is all about—providing the channel with consistent, complete, and reliable data is the key to effectively running and measuring performance-based programs.  With timely performance data you can work with the channel, just as you do with your direct sales team, to make mid-course corrections and truly accomplish the goal of the incentive and encourage the behavior that increases sales.

You would never consider paying for something other than performance with your direct sales team.  Why would you consider it within your distribution channel?

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