6 things every B2B sales team wants their manager to know

How to empower your sales team and ignite operational efficiency through impactful incentives

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Building connections, closing deals and nurturing brand relationships powers the core of your sales strategy, but administrative obstacles can hinder momentum—and your bottom line. How can you empower your sales team to increase their operational efficiency when planning B2B incentive promotions and analyzing data? How can you extend efforts from your marketing funnel to your sales team and into close?

Let’s explore what every B2B sales team wants their manager to know.

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1. Managing incentives requires foundational tools for success

Rewards and sweepstakes provide powerful leverages for sales teams, especially when enticing B2B partners to focus their sales efforts on high-margin products. When rewards drive stronger sales, your sales team feels supportive of the program.

Executing an in-house sales incentives program can be demanding and complex, taking away valuable time that could otherwise be spent with customers. However, if your sales teams fail to invest sufficient time in planning and executing incentives, program quality suffers. Fulfilling these dual roles and finding that balance can leave your team feeling stretched, impacting their morale and costing valuable sales in the long run.

To restore the focus on sales, start by providing your team with foundational tools for success. A loyalty and engagement platform for sales teams that handles the details of planning and executing your B2B incentives program makes your team more efficient and the rewards more impactful.

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2. Administrative tasks should be automated to increase productivity

A platform that handles all aspects of an incentives program should provide a robust selection of rewards while automating administrative tasks—such as collecting and reporting data, pushing notifications, tracking progress and providing customer support when verifying and awarding rewards. AI-powered platforms can quickly analyze customer data to identify the most effective communication within your target market and gives sales teams the ability to send timely offers.

Eliminating these manual tasks fosters productivity for your sales team, providing the time they need to focus on more meaningful responsibilities such as reviewing and synthesizing data to inform their strategy for the next promotion.

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3. Participation is driven by a robust selection of exciting rewards

Incentive platform technology has the power to boost participation in contests and other promotions through a diverse lineup of rewards. Variety increases engagement, raising the odds that channel partners will spot rewards that spark their motivation to get involved or increase their existing efforts.

When your sales team experiences a powerful response from their B2B partners, fueled by their ability to earn relevant rewards, it will be all the more inspiring when it's time for them to strategize and brainstorm for the next promotion. Managing promotions then evolves to be a streamlined, rewarding and valued aspect of their role.

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4. Sales & loyalty incentives deliver strong ROI to enterprise growth

Incentives and rewards should be viewed as an investment in the growth of your company. It’s important to underscore the ROI of incentivizing sales and loyalty, increasing customer spend and retention through rewards. 77% of customers stay with brands that have loyalty programs, while 63% modify spending habits to maximize loyalty program benefits.¹

A comprehensive and intuitive incentives strategy creates a culture of winning in your sales team—and streamlining your incentives program will boost ROI through growth in every category, including opportunities to close more sales, increase gains in spend and strengthen retention.

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5. Successful sales strategies are informed by actionable insights

Successful sales teams have a talent for reading people—and access to the right data serves to elevate those natural talents. Throughout the sales process and even after closing deals, team members want better insights on the thoughts, feelings and motivations of their B2B partners.

A well-constructed channel loyalty program should give your partners a voice, capturing their direct feedback through integrated pulse polls and customer surveys. To increase involvement, participation should be rewarded with points or sweepstakes entries to foster a sense of accomplishment.

As your sales team toggles results into different formats and data sets, they are able to pinpoint and analyze performance metrics and long-term trends, gaining the actionable data they need to guide future interactions.

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6. The right technology will empower your sales team & strategy

To get the most out of your incentive programs, we recommend that you spend time strategizing which behaviors you most want to encourage and reward. Consider your answers to the following questions:

• Are you seeking to increase overall engagement?
• Do you want to build a community and foster a sense of belonging within your B2B network?
• Is your goal to increase participation in product training or drive sales in specific segments?
• Are you looking to construct a strong consensus around your brand by connecting industry leaders or connecting your customers to one another?

A robust platform empowers your team to execute the smartest strategy for every sales channel with minimal time and effort. Successful sales incentive technologies drive momentum for sales teams and their B2B channel partners through incentives—offering a mix of exciting rewards, end-to-end support and engaging features that keep partners coming back for more.

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Let's connect to explore how Augeo can help your enterprise elevate loyalty and engagement through our flexible and scalable platform technology.

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¹ Forbes | The Value Of Investing In Loyal Customers