Your resellers have plenty of products they could recommend. Why should yours be the one they put in front of a customer? A partner incentive program gives them an extra reason to do it. You might attach a reward to a new product you want to move, encourage partners to bring in new customers, or offer something extra for reaching a sales target.
But paying more doesn't automatically mean partners will sell more. If they would've made those sales anyway, you've just made them more expensive. So before deciding whether to offer $50 or $500, start with a different question: what do you want partners to do differently?
We'll look at which partners to incentivize, what to reward them for, how much to pay, and how to manage rewards as your program grows.
A partner incentive program rewards resellers or other external partners for helping you hit a specific business goal.
It gives partners an extra reason to prioritize a particular product, bring in new business, or hit a sales target. If you're launching a new software product and want your resellers talking to their customers about it, you might offer a $100 reward for every qualifying sale during the first three months. Or, if B2B referrals are the priority, you could offer affiliates an extra reward once they reach a certain number of qualifying referrals.
Partner incentives can sit alongside existing commissions or reseller agreements, giving partners an additional reason to prioritize a particular product or result.
Your own sales reps work for you, but your resellers don't. With your own sales teams, you set targets, provide coaching, review their pipeline, and discuss why deals or targets aren't working.
With channel partners, you have much less control over what they sell and how they sell it. They may also have other products or promotions competing for their attention, including alternatives that solve the same customer problem.
If partners aren't selling enough of a product, offering them more money can feel like the obvious answer. But what if money isn't the problem?
Maybe they don't understand the product well enough. Maybe they're not sure which customers it's right for. Perhaps another product is easier to sell, has better margins, or simply comes to mind first. Talk to your partners before you design the incentive. If they need better training, positioning, or sales materials, fix that first.
Incentives work best when partners can already sell your product, but just need another reason to prioritize it.
The company you partner with and the person actually selling your product aren't always motivated by the same things. Say you want a reseller to sell more of a new product. Giving the reseller business a bigger rebate improves the commercial case for selling your product. Giving individual sales reps a $100 reward gives the people actually talking to customers a direct reason to bring it up.
Both are partner incentives, but they aim to change behavior at different levels. Some programs use both. The reseller has a commercial reason to support the product, while the people actually selling it have their own reason to get involved.
Rewards paid directly to individual reseller salespeople are often called SPIFFs. They're usually tied to a specific sales goal, such as promoting a new product or reaching a short-term target. Unlike rebates paid to the reseller business, SPIFFs reward the person making the sale.
If you're rewarding employees of another company directly, check the partner's policies and any applicable tax, reporting, or compliance requirements before you launch.
Read our guide to sales SPIFF programs
Start with the business result you want, then choose the action that will get you there.
| If you want to… | You could reward… |
|---|---|
| Get new partners active | Their first qualifying sale |
| Build product knowledge | Completing relevant training or certification |
| Generate more pipeline | Qualified opportunities or deal registrations |
| Launch a new product | Qualifying sales of that product |
| Win new customers | New customer sales |
| Grow existing accounts | Qualifying upsells or cross-sells |
| Enter a new market | The first qualifying customers in that market |
| Reactivate partners | A new qualifying sale after a period of inactivity |
Work backward when setting up a partner incentive program. Ask yourself what you want partners to be doing differently a month from now.
Your incentive should make that behavior more appealing, rather than simply handing out extra rewards for sales that would probably have happened anyway.
You can still reward your strongest partners. But if you're spending more, there should be a reason. The goal is to change what partners do, not pay extra for what they were already doing.
For instance, your biggest reseller might already be selling as much of your product as they can. If you give them another $100 per sale, you could end up paying more for sales that would have happened anyway.
Meanwhile, another reseller might have exactly the right customers but rarely put your product forward. An extra incentive could make a much bigger difference there.
Think about which partners have the potential to do more, and what's stopping them today.
That might include:
Commission is what your partners already expect to earn from making a sale. A partner incentive gives them something extra when there's a particular result you want to encourage.
Say a reseller normally earns 10% commission on every sale. You launch a new product and want to get more partners behind it, so for the first three months, you offer an extra $100 for every qualifying sale. The commission hasn't changed, but you added another reason for the reseller to prioritize that product.
Partner incentives work best when they have a clear job and a clear end date. If the extra $100 becomes a permanent part of every sale, it stops feeling like an incentive and starts becoming something partners expect.
The best way to reward partners depends on who you're paying, how often they'll receive incentives, and how quickly you need to deliver them. Cash may make sense for regular, commission-style payments, while gift or prepaid cards work well for individual sales incentives.
Here's how the main options compare:
| Reward | Best for | Payout speed | Tax and administration |
|---|---|---|---|
| Cash | Ongoing commissions and larger partner payments | Depends on payment method and processing | May require payment details, tax documentation and reporting |
| Prepaid cards | Higher-value individual incentives | Digital cards can be delivered quickly once issued | May be taxable; check reporting requirements, availability and fees |
| Gift cards | Sales SPIFFs, milestones and one-off rewards | Digital rewards can be sent quickly | Gift cards may be taxable compensation or income, depending on who receives them and the circumstances. Check reporting requirements. |
| Points | Longer-running programs with multiple milestones | Points can be credited quickly; redemption depends on the program | Tax treatment depends on the program structure and rewards provided |
There's also a difference between when a partner earns a reward and when they receive it. You might approve incentives monthly, even if the rewards themselves can be delivered in minutes. Decide how you'll verify results, approve rewards and handle any required documentation before launching.
Cash
It's hard to argue with the flexibility of cash. Partners can spend it however they like, making it a natural fit when the incentive feels more like additional compensation.
The trade-off is that paying a large partner network directly can quickly create more admin for your team. If you're making regular cash payments to resellers or affiliates, you'll also need to consider payment details, reconciliation, and any applicable tax reporting requirements.
Prepaid cards
These give partners plenty of spending flexibility without sending cash directly and can work well for higher-value incentives.
Digital prepaid cards can be convenient for one-off rewards, although availability, acceptance, and fees may vary by card and location.
Gift cards
Give partners a reward that feels more personal than another payment. With Giftogram, recipients can choose from 140,000+ national and local brands, with rewards available across 230+ countries.
Digital gift cards are particularly useful when you want to reward individual salespeople quickly, without collecting bank details for every recipient.
Points
Partners build toward a future reward, which can work for longer-running programs. The trade-off is another system for partners to understand and another balance for them to track.
Points can also encourage repeat participation, especially when partners can see how close they are to their next reward. But make sure the value of those points is clear and the rewards are worth working toward.
Don't make the reward more complicated than the goal requires. Think about what your partners would enjoy receiving, then make sure you can still deliver it easily if 10 participants suddenly become 1,000.
Once you know what you're trying to change, building a successful reseller incentive program itself should be relatively simple.
Start with the partners where an incentive has a real chance of making a difference. That might be your whole channel, but it doesn't have to be. If the goal is to get a new product into a particular market, focus on partners with the right customers and a realistic opportunity to sell it.
Turn your business goal into something partners can easily understand and you can verify.
Partners should be able to review the offer and quickly figure out what they need to do to earn the reward.
Make the reward worth the effort. If a sale brings in $2,000 in gross profit, a $100 reward could be a good incentive. But $10? That might not be enough to motivate your partners.
Think about what your partners would actually want to receive, whether that's cash, prepaid cards, or digital gift cards. And make sure the numbers work for your business, even if everyone earns a reward.
Decide exactly what a partner needs to do to earn the reward and which system will track it. If you're not sure where to start, our guide to the best referral marketing software compares some of the main options.
Your CRM or partner platform tracks qualifying activity, while Giftogram handles reward delivery. Connect your existing systems through 150+ direct integrations, thousands more apps through Zapier, or the Giftogram API to automate rewards once they're approved.
Make the offer easy to understand. Partners should be able to quickly tell whether they're eligible, what they need to do to earn the incentive, and when they'll receive their reward. If there are exclusions or a deadline to hit, put those upfront too.
Make these rules available upfront so partners know exactly what to expect.
Next, make sure they actually hear about it. Use the channels partners already pay attention to, whether that's your partner portal or account managers, and lead with the reward and how to earn it.
For longer campaigns, keep reminding them and show progress where you can. Someone who's made four of the five sales they need has a good reason to chase the last one.
Keep it simple. If partners need a page of rules to understand how to earn $100, the program is probably too complicated.
Once your CRM or partner platform records that a partner has qualified, the reward shouldn't create another job for your team.
Connect Giftogram to the system tracking your program so approved rewards can be sent automatically. Partners receive their rewards without your team manually checking lists and sending them one by one.
Start small enough to learn. Check who's qualifying, what results they're driving, and whether the incentive is worth the return before investing more budget.
Giftogram reporting lets you track reward activity and spending alongside performance data from your partner platform, so you can see what's working before investing more.
Start with what the result is worth to your business. Suppose a qualifying partner sale generates $2,000 in gross profit. Paying an extra $100 could make perfect sense if it encourages sales you wouldn't otherwise have won.
But if those sales were going to happen anyway, you've just given away $100 each time. That's why there isn't a standard amount every partner incentive program should pay.
You can structure the reward in a few ways:
Be careful with big jumps between thresholds. If 19 sales earn one amount and the 20th suddenly unlocks a much bigger reward, you may see some strange behavior around the end of the campaign.
And run the numbers before you launch. If every eligible partner qualifies, the program should still make financial sense.
Go back to the goal you set at the start. Did the incentive get partners to do more of what you wanted?
Depending on the program, look at:
Then look beyond the headline numbers. If sales increased, did the incentive drive that growth, or would it have happened anyway? Did you generate better opportunities or simply more activity?
Finally, see what happens when the incentive ends. A short-term lift can still be a success if that was the goal. It just doesn't mean the same incentive needs to run forever.
Give your partners a reason to put your business first, and make every reward worth earning.
With Giftogram, you can automate rewards for one partner or thousands, while letting everyone choose from thousands of brands. Connect through 150+ direct integrations or our API, and send rewards across 230+ countries.
No platform fees or markups mean more of your budget goes toward rewarding performance, not paying fees.
Join 25,000+ companies using Giftogram to make rewarding simple at any scale.
Make every partner reward count. Book a demo
A $100 gift card for every qualifying sale is a simple example of a partner incentive. You could offer it for three months to get resellers behind a new product, then end the incentive once the campaign is over.
Channel partner incentives are extra rewards that motivate resellers, distributors, or other partners to focus on a particular product or goal. You might use one to get more attention on a new product or encourage more referrals. They usually sit on top of whatever commission or payment arrangement you already have with your partners.
Give resellers an extra reward for doing more of something that helps your business. If you want to shift more of a particular product, you could offer a gift card for every qualifying sale. Make the target achievable and give them a reward worth putting in the extra effort for.
Yes, you can use gift cards as affiliate incentives. They work well when you want to offer something extra on top of the affiliate's usual commission, such as a reward for hitting a referral target during a campaign.
Channel partner incentives can be taxable in the US, including rewards provided as gift cards or prepaid cards. The reporting requirements depend on who receives the incentive, the type and value of the reward, and the circumstances of the payment. Check current IRS rules and any applicable state rules when designing your program.
A reseller incentive program rewards partners who sell your product, whereas an affiliate program typically rewards partners for referring customers or leads. Both can include extra incentives to help partners hit a pre-set target.
Partner or referral software tracks who has completed the action needed to earn an incentive. You can then use Giftogram's reward platform to send the reward and keep a record of what has gone out. Keeping those two sides connected helps when hundreds of partners earn incentives each month.