Channel Sales Incentive Program
Motivate resellers, distributors, and counter sales teams to choose your product and keep choosing it.
Proven results for an electrical supplier
24%
year-over-year sales growth
61:1
return on total program cost
3,337
salespeople chose to participate
Core Rewards designs, runs, and fulfills channel sales incentive programs that change partner behavior instead of simply rewarding existing habits, so you grow brand recognition, market share, and bottom-line revenue. Our platform brings goals, communication, training, and rewards together in one place, backed by a team of strategists who build every program around your business objectives.
Why a Channel Sales Incentive Program Matters
Strong relationships with your channel sales network are critical to the success of any B2B organization. Persuading partners to choose your product over a competitor's is a battle that demands constant reinforcement to both gain and retain market share. At scale, targeting individual resellers with unique incentives across a diverse product mix is a real challenge, and it is exactly where a unified program platform pays off.
Independent research points the same way. The Incentive Research Foundation's 2026 report, Using Incentives to Drive Pipeline, found that partners often navigate 10 to 50 incentive programs but actively participate in only about half of them. It also found that top-performing programs direct 40 to 50 percent of their budget toward pre-sale actions, such as training and deal registration, rather than rewarding final sales alone. A program has to earn partner attention and reward the behaviors that lead to a sale.
10–50
incentive programs a channel partner often navigates
~50%
of those programs partners actively participate in
40–50%
of budget top programs put toward pre-sale actions
Source: Incentive Research Foundation, Using Incentives to Drive Pipeline (2026)
How Our Channel Sales Incentive Program Works
Grow brand awareness and loyalty
Buyers are more informed than ever, and talking about features and benefits alone is not enough. Non-sales behaviors and steps-to-the-sale can be just as important as direct selling behaviors. With our engagement platform and a team of expert strategists, you can:
- Increase product awareness and knowledge
- Grow product sales and encourage ongoing brand loyalty
- Enable channel leaders to show their appreciation on the spot
Set goals that fit every seller
We build individual goals from each salesperson's baseline sales, so top performers and newer sellers alike have a target within reach. Unique goal setting boosts performance at every point on the bell curve, and each participant hears their goal directly.
Communicate directly with your targeted audience
Transform the way your channel partners connect with you and take control of your indirect sales. For channel sales to thrive, everyone needs to communicate effectively, and in one place. Our platform is the glue that holds your channel program together and keeps you and your partners aligned. It supports:
- Targeted promotions that put the right incentive in front of the right partner
- Direct communication through email and inside the program platform
- Product knowledge and application training through quizzes, videos, and webinars
- Gamification, such as a "Question of the Week" that rewards participants for learning about target products
Reward with the brands people want
Participants choose their own reward goals from 70,000+ merchandise, travel, and experiential options, fulfilled in-house by our team. Top categories include branded gear, electronics, and tools, and top brands include Yeti, TaylorMade, Apple, Dyson, Milwaukee, and Weber.
Measure results in real time
Every program is built to be tracked, so you can see what is working and adjust.
- Baseline and follow-up surveys
- Email and platform usage metrics
- Fulfillment statistics
- Real-time reporting and custom dashboards in the admin portal
- Data analysis from our program team
Integrations, Security, and Support
Our platform fits into the systems you already use, and our team stays with you after launch.
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Integrations
Integrations through REST APIs and SFTP, with program data accessible via our internal API
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Single sign-on
Secure single sign-on (SSO) with user provisioning via SAML
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Your data, your vendors
Ability to work with your internal data teams or third-party vendors, pulling in sales data, user account information, and LMS or training data
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Account management
Dedicated account management, including contracts and billing, IT admin, and recurring meetings
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Participant support
Participant support by call center, email, or online chat, with custom FAQ resources inside the platform
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Languages
Languages supported: English, French, and Spanish
Case Study: Electrical Supplier Grows Sales 24%
The challenge
An electrical supplier wanted to lift sales of an underperforming product line. To do that, it needed to build brand awareness and market share within its channel sales network, with little marketing budget available. Any promotion had to be entirely self-funding through increased profit.
How we helped
We worked with key stakeholders to design a point-based channel sales incentive program for inside and counter salespeople, with two goals: increase product awareness and knowledge, and grow product sales while encouraging ongoing brand loyalty.
- A custom online portal where participants tracked progress and redeemed points in an online rewards catalog
- Points awarded for incremental sales, with individual goals set from the prior year's baseline, from 10% growth for higher-volume sellers to 30% growth for lower-volume sellers
- A launch marketing campaign, followed by a strategic outreach plan delivering educational resources by email and in the platform
- Gamification, including a "Question of the Week" that rewarded participants for researching the target product line
The results
- 3,337 inside and counter salespeople chose to participate
- 24% year-over-year sales growth within the participating group
- 61:1 return on total program cost
Through this incremental sales growth program, the supplier engaged its most critical audience and achieved a positive business impact.
Frequently Asked Questions
A channel sales incentive program motivates the people who sell your product through resellers, distributors, and other partners. Participants earn points or rewards for the behaviors that matter to your business, such as growing sales of a target product line, completing product training, or engaging with promotions. Unlike a one-time contest, a well-designed program is built to change behavior and keep your brand top of mind.
Most programs start from a baseline, such as the prior year's sales of the targeted products, and reward incremental growth above it. That makes the return measurable: you compare incremental sales and profit against total program cost. In the electrical supplier case study above, the program returned 61:1 on total program cost. Our admin portal adds real-time reporting, custom dashboards, and baseline and follow-up surveys so you can track results as the program runs.
Set individual goals from each seller's own baseline rather than one target for everyone. In the case study, goals ranged from 10% growth for higher-volume sellers to 30% growth for lower-volume sellers, and each salesperson was told their unique goal directly. Individual goals keep every participant, not only top performers, in reach of a reward.
Name-brand merchandise, travel, and experiences all play a role, and variety matters because participants choose their own reward goals. Our catalog includes 70,000+ options, and when branded promotional products were offered, about 35% of redemptions went toward them. Research also indicates that sales representatives think more frequently about tangible, non-cash incentives than about cash incentives.
Our platform supports external integrations through REST APIs and SFTP, and secure single sign-on with user provisioning via SAML. We can work with your internal data teams or third-party vendors to bring in sales data, user account information, and LMS or training data, so the program runs on the numbers you already trust.