Will schemes bring festive smiles for partners?

Schemes and incentives play a vital role in company’s channel strategy.
With fierce competition and a crowded market with a variety
of products, it is essential for principal companies to engage with
their partners on a continuous basis. Vendors believe that it is worth
spending on channel partners as they push products off the shelves.
Planning schemes and incentives for the channel partners is as good as
advertising your products.
IT vendors gear up their channel partners with new and innovative
schemes during festive season. Not only for the channel partners, but
festive season seems to be the best time even for customers—to walk
into retail showrooms and avail heavy discounts and gifts with every
purchase of PC and smart phones.
Schemes bring wonder for channel partners
Schemes not only boost the sales of channel partners, they are also
excellent motivational tool. The final objective of channel schemes and
incentives is therefore, to promote end products and help partners sell
more. Considering this objective, vendors and distributors design and
implement schemes based on products and locations. These schemes
involve cash incentives, freebies or even foreign trips.

Festive season is a great opportunity to grab a good market share
and to create a good brand value. The festive journey begins with the launch of new facelift products by the companies, during this scheme company’s lay special focus in increasing and strengthening the distribution network and offering a wide range of our products. The coming festival of Diwali will set the ball rolling for the company’s plans during the second half of the year.

According to Pankaj Sureka (Co- Founder & Director, Kestrel Mobiles)
schemes are very important to create partner excitement and offer
avenues for improving sales. Kestrel is providing power bank as a complimentary gift on purchase of smartphones this festive season to their customer and on the other hand it is running special incentive scheme for partners on certain sales target achieved.

As power bank has become a necessity because it is always used to
charge smartphones on the move and it is a must have gadget in this age. Bringing these kinds of attractive offers for the customers to boost the sales of channel partners and help them in achieving their targets.

“We are expecting a increase of at least 40-50% other than normal in
sales this festive season,” stated Pankaj Sureka, Co- Founder & Director, Kestrel Mobiles. While schemes such as incentives, gifts or foreign trip impact the overall volume positively, there is a need to support them with timely reimbursement. Also the products and solutions, on which the schemes have been built, need to have a strong value proposition.

Dell India has also come up with ‘ShareTheJoy’ festive offers for consumers. The ‘ShareTheJoy’ campaign inspires the sentiment of goodness which prevails throughout the festivities, seeing Indians reach out and share the joy of celebration in order to spread the festive cheer. This festive season, Dell wishes to be a part of their consumer’s celebrations by adding excitement to their shopping experience and offering enthralling gifts on its entire Inspiron and Vostro range of devices which will boost the sales of channel partners.

Ritu Gupta, Director, Marketing, Dell India said, “Festivals are an occasion for togetherness and celebrations with all our near and dear ones. It is also a season for exchanging gifts and sharing the joy of celebration. This festive season, we wish to celebrate with our customers and encourage them to #ShareTheJoy with the power of technology. With the launch of our new Festive campaign, we aim to sweeten our customers’ experience with special offers available on our entire Dell Inspiron and Vostro range.”

 “Dell is committed to enabling PC awareness and reach across the country. With these offers we hope to provide our users with their choice of form factor that caters to their usage needs, and inspire them to spread festive cheer using Dell’s technology solutions. Understanding that many of our customers are also first time users of personal technology, we are taking additional steps to safeguard the performance of our devices by equipping them with anti-virus software and security features like Absolute LoJack® Theft Protection Software. These features provide an extra layer of protection that gives users peace of mind and enhances their experience with our brand.” continued Ritu.

The purpose behind schemes is to motivate our channel partners to plan a profitable purchase cycle for PC’s and smartphones to reach out to as many end users as they can. Moreover, schemes are an extension of constant endeavour to delight, satisfy and encourage our partners to achieve more than their targets.

Schemes in categorization

As per vendors there are certain types of schemes such as; promoting sales or any product, liquidating stock, boosting overall sales, providing distributors or channel partners a level of excitement while working with some vendor which includes foreign trips, family trip, as it pushes the sales of certain product range.

Channel schemes do motivate partners to increase business volumes, but it does not work on all products. Partners do push the products of vendors whose schemes are attractive and when there is a good return on their efforts. But schemes and incentives alone are not enough to boost sales. The product has to be efficient, competitive and innovative. Schemes, however, help in liquidating stocks that might have been stocked up with the principal.

"Given the number of schemes being run by mobile handset brands throughout the year, the euphoria around launch of such schemes has plummeted. But brands that will genuinely ensure that benefits are passed on to their channel partners will earn their trust and loyalty and stand out in the long run,” commented Govind Bansal, Founder, Aqua Mobiles.  

Schemes vary for partners, retailers and Distributors which can be primary sales or subsidy sales. Primary sales cater a huge incentive or some tour package on heavy sales which is designed specifically for Distributors. Subsidy sales includes incentives and tour but on limited sales specifically for retailers. The difference between both is sales target given by the principal vendors.

While schemes are valid for fast selling or box moving products. In fact, schemes and incentives are more suitable in the IT and consumers electronics sectors.

Sanjay Kalirona, Head Mobile Business, Intex briefed the innovative schemes company is offering this season such as Nazara offer, Shagan offer etc through various online portals such as Amazon, iBibo, Saavn, etc. Äs online presence of customers is in high trend and presence of channel partners on such portals while providing attractive offers which help them add good numbers in their sales.

There is cut throat competition in today's market and to succeed in business company one must design innovative shemes and offerings for channel partners. “Schemes and offerings includes incentive programs, a car or any gift which motivates the partner to promote particular brand among other competitve brands, “ said Vikas Sharma, Regional Sales Manager, Fortune Marketing, Raipur. “ While designing schemes company should take care of trends which are in demand among channels and understand the influence of sales as our aim is to boost sales,” he added.

Schemes boost bottom lines

However, vendors believe that schemes can work wonders in all cases; they just need to be more innovative and attractive. Schemes and incentives should also be supported by training the channel partners, enabling them to sell better so that they can pull up their bottom lines.

Hawkeye believes, “We always have been channel focused and such schemes have always aided us in motivating our channel partners and ensuring an improved bottom line for their business.”

Acer has also added excitement this festive season and kick-starting the festive celebrations by announcing special offers on the auspicious occasion of Dussehra, Durga Puja and Diwali. This festive season, Acer is gifting a host of special offers on the purchase of Acer Aspire series notebooks, All-In-One PCs and also applicable on all the latest products such as Aspire V3, Aspire R11 and Aspire E5-574 which is the first Intel 6th Gen processor based notebook in India.

Announcing offers, S. Rajendran, Chief Marketing Officer, Acer India, said, “The festive spirit is in the air with Durga Puja, Dussehra and Diwali just around the corner. To make gifting and shopping even more special for our consumers, Acer brings its mega Diwali celebration offer promotion, another compelling reason to celebrate this season of cheer. The primary objective of this special festive campaign is to engage with consumers at the ground level and strengthen our brand connect.

“Through this campaign, we also intend to reinforce our relationship with our channel partners and regional distributors and increase our sales. We have introduced this special festive offer to spread more zeal amongst our consumers, offering them yet another reason to purchase an Acer device.” He also said, “Acer has strived to offer exquisite packages to create an unparalleled travel experience for our consumers. The new ‘Holiday Gift Vouchers’ are a testimony to our focus on consumers, to offer them a right combination of fun activities, adventure sports and breath-taking getaways, ’’ added S. Rajendran, Chief Marketing Officer, Acer India.

These offers add a dash of delight to the Indian shopper’s spirit of festivity, drawing in customers to enjoy these attractive offers. Acer, Aqua and other vendors has rolled out exciting training programs to equip channel partners, store sales staff and regional distributors making the consumer experience more enjoyable. Apart from this there is multiple on-ground marketing initiatives to drive awareness of these offers amongst consumers.

Partners comment on schemes

Vendors have announced a channel scheme called to ensure faster penetration of IT products in the markets across India. The value based scheme provides channel partners the opportunity to win up exciting tour packages, home gifting, family foreign trips, etc. Schemes are exclusively designed to bootstrap aggressive channel engagement.

Ram Nagori, Nagori computers, Gwalior, said, “As every partner is engaged in huge transactions and have good bank balance but they’ll never get enough time to plan a foreign trip. And when such schemes are offered we pull up our socks to achieve the target which automatically boosts up our sales.”

Paresh Ajmera, owner of Rajkot based Delta Systems & Peripherals said that festive offers are good in terms of accelerating sales; however, vendors should keep their schemes simple.

He said, “Vendors should come up with good warranty schemes. There should be easy registration to avail offers. Most of the times customers are not aware of such schemes.”

“Reseller educates customers but festive schemes do not impact our turnover in terms of revenue. On the other hand if any customer does not get services as promised by vendors they get angry on us. Dealers are not interested in schemes as they do not have any direct role in it,” he further added.

Dayashankar, Computer Services, Jaipur said that big vendors like HP, Dell, Lenovo announce offers directly for end users during festivals like Diwali. These schemes might be beneficial for customers if they get extended warranty but partners hardly gain something out of it.

Indian customers are pushed by festive offers. It is a normal tendency of customers to buy electronics products during festivals. Festive schemes do help to something additional but partners do not get much from it. However, festive offers do help partners to connect with more customers.

Issues related to schemes

While channel partners are happy with the schemes, they point out that schemes are plagued with problems. Schemes are full of risk as a lot of hidden charges and deductions crop up during and after the scheme period. Generally, distributors do not communicate hidden clauses, and in disputes, decisions always go in favour of the vendor.

At times, payments are delayed for about six months. In many cases, vendors float schemes to compensate for the high value of the product without reducing the price.

The major challenge in any such scheme is settling the claims. However, vendors try to do it in a very speedy manner to keep brand name safe. They have an internal turnaround time defined for settling the matters once the claim is received at vendors end.

Second major challenge is that sometimes channel partners are not able to achieve target and lack behind due to very minimum amount and for which partners claim their incentive or gift packages or demand time extension. These kinds of issues sometimes create miscommunication between vendors and partners.

Though majority of partners do not see festive offers a major motivation for business turnover but festive schemes do encourage end users to lighten their pockets. In a scenario where there is a slowdown in the industry, festive season can be a driving force for end users to rush the stores. Considering fears of channel about schemes period vendors should educate partners and assist them to promote their schemes among customers.