Across every distribution channel, the person at the point of recommending a chosen product is becoming more valuable. Most distribution companies are investing in them ineffectively or just plain incorrectly.
In HVAC, 68% of contractors say the counter or inside salesperson is the most influential factor in their purchasing decisions, and that influence is gaining importance year-over-year while equipment brand loyalty is declining.
In the automotive aftermarket, brand doesn’t register as a primary selection factor at all on the ordering platforms where over half of independent shops now buy parts. And customers don’t always request specific brands.
In the dealership service lane, tire brand loyalty drops to just 42% when two or more tires are replaced. That’s not because customers stopped liking the brand. It’s because once they’re in the service lane, the choice comes down to what the advisor recommends. The brand didn’t fail – nobody was there to reinforce the preference at the moment it really mattered.
Different sales channels are experiencing the same challenge. The person (counter rep, service advisor, technician) who makes the recommendation in whichever channel is the one who decides which brand gets purchased. This is the last advantage you have that a platform or AI can’t replicate or automate.
The Problem with Paying for the Sale
The standard playbook is straightforward. Offer the advisor or rep a SPIFF for selling your product. It’s simple, easy to explain, and it works in the short term.
A rep with a direct financial incentive to push product X will push product X, maybe regardless if it’s the right fit for the customer. The dealer sees questionable recommendations. Customer satisfaction dips. Returns go up. The manufacturer kills the program. A common conclusion becomes that “incentives don’t work,” when what really failed was the incentive design.
That worry is real for SPIFFs. It’s also the wrong worry for a different kind of program. Even when the SPIFFed rep is recommending the right product, a sale-only incentive has no stability. The rep sells whatever pays more that week. However, a training-based points incentive doesn’t create uneducated, reward-based bias. It creates product knowledge. The rep makes better recommendations because they know more, not because they’re paid more. Same dollar, completely different behavior.
Meanwhile, the annual turnover rate for a service advisor in the dealership service lane is 40% with a median tenure of just 2.2 years. The replacement arrives with no brand preference, or a different brand preference, and no relationship with the customer. The incentive cycle starts fresh. Once again you can’t solve a knowledge and engagement problem with a transaction-based incentive, but a training-based incentive brings newcomers up to speed quickly.
Stop Rewarding Outcomes Alone
The goal is not to stop rewarding outcomes; But, it is to stop rewarding outcomes only.
The best incentive programs reward the behaviors that lead to the desired outcome:
- training completion
- product certification
- new product learning
- cross-category engagement
- consistent participation over time
The Incentive Research Foundation’s 2026 channel research finds best-in-class programs allocate 40% to 50% of their incentive budget to pre-sale behaviors like training, enablement tool usage, and project registration. They reward the work that makes the sale possible, not just the sale itself.
Not everything that builds brand preference shows up in POS data or claim forms. It starts with human interaction, emotional connections and feelings of being part of a team, like:
- a construction supply store counter rep who takes ten extra minutes to walk a building contractor through a new product line
- a service advisor who sets up a compelling product display at the auto parts store
- a branch manager who runs an informal lunch-and-learn to get people through the commercial office furniture showroom
Discretionary rewards can let field managers recognize those moments in real time. That’s the part of brand building no system can track automatically, and it’s often the part that matters most. It’s also another thing you can’t automate. It requires face to face interaction that rewards an all-hands-on-deck mentality at the POS level.
Why Reward Point Programs Change Economics
Cash is the most expensive way to motivate someone. It gets absorbed into the paycheck and forgotten. With inflation above 3% for most of the past three years, extra cash in hand has felt less valuable. A points-based channel incentive program changes the economics of the program itself.
A great advantage to building a points-based incentive program is its flexibility. Business priorities will change. Maybe you’re ready to launch a new product or a competitor enters the market. With a reward points incentive program you can easily adjust what activities can earn and how much each is worth without redesigning the program or renegotiating a SPIFF schedule with finance and sales. They can evolve with your business needs, by:
- adding a training module
- giving points for attending a webinar
- encouraging a specific product category one month
- running a quarterly accelerator
The infrastructure stays the same, but a program that can change as needed remains relevant and engaging. It helps you mitigate risk and maximize gains through real-time program analysis.
Reward point programs can protect budget too. Points accrue as they’re earned, but until the objective is hit, they’re not accessible to redeem. That breakage is real. It means the program only costs budget when it produces results, and the financial exposure stays predictable in a way that cash SPIFFs paid on the spot for each transaction are not.
It also means you can start with a pilot: one region, one product line, one distributor segment. This allows the incentive program to prove the behavior change; Prove the ROI. That’s a lot of flexibility from the very start. Adjusting scale is as easy as adding participants and different reward earning categories. There’s no need to fully rebuild a program with each evolution.
The free marketing is something special too. A points-based incentive program funds rewards people actually talk about. The service advisor who earns a fishing trip or a new TV tells that story to customers, friends and family. That personal story does more to drive brand advocacy and engagement than you can imagine.
What We Build at Motivation Excellence
Price and convenience are not why people buy. If they were, every cost-based platform and every algorithm would have already won. People buy because someone they trust recommended it. That’s the moment that matters for brand loyalty and it’s what we reward with our channel incentive programs.
We design reward point programs for manufacturers and distributors who need to influence the person interacting with the final customer: counter reps, service advisors, branch managers and sales reps. These are the people who matter to the commercial success of your company.
We just completed a program targeting distributor sales reps for a global office furniture manufacturer. The first year delivered more than 400% ROI. The behavior changed during the earning period, before the reward was ever delivered! The reps didn’t sell more because they got paid more. They sold more because the program gave them a reason to engage with the brand and recommend it with confidence. 98% reported in a post-program survey that the incentive motivated them to bring more business to our client.
That’s what a well-designed channel incentive reward point program does. It doesn’t pay for a transaction. It builds the knowledge, the preference, and the habit that leads to long-term loyalty based in human interaction with the people who mean the most to the success of your business. Let’s connect to see how we can help you build a successful program today!
