Virtual currency – a powerful incentive reward type 

Many B2C companies offer business benefits as part of their customer loyalty program. For example – hotels reward customers upon reaching a certain loyalty level, with business benefits like free wifi, food & beverages, access to their business center, and an all-expense-paid bonus stay package. 

While customers feel on top of the world with so many rewards & benefits relevant to their stays, the hotel gains them as loyal customers. All the hotelier has to do is offer their already-existing amenities as rewards that customers can use for free.

How does this translate into a B2B world?
 

Business benefits in a B2B world

So, what does this mean for a B2B company involving their channel partners? The same concept applies here too. There are products/services that a tech company or a manufacturer already has that would prove valuable to a channel partner. 

For example, tech companies could discount their channel partners for advanced training classes — or, say, the annual partners’ conference or a regional users’ conference. All of this, the tech companies already have or co-own. Another not so obvious ask could be those channel partners who need help with their website design, their Google AdWords strategy, their digital advertising, and such. Tech companies package ways to consult with them in the form of a reward. This could be an hour of consulting each month or sometimes to actually help them do these things. 

Another important business benefit is leading. Tech vendors land good leads, and they give them to the channel partners to turn them into opportunities. Tech vendors could part with these leads at a price. They could hold back the high-quality leads and offer them to those partners who’ve perhaps met an incentive goal. 
 

Business benefits redeemed through virtual currency 

Now, all of these business benefit reward examples are already in your portfolio. They’re already paid for. They don’t call for an extra rewards budget that you need to ask for every year. It’s literally a zero-dollar rewards budget. 

How does this relate to virtual currency? 

You can choose to deliver business benefits both directly and indirectly. 

Directly implies if you achieve the goal per a particular incentive you get a specific business benefit — say premium support for 6 months. Or if you achieve a certain marketing incentive goal you get a package of premium leads for 6 months. 

In the indirect scenario, channel partners have the opportunity of choice. What if the company wanted to offer all these benefits to their channel partners for achieving an incentive and let them choose what they wanted? That implies a rewards catalog made up of a plethora of business benefits – premium support, high-quality leads package, advanced training class discount, website design consulting, user conference fees discount, etc. 

Business benefits and the virtual currency employed as a redemption vehicle for such are one of the most powerful incentive reward types you can implement, not just because of their essential no-cost basis, but because of their direct relevance (high value) for channel partners.

Do you want to learn how to combine these reward types? Are you wondering what would work best for the kind of behavior that you want to incentivize? Well, don’t look too far ahead. Watch this space for a major reveal. Coming soon.