When you’re creating sales incentive plans for the medical devices industry, you need flexibility. Although you may have a vast sales distribution channel, you often have specific goals you need to laser-focus on, such as increasing sales of a new glucose meter model by the end of the quarter. With the right set of technology, services, and expertise, a sales incentive plan can yield long-term, scaling results. Here are some incentive plan management tools and skills that help:

Prioritize education with training incentive tools.

Investment in sales training and product education is always a good idea, especially in terms of sustaining continued growth. “Great,” you may be thinking, “but what does incentive plan management have to do with that?” Here are a couple of incentive program features that can motivate sales reps to expand product knowledge more frequently and extensively:

• An incentive training platform allows you to instantly reward sales reps for completing training in various forms, from complete certification courses to quizzes and daily trivia. The immediacy of the reward creates pleasure surrounding the associated behavior, eventually making the behavior on its own more enjoyable.
• A public, interactive sales leaderboard can add the exciting element of friendly competition to your training incentive plan. Deliver bonus rewards to salespeople who make it to the top spot. Bestow the leading performer with the title of Reigning Brainiac. Make things fun and engaging to encourage greater participation and better results from your training incentives.

Take advantage of tools that capture sales data.

Another excellent way to expand your incentive program’s abilities is to create a system for rewarding sales and customer data collection. How do you do that? Here are two techniques for capturing sales data with your incentive program:

• Use an online document upload tool to let sales reps upload invoices, receipts, and other sales documentation straight to your incentive program.
• Some incentive program providers, such as Incentive Solutions, offer data entry services to help you input information into your incentive program. Not only does this save you from dedicating your own work force to the task, but you can rely on incentive experts who are specially trained to input sales documentation swiftly and accurately into the incentive program.

These tools and services open up more paths for sales data to make it into your business technology. As you gather more insights about sales trends, customer needs, and purchase details, you can create more effective medical device sales strategies in the future.

Collaborate with experts on incentive marketing strategies.

Your incentive communication plan should reflect your specific sales goals and program audience. You’re the expert on both of those things. Your incentive program provider should be an expert on effective incentive marketing campaigns. Marry these two things and you have incentive campaigns that increase enrollment, boost activity and reward redemptions, and sustain excitement about the program. Here are some of the incentive marketing tools and services you can utilize:

• Your incentive program provider can create and manage multichannel communication plans that include call campaigns, email, push notifications, texts, incentive program website content, and physical mailers. Incentive experts’ specialized experience pairs with the consistency, variety, and frequency to deliver highly effective communication plans.
• Utilize audience segmentation tools to group program participants based on performance level, region, and sales promotion qualification. This will allow you to personalize incentive marketing messaging, even to a large and diverse sales force.
• Automated marketing will help you engage your participants, while continuously prompting and informing them. For instance, you can send sales reps automatic monthly updates summarizing their reward point balance, stimulating program activity and reward redemption.

By collaborating with incentive marketing experts, your incentive plan management benefits from years of specialized experience understanding which strategies work best.

By setting your incentive program up to facilitate sales training and capture sales data, while leveraging incentive marketing expertise, you grow your incentive program into a multi-faceted sales and marketing tool. Don’t overlook tools and services that can help you manage an incentive plan for medical sales. You could be missing an opportunity to increase revenue, train and prep salespeople, while building positive and long-lasting channel partnerships.