Tire suppliers, where do your products ultimately end up after they roll out of manufacturing? Presumably, they find their forever home with an end-consumer whose day-to-day life is impacted by your tires safely bringing them to work, to their kids’ school, or on family vacations. They have the power to provide friend or family customer referrals, i.e. referrals 77% more likely to result in a purchase. They have the biggest impact on your brand reputation and market position. But what do you actually know about them? When you sell through a tire distribution channel, you don’t have direct communication with and influence over them. You can use tire dealer incentives to motivate your sales reps and manage B2B data. Here are four examples of this strategy in action:

Reward tire dealers for submitting sales and customer data.

The original concept of a sales rewards program was simple: a salesperson performs a desire action and earns a reward. That basic idea remains a very effective way to influence behaviors—in this case, submitting B2B sales data. Offer your dealers, distributors and sales reps bonus rewards when they collect such data or sale additions such as:

• Extended warranty registrations
• Supplemental product sales
• Receipts
• Aftermarket services
• Demographic info

When you reward your channel partners for collecting data, give them an easy, convenient way to do so. That brings me to the next B2B data management strategy you’ll want to use….

Enable instant sales claim uploads.

An online claims upload and verification feature allows your sales channel partners to submit the data mentioned above directly to your tire dealer incentives program. All they have to do is snap a pic of a document or scan a receipt. Intelligent character reading (ICR) technology can even pick out your product from a list of others in a receipt and capture it accordingly.

Once you’ve verified the sales claim, using whatever fraud-prevention rules you’ve set the system to look for, you can instantly deliver the appropriate reward amount to your sales rep. The speed of delivery makes the experience more gratifying and thus, one the sales rep is more likely to repeat.

Gain customer data from open incentive program enrollment.

Open enrollment for your incentive program is one of the most upfront ways to capture customer data. Simply offer a publicly accessible link to your program (integrate it into your corporate website to make things even more straightforward) and anyone can sign up. End-customers you previously had no information on file for and distributors you knew little about can all register to start participating in your sales promotions or earning loyalty points. With a configurable registration form, you can collect exactly the information that’s most important to you.

Attach feedback requests to incentive marketing campaigns.

Since incentives have such personal value and meaning to your channel partners, incentive marketing tends to more engaging than other marketing efforts. For example, Incentive Solutions found that our incentive-related emails for one client had click-through rates that were 400% higher than non-incentive marketing emails. People enjoy getting updates on their reward balance, seeing what items are available to redeem for in a rewards catalog, or learning about new sales promotions they can participate in to earn points.

What am I getting at? If you unobtrusively attach other information and requests to your incentive marketing messages, those messages are more likely to be seen and get a positive response. Let’s say you send an email along the lines of “You have 5000 points in your reward program account! If you fill out this survey, you could earn 500 more!” Your tire dealers see a clear value proposition here. It’s more of an invitation to earn rewards than a request for data.

When your tires roll into your dealer/distributor/sales reps’ store, that doesn’t have to be the end. Really, it’s just the beginning of your product’s ultimate impact. Using a tire dealer incentives program that deliver a positive experience for your dealers and end-customers alike, you can gain more insight into the post-sale journey. Then you can use these insights to make your sales and marketing efforts more personalized, strategic, and effective!