Know About Travel Rewards

Are you a frequent traveler? If so, it is likely that you are already enrolled on a frequent flyer program with a few airlines. In this case, would you be open to an opportunity to earn airline miles at a quicker rate? Yes, there are ways you can do this through the smart collaboration between airlines and credit card companies.
Indeed, you gain rewards points that can be converted into airline miles for purchases charged to your card. Of course, the total amount that you need to charge to your travel rewards credit card would need to be significant in order for you to attain adequate airline miles to claim your free flight. This also means that you have to charge more to your credit card each month. In order to reap the full rewards of this, it would be best that you pay off your outstanding credit card balances every month so as not be caught with a mountain of debt with high interest rates.
With this, it won't be long before you claim for your free flights for your well deserved holiday. What's more, rewards points may sometimes be claimable for free hotel rooms as well, making you a true smart traveler! Other benefits of your travel rewards program include hotel discounts, travel insurance or car rental discounts. Some of these credit cards even include car rental insurance coverage and buyer assurance plans.
There are a few attributes of travel rewards credit cards that you should look at when selecting the right credit card to get. First of all, these credit cards award a certain amount of free miles upon approval of your application or your first charge to the card. Other points of evaluation include the value of each mile that you will be getting. For example, some travel rewards credit cards award 1 point for every $1 spent, while others may reward 1 point for every $2 spent. Therefore, cards that reward more points for lower card charges will enable you to accumulate rewards points at a greater pace.

Your Channel Partner And Sales

As the second part of the equation, for this process to go smoothly, all sales leads must be passed through a single lead management system like LeadMaster. This provides those with authorized access real-time updates of any and all leads; it helps marketing know the effectiveness and the ROI of their lead generation programs; it minimizes outdated information in your database; and the channel manager can finally track which partners are following up on leads and which aren't.

Thus, the problem of tracking ROI and channel loyalty is solved with a dedicated "lead driver," and a single lead management system that you and your channel share.  But this is not the only benefit of having a unified lead management system. This approach can also benefit your partner sales reps. Here's an example.  When a partner leaves the company and a new rep is hired, the lead driver gives them a call, tells them about the leads they'll be working and walks them through the lead management system. By having up-to-date information about their leads in a system that is easy-to-use, the new rep can come up to speed quickly.

Keeping them up to date with the company's activities might also help in motivating them since they use such information to their advantage. Promoting internal contests or other friendly business contests that would involve all partners would surely spark fire and motivate them to perform their work faster and better. Incentives in the form of activities, events and goings-on inside the company can also give the same results. Commission programs and good per-sell rates can even better motivate these partners to perform their best. After all, companies operate under the principles of capitalism which means they need to be profitable to be able to grow.

Instating programs, training sessions, seminars and other skill development events gives them the idea that the parent company will provide them with everything they need to learn about the job as well as supporting partners with the information they require. Back these events with giveaways. Free stuff always gets the good side any person especially after a hard days work

The Effective Customer Retention Strategies

Large or small, your business needs clients and is driven by customer demand. Managing the customer relationship is a delicate balance of satisfying their wants and needs without losing your shirt. Your clients are the lifeblood of your business and repeat business and referrals are key to your longevity in the marketplace.

"It is easier to keep a customer, than to find a new one". This is a very true statement and your business should have it displayed above every doorway to help the organization understand the importance of the customer.

Customer Retention Strategies:  Customer retention is not only a cost effective and profitable strategy, but in today's business world it's necessary. This is especially true when you remember that 80% of your sales come from 20% of your customer and clients.It's much less costly to generate customer loyalty and Retain customers than to spend marketing money to attract new customers.
Many customer retention strategies have been formulated, applied, and reviewed to get that much coveted high customer retention rate. What are these strategies?

• Membership cards and membership programs
• Welcome and thank you communications
• Beefed up customer service, empowered to solve problems
• Enhanced technical support with follow up satisfaction calls
• Frequent buyer programs which permit customers to build up equity
• Event driven communications that are meaningful to the customers’ lives
• Databases that keep track of customer’s purchases, preferences, complements and complaints, which are used to carry out loyalty building services and dialogs.
• Integrated marketing programs where the advertising, direct communications, customer service, database marketing and sales programs are all orchestrated together and designed to build loyalty. 
• Satisfaction surveys, followed up by phone calls and letters

One strategy that is effective is using client surveys because they provide an easy way to find problems in the services and products provided by the company. Some common problems include lack of proper service and high price of products and services. It is necessary to analyze these customer surveys in order to understand customers who are not satisfied with the services and products offered by the company. Understanding will enable you to apply preventive actions to prevent or at least resolve these problems.

If companies are able to identify their clients who are thinking about shopping somewhere else then they are also in the position to be able to implement actions in order to prevent the customers leaving. Some ways to do this include analyzing customer segments, developing customer profiles, and building models that will predict the possible problems that may arise.

Your Business And Channel Partners

About Channel Partner Programs
For those of us who do business through channel partners, finding out exactly what happened to leads that are sent to the channel is always a challenge.  How many of those leads did your partners follow up with?  How many turned into sales?  What's the ROI for each program that generated those leads?

If you're fortunate enough to have a channel sales rep helping your partners follow up with and close leads, you're doing a better job than most. Still, many leads fall through the cracks.  Why?  Because sales is a numbers game and warm/cool leads are on the losing team.  Each partner rep may work with dozens of channel partners each of whom may work hundreds of leads. And when a rep is working to close a deal, he's not focused on the other leads.

Incentive marketing programs differ from vendor to vendor. Others are more comprehensive with more bonuses and rebates while other vendors, smaller companies or start up companies, offer just the basics and a promise to increase as the company grows. Training and certification included in the package is not only beneficial to customers, but to vendors and resellers as well. Certification allows channel partners to offer value added services that not all resellers can provide. There is tangible proof that a reseller firm has the credential to offer specialized and quality services with quality products.

Good communication is the key to creating better relationships not only with your customers but with your partners as well. For companies that focus on channel management services, creating effective communication among business partners is vital.

For example, channel conflicts can easily be avoided given the good connection and contact between parent/manufacturing companies and their resellers. For partners, however, it takes more than just good communication to motivate the workforce in general.

One has to take note that motivating a channel partner may differ from motivating a staff of their own and would usually require channel management services from a software company. The difference is that the boss would usually want to inspire the staff into the direction of the company's commerce objectives like sales performance and customer service while motivating channel partners like dealers and distributors require their inspiration to be directed to easy product sells.

Basically, the staff would just want to do a better job at keeping the blood of the company going while business partners would want to vertically develop their own trade in a faster and easier way. This means that these businesses partners would to know and understand better the "how to's" of promoting and delivering their goods or services in all aspects of the business. To put it simply, they are result driven, usually with the purpose of being on a short term goal. 

Brand Building Programs And Strategies

The ABC of Brand Building And Program Strategy
Utilize the Advertising Mediums:
Earning brand recognition is the first step.As soon as people recognize your brand you should find out effective ways to make them remember your brand. You should occupy a place in the customer's mind by using all the existing advertising mediums.This is very important to spread awareness and building brand loyalty.

Develop Good Customer Relationship:
When a new customer buys your product or service you should focus on how to establish and maintain a good relationship with the customer so that he/she keeps coming back to you.You should maintain the relationship by use of telephone,emails or direct mails.

Go for Re-branding:
At time you can go for re-branding so that the customers don't get bored. You can try new packaging.A good example of this is Maggi,which used to come in a single packing form initially.Later Maggi was reintroduced in a double packing form.You can also introduce a scheme reducing the price.

Brand loyalty is also associated with supporting a good cause.You will see people who remain loyal to a brand because the brand supports some good social cause for the improvement of the general public.

One source of negative feedback you can always count on is going to be from your competitors. One guy always wants to win, and winning in this case would be selling more, or providing more service. To combat this negative feed back, and gain the respect of your consumers, you will need to know your competitors product well. What differentiates there product from yours? What main points are they focusing on that is helping there product to sell well?
We see this competitor negativity often in over the counter aches and pain medication. One popular company is known to be the, "headache," medicine. This company advertises that they can take away any type of headache including severe migraines. Their competitor's then use their advertising against this company by advertising that their pain medication will not only work on headaches, but on all bodily aches. You will find similar competition when entering the market and it is best to be prepared ahead of time.

New Customer Acquisition Programs And Strategies

Customer acquisition is a process of identifying, approaching and build customer relationships. It is important that new relationships formed are acquired from the right type of customer, in order to ensure a sustainable future. Acquiring customers is one of the most important factors in the success of a business. The importance of acquisition not only lies in the volume of customers acquired, but the profitability and value that the customer will bring.
Adopting a strategic approach is advised when it comes to acquiring customers. Determining what type of customer best suits the business needs, enables you to target customers which will be profitable and add value to the organisation.

Our business is not about ourselves, it is about our customers. The focus of your business shouldn't be on yourself, rather it should focus on your customers. They are not really interested in how long you have been in business or how much education you have. Customers are intersted in what your business can do or provide for them. We call these "customer benefits".

In all your marketing, keep the "customer benefits" foremost in your mind. In fact, learn to think like your customers. It will help you be more effective in marketing and your overall communication with them. A successful customer acquisition strategy is that of which adopts a fully integrated multi channel approach. Giving customers the choice to utilise their preferred channel, instantly creates a positive impact on potential customers. Also, this fully integrated method means businesses increase availability to their potential customer base.
Your "customer benefits" should ALWAYS be highlighted or in the forefront in all your marketing and communication with your customers. When you're communicating with your customers, your thoughts and conversation should center on the customer's benefit of buying your product or using your service.

Create Effective Programs for Sales Incentives

Research shows that the way the brain processes information is responsible for non-cash rewards having a greater impact on people than cash awards. Offers of non-cash rewards are visualized or imaged by the right hemisphere of the brain. Such images or mental pictures trigger emotional responses which can be quite powerful.

Conversely, offers of strictly monetary rewards are processed by the left hemisphere, which lacks the ability to create images. When a monetary offer is received, the brain's left hemisphere assesses the information and determines whether the offer is sufficient, relative to the time or effort required to earn it. The emotional response is what drives behavior, not rational thought. With cash, its reduced to one issue - simply how much.

Tips on How to Create Effective Programs for Sales Incentives
Sales Incentives Have Two Faces - And they're called cash and non-cash incentives. It's important that you offer both. Like it or not, people are generally easier to motivate if you're offering both money and recognition in exchange of showing better job performance.

Motivation Comes from Within - Before creating any sales incentive program, you must also understand that no matter how hard you work on setting goals and determining prizes for employees, there won't be any changes made if the employees themselves aren't ready, willing, and able to change. Thus, be ready to be confronted once in a while with a few bad apples here and there. And when you do, don't blame yourself: it's those people - and not your program - that's at fault.

Separate Sales Incentives for Short-Term and Long-Term Goals - You must prepare separate and appropriate sales incentives for your short-term and long-term goals. Cash and similar monetary incentives work better for short-term goals because they work like confectionaries by providing employees with a temporary boost of physical and mental energy. Stimulants for intrinsic motivation, on the other hand, will definitely work better for long-term goals because it gives your employees a reason to continue working the way you want them to.

3 S's for Sales Incentives - When creating sales incentive programs, always make sure that it adheres to the 3 S's rule: short, sweet, and simple. Anything complicated can discourage your sales workforce from bothering to change. And if you offer something sour instead of sweet, who'd want to work for it?