Each month the top 15 Lexmark salespeople score a ticket, with the best-of-the-best scoring deluxe packages involving box seats and stays at either the Mirage or Versace hotels on the Gold Coast.
"The events have been absolutely sensational," Champion says. Besides, some people might think it’s more fun to watch fast cars than drive them, especially if you fancy the odd drink.
Lexmark now boasts over 60 percent participation in the program across 50 different dealers, which it says has led to a 50 percent spike in revenues to more than $1 million last year alone.
"We think it’s getting traction," Champion says, no pun intended. Like other vendors, Lexmark has been especially wary of not running programs that would encourage sales staff to overly discount products to gain rewards. Instead it has stuck with a model that records revenue as opposed to units sold.
"The thing I’d say about these programs is what we’re careful not to is incent behaviour that impacts dealer margin. There’s concern that sales people discount the hell out of the product to get the sale so we register revenue as opposed to units sold," he says. "You get to the point where there’s so many of these things going on they lose impact."
Lexmark also runs a number of incentive programs specifi cally targeting the dealerships themselves, believing that doing so can often help to engender wider cultural support of vendor’s products throughout the channel.
-1.jpg&w=100&c=1&s=0)
.png&w=100&c=1&s=0)
