You may be familiar with your local mattress chain (for our area it’s Sleep Country USA) selling mis-matched mattress sets.  “You can save a bundle if you don’t care about color!” Really now, how many mismatched sets could there possibly be in the grand supply of mattresses?  This is a game of perception management.   You are led to believe that giving up something insignificant (like a sheet-covered mattress color) will earn you savings.

The beauty is that everyone is happy and no one gets hurt.  You can choose not to buy a mismatched set and pay a premium price if you wish.

Let’s apply this to your channel partners.  If you are looking for a promotional offer to extend through your partners without having to lower your price or cause channel conflict then think about ways of managing perception within your standardized offer. 

For example: 

Offer a trade-up incentive (where you can displace your competitor and the partner deploys your solution in their place).  The perception is that your customer has earned the savings of a discounted offer because they have given you something in return (a crummy old technology). 

But what you’ve really purchased is the displacement itself.  You can take apply this logic to many scenarios. 

What can you ask of the customer that earns their saving, where they put some skin in the game and the partner is there to administer the transaction for you?  The possibilities are endless. 

Call us if you need help,
-Kris