Automate and turbocharge relationships to compete
Sales pipeline keeping you awake at night? Wondering why you’re not getting the same level of returns on your sales incentives as you used to?
You’re not alone. Over the last 8 months, the rules for incentives have changed, boosted by new technology that is democratising how incentives are designed, launched and managed.
Looking at data gathered in the ‘Channel Incentive Report’ from 2023 / 2024 and 2025, it’s clear that over the last few years, vendors have doubled down on partner ecosystems with the intention of using them as a growth engine, even in uncertain markets.
However, that’s created waves that not every vendor or partner can withstand. Tried and tested models are not performing as they once did. Partners are disengaged, suggesting they’re selling competitor offers, yet vendors plough on as there is no meaningful alternative.
But is this valid? This report will highlight the credible alternatives that are emerging and encourage a rethink on incentive strategy and execution.
Want a 35% uplift in deal registrations? Then read on.
Our guide to incentive strategies for 2026 is a must-read for any leaders tasked with driving the pipeline and closing deals in the year ahead.
Drawing together years of expertise and experience of running multi-national campaigns, and market data from 2024 and 2025, this guide will:
- Uncover what’s behind the shift in performance.
- Explain why partner engagement dropped off and simply didn’t deliver the expected ROIs despite vendors increasing their channel investment.
- Look at why vendors and partners need to rethink working relationships.
- And, introduce the ‘five pillars’ for developing winning strategies in 2026.
The rules of the game have changed
The fundamental challenges identified in our Channel Incentives Report for 2024 were:
- Low participation – getting salespeople excited and engaged was tough.
- Design missteps – incentives were underperforming because they were overly complex, the terms were unclear, and/or prizes were undesirable or hard to redeem.
- ROI neglect – the two challenges above made it hard to justify an ROI and, therefore, continued investment. Even so, vendors have ploughed on because they see there is no alternative.
(You can see a full summary of the insights and the takeaways in the ‘deep dive’ section below)
These factors persisted into 2025, but as the year has gone on, new insights show there’s an industry response underway. Vendors are learning from past mistakes: simplifying programs, investing smartly, measuring obsessively, and experimenting with new reward strategies.
But there’s also been a notable shift in the volume of activity, causing greater competition in the market. The volume isn’t just the result of vendors running better considered incentives or investing more, but new challenger brands entering the fray.
Back in 2023, 30% of vendors ran no incentives at all. Not today. For the first time, thanks to developments in automation, smaller vendors are ramping up their incentive activity by using technology that will run an incentive end-to-end and without crashing tight budgets. It’s a significant step change, helping them tap into a way of affordably generating pipeline that has been previously out of reach.
Key takeaway: New vendor activity is adding a new dimension to sales strategies that every vendor needs to plan for in 2026.
The performance shift – the highlights
Channel-driven revenue has never been more vital. In 2024, 64% of tech vendors generated at least two-thirds of their revenue through channel partners. This continued into 2025, with a substantial share of companies now deriving 30–60% of total revenue from partnerships, and we expect it to continue into 2026.
Historically, smaller vendors shied away from incentives – in 2023, 28% of surveyed vendors ran no incentive at all, often citing limited budget or know-how.
However, in the last 6 months, there’s been a shift in thinking. Automation and flexible pricing, thanks to software as a service (Saas) models, are making it possible for fast growth new market entrants to successfully take on the incumbent vendors and compete on a level playing field, globally.
Key takeaway: Investment in automation needs to be a critical component of sales incentive strategy
Deep dive – the facts you need to develop a winning incentive strategy
The original Channel Incentives 2024 report identified several critical themes:
- Channel revenue contribution is climbing, but incentive participation is dropping.
- Not all vendors leverage incentives or track ROI, to their detriment.
- Incentives are difficult for participants to engage with, and rewards aren’t enticing.
- Budgets vary wildly, and there’s a strong argument for quality over quantity.
| 2024 Findings | What's Happened Since and Why it Matters |
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Channel revenue contribution continues to climb. In 2024, 64% of vendors said two-thirds or more of their revenue came via channel partners. Channel was firmly established as a primary revenue engine. |
Channel revenue contribution continues to climb. In 2024, 64% of vendors said two-thirds or more of their revenue came via channel partners. Channel was firmly established as a primary revenue engine. |
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Incentive participation levels were falling. We discovered partner engagement in incentives was alarmingly low – 56% of partner sales reps participated in only 1–2 incentives a year despite being invited to many.
Vendors were oddly complacent with this: over 70% of vendors said they were “satisfied” even if only a quarter of their partners took part. |
Engagement remains the battleground. Unfortunately, many vendors still struggle to entice broad partner participation. Channel salespeople continue to be selective – often ignoring programs that seem too complex, low-value, or “more of the same.”
The overload problem persists: 44% of reps are invited to 6 or more different vendor incentives per year, creating competition for mindshare. The good news is that vendors are starting to realise that low participation is not okay – it signals partners might be selling someone else’s products. Key takeaway: In 2025 we’ve seen a push for simpler, more engaging incentive design (e.g. clear rules, quick rewards) to win back partner mindshare. Gamified, user-friendly platforms deliver higher sign-ups and activity than the traditional, static portal approach. |
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Some vendors hadn’t “woken up and smelt the coffee.” Not all vendors leveraged incentives; 72% ran at least one incentive in 2023, meaning nearly 30% ran none.
It was mainly the smaller vendors sitting on the sidelines, often feeling they lacked the resources or know-how to run programs. |
Awareness is growing, but gaps remain. More vendors – including mid-market players – have started exploring incentives as they realise the cost of doing nothing. Industry surveys in late 2024 showed 38% of tech firms planned to boost channel marketing budgets for 2025, and many cited incentive platforms among planned investments.
However, a significant minority of companies still run no formal incentives, typically smaller vendors who until now felt programs were out of reach. Key takeaway: This is precisely the gap new challenger automated solutions are addressing by lowering barriers (more on that shortly). |
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Many vendors didn’t track ROI rigorously. One striking finding was that nearly half of incentive campaigns did not have clear ROI accountability. 47% of incentives either failed to hit their ROI target or, worse, never set a specific target at all.
And yet, vendors often declared these programs “successful” anecdotally. This lack of measurement meant lost opportunities to learn and improve. |
ROI is now front and centre (finally). In 2025, the conversation has shifted – ROI measurement is a top priority for channel chiefs and CMOs. Economic pressures and tighter marketing scrutiny have forced a more data-driven approach.
We’re seeing more vendors define concrete success metrics (pipeline generated, incremental revenue, etc.) before launching incentives and then use dashboards to track results in real time. Modern incentive platforms should facilitate this by automatically linking partner actions to outcomes. Still, challenges remain: long channel sales cycles and patchy data can make workflow and attribution tricky. But the trend is clear – today’s channel leaders want to prove that incentives drive ROI, or they won’t get next year’s budget. Key takeaway: This push for accountability is weeding out the lazy “spray and pray” incentives and favouring those designed with measurable goals in mind. |
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Participants found incentives hard to engage with. A major reason for low uptake: 44% of partner reps told us incentives were difficult to participate in, citing confusing processes or time-consuming manual steps. In short, many programs weren’t user-centric. |
User experience is finally a focus. Since the 2024 report, there’s been a notable shift toward partner-centric program design.
Vendors are simplifying incentive workflows – for example, ditching clunky claim forms for one-click deal registration and instant digital rewards. Real-time dashboards, mobile access, and automated progress updates are necessary to keep partners interested. Key takeaway: Making incentives “easy and even fun” is now seen as key to driving high participation. The result? Some programs have reversed the decline, with engagement rates rising where friction has been removed. |
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Rewards didn’t always match what participants want. Our 2024 report revealed a disconnect between what vendors offer and what partners value.
For instance, many vendors kept pushing low-budget merchandise or one-size-fits-all prizes, whereas partner surveys showed preferences for more flexible rewards (like cash equivalents or choice of experiences). The wrong rewards can turn an otherwise good incentive into a flop. |
Incentives get more personal and instant. Over the past year, savvy vendors have started to align rewards with partner preferences. There’s a clear move toward digital rewards and flexibility: gift cards, charitable donation options – anything that lets a winner choose what’s meaningful to them.
Speed of fulfilment must improve too: participants expect to receive their rewards in real time (e.g. an e-gift card delivered within seconds of a claim being approved). This instant gratification is huge – it keeps motivation high. Additionally, with global programs regional and cultural differences need to be considered. Key takeaway: The bottom line is that incentives in 2025 must be more participant-centric, using choice and immediacy to boost partner participation, excitement and goodwill. |
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Incentive budgets varied wildly. We saw no consistent spend level – 35% of incentives ran on shoestring budgets under £10k while ~18% had hefty budgets over £100k. Many vendors were essentially under-funding incentives and still expecting big results.
Not surprisingly, those who invested more tended to see better outcomes. (In fact, 67% of vendors who spent <£10k failed to hit their ROI target, whereas 63% of those spending ≥£25k met or beat their targets.) |
More investment where it counts. Looking at 2024–25, budget trends have bifurcated. On one hand, channel incentive spend is up overall – vendors that saw ROI are doubling down (remember nearly 40% increased marketing budgets this year), aiming to stand out in the crowded channel.
On the other hand, companies that ran token efforts are rethinking strategy: some are regrouping to design fewer but more substantial incentives rather than many trivial ones. Key takeaway. The lesson from last year holds true – under-invested, “beige” incentives don’t move the needle. We’re seeing a tilt toward quality over quantity – better-funded campaigns with personal, meaningful rewards, tailored for impact. |
Introducing the five pillars for strategic planning and delivery for success in 2026
The new trends and market dynamics in the channel incentives space provide important context as we adapt to a future of affordable automation. For every leader involved in sales, there are five pillars that should be used to inform strategy:
Pillar 1: Diverse partner ecosystems demand new incentives
Vendors are no longer dealing with just traditional resellers. Influencers, referral partners, cloud marketplaces – the partner landscape is broader in 2025. This has spurred demand for incentive programs that can motivate non-traditional partner roles (e.g. a referral partner might need a different reward structure than a reseller sales rep).
Our research, alongside that from analysts such as Canalys and others, indicates vendors are seeking flexible incentive platforms that can handle these emerging partner types. In short, the incentive strategies of yesterday are straining to cover today’s ecosystem-driven go-to-market models.
Strategic tip: Look for out-of-the-box solutions that cater to this complexity.
Pillar 2: Mid-market and “long tail” vendors can enter the fray
One of the most exciting shifts is the democratisation of channel incentives. Historically, incentive programs were the domain of large enterprises – smaller companies often felt left out due to cost and complexity
But in 2025, mid-sized tech vendors and even start-ups are looking to jump in, aided by more accessible technology.
Strategic tip: You can generate channel incentives that drive pipeline and revenue when you are bold with your technology decisions. You can still be small and deliver – this isn’t only for the Fortune 500. And for larger vendors, don’t forget to look over your shoulder.
Pillar 3: Data-driven incentives & AI
Another new theme is the rise of analytics and AI in incentive program management. Vendors are drowning in data from CRMs, PRM portals, and sales tools – much of it is poor quality, with data from different systems difficult to combine – and they’re looking for an incentive platform that proves ROI and turns data into insight.
Platforms must evolve to use AI to analyse partner behaviour, e.g. to suggest an optimal reward to re-engage a partner who’s slowed down. While still nascent, AI-driven incentive optimisation is on the radar for 2025 and beyond. There’s also growing interest in using AI to combat fraud in incentive claims, and to personalise communications at scale (e.g. using AI to tailor incentive email content to different partner personas).
The new generation of tools is capitalising on this trend by baking advanced analytics and AI into the platform experience – a stark contrast to legacy systems that mainly just track points.
Strategic tip: Data-driven “smart” incentives will be a major talking point in the coming year, as vendors seek not just to run incentives, but to continuously tune them for maximum ROI. It’s never too late to start on this journey, and no step is too small.
Pillar 4: Focus on speed and agility
In today’s fast-moving market, vendors want to launch promotions in days, not months. One echo we heard throughout 2025 is that traditional incentive rollouts take too long – by the time an incentive is live, the window of opportunity might be gone.
This has led to a “need for speed” in incentive management. Vendors are gravitating towards platforms that promise extremely quick setup, even self-service configuration of new campaigns on the fly. By contrast, traditional approaches often took at least 4–6 weeks to coordinate with IT, legal, and fulfilment providers.
The ability to spin up tactical spiffs or flash incentives in near-real-time is a competitive advantage – it lets vendors capitalise on immediate sales priorities (say, moving out quarter-end excess inventory) or respond to competitor moves swiftly. Agility is also about running incentives with minimal admin overhead – lean channel teams want automated workflows that don’t bog them down.
Strategic tip: In 2026, we’ll see more of this “lighter, faster” mindset take hold, especially among challenger brands that can’t afford long delays. What’s your plan to adjust the company culture so it successfully competes on this new stage?
Pillar 5: Proving the payoff with stats
The challenger tone isn’t just about bravado; it’s backed by numbers. Across the industry, there’s been an effort to quantify incentive impact more tangibly to justify programs. Case in point: incentive initiatives are being linked to metrics like deal registration uplift, partner engagement rates, and incremental revenue.
At Incentivizer™, our clients have seen at least a 35% uplift in deal registrations and a ~54% increase in partner engagement on average. Collectively, we’ve helped drive over $1.1 billion in closed-channel revenue to date.
Strategic tip: These kinds of statistics are powerful – they not only validate the approach but also set new benchmarks for what “good” looks like in channel incentives. How can your organisation maximise the advantage that data can bring to your sales pipeline and deal reg?
Incentivizer™ – Welcome to the new era of channel incentives
The channel incentives landscape has evolved significantly since our 2024 report. The core challenges we identified remain very real, but the awareness and will to solve them have grown.
Vendors worldwide are waking up to both the necessity of great incentive programs and the use of new approaches to make them work. We have more data than ever proving what works, more urgency to fix what doesn’t, and a climate of disruption that favours fresh thinking over business-as-usual.
As we move into 2026, keep an eye on how these themes interconnect: the continual, rising importance of the channel, the persistent execution gaps, and the emergence of new solutions.
Together, they paint a picture of a market on the cusp of change. And it’s exactly this backdrop that makes us so excited about Incentivizer’s role – as a catalyst for better, bolder, and more inclusive channel incentive strategies that will shape the future of vendor-channel relationships and sales. The challenge has been issued to the status quo, and we’re here to lead the charge.
Challenge the status quo and grow your business with incentives that work. Incentivizer is built to win.
All these trends – the enduring pains and the fresh opportunities – create the backdrop for Incentivizer.
When we say Incentivizer levels the incentives playing field, we mean it is purpose-built to address the very issues outlined above and enable a new era of effective, inclusive channel incentives. Here’s how we position our platform considering the market context:
- Built for Everyone, Not Just the Giants: Incentivizer is a stand-alone SaaS platform born from the idea that any vendor – from an emerging SaaS disruptor with 20 employees to a global hardware behemoth – should be able to run world-class incentive programs.
It strips away the traditional barriers (hefty fees, long deployments) that kept smaller players out. For the first time, companies of all sizes can access proven incentive technology. Whether a client wants to run a simple quarterly sales push or orchestrate a multi-country year-long campaign, they can do it on the same easy-to-use platform, and scale it as they grow. This is transformative – we’re injecting democracy into channel incentives.
- Fast, Agile, and Zero Headaches: In the past, launching an incentive felt like launching a space shuttle – lots of coordination, countdowns, and crossed fingers. Incentivizer turns that on its head. We enable vendors to go to market with new incentives in days, not weeks.
Thanks to best-practice templates and an intuitive platform, “time-to-launch” is minimal. There’s no complex coding or heavy integration needed to start. And everything is managed in one place: from participant sign-up, to tracking, to reward fulfilment and real-time reporting.
Essentially, we committed ourselves to eliminating the traditional administrative and technical headaches of running incentives, so marketers and channel managers can focus on strategy and relationships, not admin and paperwork. This agility and simplicity resonate strongly in a market that values speed – it’s exactly what a challenger brand should deliver to help customers outmanoeuvre their larger competitors.
- Laser-Focused on Partner Engagement: Our philosophy is that incentives only work if partners love participating. So, Incentivizer was designed with the partner experience front and centre. The platform makes it simple for partner reps to join programs and stay engaged: single-click submissions, real-time personal dashboards, and even automated notifications when they hit a target.
Importantly, rewards through Incentivizer are delivered in real time via digital channels, so partners get that instant gratification that drives repeat behaviour. By aligning with how modern participants want to interact – mobile, fast, fun – we help vendors vastly improve on the traditional participation rates.
As a challenger product, we are obsessed with partner engagement outcomes (not just feature checkboxes), because that’s ultimately what makes incentives successful. Our promise is to turn incentives from a chore into an experience that partners actually seek out.
- Outcome-Driven and ROI-Centric: From the ground up, Incentivizer was built to answer the question: “What did we get from this incentive?” We give vendors clarity into ROI that simply wasn’t possible before, without tons of manual analysis.
Every Incentivizer campaign reports against concrete objectives (e.g. number of new deal registrations, pipeline $ generated, training completions, etc.), and the dashboard shows progress and results against those targets in real time. At the end of an incentive, vendors can literally see ROI at a glance. This degree of transparency and accountability is part of “ripping off the plaster” of vague reporting that plagued legacy programs and platforms.
In an era when every marketing pound is scrutinised, we position Incentivizer as the platform that proves and improves the value of incentives, making the case for these programs stronger than ever. We’re turning incentives into a reliable, data-driven growth lever instead of a leap of faith.
- Levelling the Playing Field in Practice: Finally, when we say, “revolutionise how vendors manage incentives,” it’s not hyperbole – it’s about fundamentally changing the game so that even a challenger vendor can outperform the big players in channel engagement.
Incentivizer offers transparent, pay-as-you-grow pricing (no more opaque custom quotes that scare off smaller budgets), making enterprise-grade capabilities accessible to all. It’s offered as a subscription that flexes with needs and usage, ensuring affordability for lean teams. A vendor doesn’t need a huge IT project to get started.
By knocking down cost and complexity barriers, we empower a 20-person software company to run incentives just as effectively as a 10,000-person market leader. That is the essence of levelling the field. And as these up-and-comers see success (hitting that 35% pipeline uplift, for instance), it forces everyone in the market – including the big incumbents – to step up their game.
In that way, Incentivizer isn’t just a product; it’s a catalyst pushing the whole channel incentives space forward into a more dynamic, innovative, and equitable state.
Join the revolution today
Join the Revolution Today
The industry is at an inflection point. Bold decisions and smart technology will define the winners—and Incentivizer™ is here to lead that change.
This isn’t just another tool. It’s the best incentive software platform, built to solve years of pain points and deliver a better way forward. Incentivizer empowers any vendor to design incentives that truly engage partners, accelerate sales, and drive measurable ROI.
By levelling the playing field, we’re unlocking untapped potential—more vendors energising more partners to achieve more growth. That’s the revolution in motion.
Ready to take the first step? Explore our pricing and plans or book a demo today and launch your first (or next) incentive with confidence.
