Did you know that less than a quarter of sales emails are opened by recipients, and it takes an average of 18 calls to connect with a buyer on the phone, according to Gartner?
The sales team at BHN Rewards was feeling that struggle, says Adam Ross, a Senior Manager of Sales Development at Blackhawk Network (BHN). Like any sales team, “getting clients and prospects to respond to our outreach is always a huge challenge,” says Ross, who leads a group of reps tasked with driving acquisition.
Since they were already selling BHN Rewards, the solution seemed obvious: Ross and Senior Director Landon Teague carved out budget to empower their own reps with digital incentives.
READ MORE: Download our Sales Playbook on using rewards for prospects and customers
Teague and Ross took advantage of BHN Rewards’ integration capability (with Salesforce, in this case, but it also integrates with HubSpot and Microsoft Dynamics 365), so each rep could send incentives directly from the CRM.
“By offering an incentive, it helps them get that response rate up. It piques curiosity,” Ross says. “Plus, it helps us speed up transactions, getting prospects to attend a demo or take action on the agreement with more velocity.”
Reps use variable reward denominations, depending on the action being requested. Within just a few months, the success was obvious. The team spent less than $2,000 on rewards and got it back nearly 30 times over, helping drive close to $60,000 in sales. After all, you have to spend money to make money!
Feedback has been positive from recipients as well, especially for rewards sent using the Smart Global Choice feature, which presents a choice of digital gift cards and prepaid cards. Recipients love the experience, Ross says, including delivery from BHN’s own recognized domain, a branded email with a custom message, and the ability to quickly and easily pick the reward they prefer — the ultimate personalization. “And quite frankly, they’re choosing all kinds of different rewards that I probably wouldn’t have thought about offering!” Ross adds.
On the back end, managing the incentives program has been a breeze.
For the team leaders, it’s nearly a “set-it-and-forget-it” scenario, Teague says, where they created campaigns in BHN Rewards for different purposes and denominations and then designated budgets for each group of reps. When the funds run out (or when they need to stretch the budget a little before the end of the quarter), it’s easy to replenish the correct cash pool.
“The control aspect is very helpful, to be able to set reps loose to run their deals as they see fit, but within the parameters and their budget constraints,” Ross says. “It’s great to see them pushing toward their goals and using this tool in the toolbox.”
Plus, he adds, “the CRM integration is fantastic and works great. We haven’t had any issues with it, and it’s super easy for my team to send rewards efficiently.” All they do is pull up the lead or customer record, click the “Reward with BHN” button, choose the appropriate campaign and reward value, type in the message, and hit “Send.”
Ross and Teague also rave about the reporting capabilities, which streamline the process of pulling data to share with other stakeholders. That complete visibility and organization make it easy for them to understand their incentives spend and ROI.
So far, “the numbers are impressive,” Teague says. “The recipient choice feature is really important in the success. Letting them select their own digital reward enhances the experience and allows the tool and incentives to be more versatile.”
Ready to see how BHN Rewards can make your sales team more successful? Request a demo today!
Hannah is a reformed journalist who has more than 15 years of experience and now focuses on content marketing for innovative tech companies.
Hannah is a reformed journalist who has more than 15 years of experience and now focuses on content marketing for innovative tech companies.
