Accelerating and winning deals through efficient customer incentive governance

Offering customer incentives is a tried-and-true strategy for accelerating and winning deals, especially when supported by effective customer incentive governance. Whether the incentives take the form of dedicated support teams who can help customers navigate challenges with a product technology, or financial discounts and credits which provide customers with a clear incentive to migrate from competitor products, customer incentives are an essential tool for any successful business aiming to grow their revenue and market impact. For additional insights on strategic decision-making and business growth, refer to Harvard Business Review.

As important as these incentives are, it is equally critical to develop the processes and structures that ensure the right incentives go to the right customers, supported by strong customer incentive governance. This ensures that all decision-making and financial accounting are completed with efficiency, accuracy, and auditability. In this case study, we share how Nextant partnered with a Fortune 10 client for over five years to develop and operate efficient processes, modern tools, and intuitive reporting that connected field sales teams and executive decision-makers to win deals with some of the largest enterprise customers in the world.

The client, a Fortune 10 company, had determined that customer incentives were an increasingly important part of their strategy to win large deals with their enterprise customers. Due to the size of these enterprise deals and the magnitude of the financial incentives required to secure them, strong customer incentive governance became essential. C-suite executives needed to be the final decision-makers regarding where incentives should be applied and what the expectations would be for deals that received them.

After sizing and setting aside the funds required to accelerate these deals, the next order of business was to ensure that the right incentives were going to the right opportunities, supported by strong customer incentive governance. With this in place, Nextant’s client needed efficient ways for global sales teams to escalate time-sensitive enterprise deals requiring incentives, along with a documented approval process involving executive decision-makers and auditable financial accounting to ensure that all incentive resources were properly leveraged to win deals and secure long-term enterprise customers.

SOLUTION:

Nextant assembled a multidisciplinary team of business consultants and data analysts to develop a comprehensive solution package of processes, tools, and reports that enabled our client to efficiently leverage and document customer incentives on enterprise deals for over five years. This approach was grounded in strong customer incentive governance, ensuring consistency, transparency, and control across all initiatives. This long-term project has included the following consulting services and solutions:

Incentive Request Intake: Nextant partnered with our clients to create a streamlined process and tools for global sales teams to submit requests for enterprise customer incentives 24 hours per day, 365 days per year. As part of a robust customer incentive governance framework, Nextant team members review incentive requests to ensure that all required information is provided and that corporate finance requirements are met or exceeded. When a request is missing key information, Nextant consultants work closely with sales teams to refine and complete the submission before it is forwarded for executive decision-making.

Executive Presentations: On a weekly basis, the Nextant team supported the preparation of executive summary documents and other required assets to inform decision-makers of the largest deals requiring corporate support and customer incentive investment. As part of a structured customer incentive governance approach, these assets provided executives with detailed information on the status of enterprise opportunities, the financial implications of leveraging customer incentives, and the strategy for ensuring opportunities led to successfully landed deals.

 Comprehensive Reporting: To ensure that all necessary stakeholders had access to accurate reporting on enterprise deals and customer incentives, Nextant developed a suite of Power BI reports that provided real-time information on tracked opportunities, customer demographics, investment details, and landed revenue associated with a variety of products and services. As part of a comprehensive customer incentive governance framework, Nextant also built an intuitive business application utilizing Power Apps to enable corporate teams to efficiently track customer, opportunity, and investment details, supporting trend identification and advanced analysis. For additional best practices for Power BI, refer to Microsoft Learn.

 Event and Communication Management: Once the effectiveness of the customer incentive governance program was established for our client’s largest enterprise customers, Nextant supported a series of smaller programs focused on opportunities from targeted geographies and strategic industries. Nextant consultants provided essential support in the orchestration of deal discussion events with regional sales teams and decision-makers, while also creating timely communications for global distribution with data-driven summaries of opportunities and awarded incentives.

RESULTS AND IMPACT:

The comprehensive support provided by Nextant over five plus years helped our Fortune 10 client establish predictable and effective means of awarding, tracking, and documenting customer incentives for a significant portion of their largest enterprise deals. The processes, tools, and reports our team developed led to:

eady to strengthen your customer incentive governance and accelerate deal execution? Connect with Nextant to evaluate your current processes and unlock greater visibility, control, and business impact.