Designing Dealer Schemes That Pay for Themselves

A dealer scheme is a simple promise: sell this much and we will pay you that much. Done well, it moves volume you would not otherwise have had and the reward costs less than the margin on the extra sales. Done badly, it pays dealers for what they would have sold anyway, trains them to wait for the next scheme, and eats the margin. The difference is almost entirely in the design, before the scheme starts. Here is a method that fits how schemes work in gamitrack.

What a scheme measures

A gamitrack scheme works on fulfilled secondary sales, meaning what the dealer actually supplied to shops, not what the dealer bought from you. You choose the basis:

• Kilograms, which suits products where weight is the common unit across SKUs,
• Amount, which suits mixed baskets where value is the better measure.

The scheme has a period (from and to dates), tiers, and an optional list of dealers it applies to. Each tier has a minimum, and a reward that is either a percentage or a fixed amount.

Why does the secondary basis matter? Because paying for primary purchases only rewards stuffing the dealer's godown. Paying on what reaches shops rewards actual market movement, which is what you are trying to buy.

Step 1: Start with the objective

Write one sentence. Examples:

• "Increase kg of the new 200 g pack reaching shops in the eastern region."
• "Lift the monthly secondary volume of our mid-sized dealers by a fixed share."
• "Move slow stock before expiry."

If you cannot state the objective in one line, you are building a gift, not a scheme.

Step 2: Find the baseline

Open Dealer sales and look at each target dealer's recent months of secondary sales. The baseline is what they sell without your scheme. Any reward you pay on the baseline is a pure cost. This is the most common leak.

The practical fix is to set the first tier above the baseline. A hypothetical example: if a dealer's recent monthly secondary sales are around 1,000 kg, set the first reward tier at 1,150 kg, so the scheme pays only for growth.

Step 3: Set tiers and test the margin

Draft two or three tiers. Keep them few, because every extra tier is something an officer must explain. Then test each tier on paper:

Item (hypothetical numbers)	Tier 1	Tier 2
Threshold (kg)	1,150	1,400
Extra kg over baseline	150	400
Gross margin per kg	Rs 20	Rs 20
Extra margin	Rs 3,000	Rs 8,000
Reward	Rs 1,500	Rs 4,000
Net gain	Rs 1,500	Rs 4,000

The point is not these numbers, which are invented, but the structure: for every tier, extra margin must clearly exceed total reward. Also consider the reward on the whole volume if it is a percentage of everything the dealer sells. A percentage on total sales may cost more than a fixed amount tied to growth.

Test the worst case too: what if every dealer reaches the top tier? If you cannot afford that outcome, the scheme is too generous.

Step 4: Create it and brief the field

Create the scheme under Schemes: a clear name and description, dates, the basis, tiers and the dealers it covers. Write the name for dealers, not for accountants, for example "Eastern region 200 g push".

Then brief your officers. They are the ones who will explain it in the shop and at the dealer's counter. Give them two sentences and the numbers of the tiers. A scheme nobody understands changes nothing.

Step 5: Watch it during the period

A scheme should not be a black box until the end. Each week:

1. Check Dealer sales for the scheme dealers' progress.
2. Identify dealers near a tier boundary and tell officers to prioritise them.
3. Identify dealers who are far behind and decide whether to call or leave them.

The progress conversation is where most of the value is created. A dealer 80 kg short of a reward in the last week will chase it; a dealer who has no idea where they stand will not.

Step 6: Approve rewards

At the end, award figures are calculated per dealer from the fulfilled secondary sales in the period. Review each one:

• Does the basis value look right against the dealer's orders?
• Were there unusual returns that should reduce the figure?
• Does the reward fit the tier?

Then approve. Approval credits the reward to the dealer's ledger, so it appears on their statement as a clear entry. Because the credit is visible and traceable, the dealer sees it, you see it and accounts reconcile it. Avoid paying rewards off-book in cash; it breaks every report that follows.

Step 7: Review the result honestly

After approval, compare:

• secondary sales in the scheme period against the previous period,
• cost of rewards against the extra margin,
• what happened in the first month after the scheme ended.

If sales fell sharply afterwards, you pulled demand forward rather than creating it. Use this to design the next scheme. See using sales data to plan production for how to read the pattern.

Design rules of thumb

• Pay for growth, not for existing volume.
• Keep it to three tiers or fewer.
• One objective per scheme.
• Run it for a defined short period. Always-on schemes become a discount.
• Let dealers know where they stand. Your officers can share progress weekly.
• Do not overlap schemes on the same dealers and products unless you have modelled the total payout.

Related reading

Schemes sit on top of price lists, which set the base margin: see setting different prices for dealers and retailers. The dealer's side of the story is in how dealers order and track.

Next steps

Schemes, targets and dealer sales live in the same workspace, so a scheme reads the same data as your reports. See the plans on the pricing page and the scheme setup article in the Help centre.