Sell-in and sell-through incentives: what is the difference?

A sell-in incentive rewards a distributor, dealer or store for buying your stock. A sell-through incentive rewards the people who then sell that stock on to the end customer.

Both move product, but they move it to different places. Sell-in fills a warehouse or a shelf. Sell-through empties it.

Sell-in: rewarding the order

Sell-in incentives are paid on what the channel buys from you: volume rebates, order bonuses, early-order deals. They are simple to run because the data is already yours. Every order is in your own system.

The risk is that you reward stock, not sales. A distributor can earn the bonus by loading up, and the stock then sits until the next promotion clears it. Your sell-in numbers look strong while the end customer has not bought anything yet.

Sell-through: rewarding the sale

Sell-through incentives are paid on what leaves the channel: the unit a rep sold, the job a trade counter quoted, the product a floor staffer recommended. They reward the behaviour you actually want, which is someone choosing your product at the moment of sale.

The catch is data. To pay on sell-through you need sales data from the channel, not just your own orders. That is the part most programmes struggle with, and the reason many fall back to sell-in.

Which one should you use?

• Use sell-in when the goal is ranging: getting a new product stocked, or winning shelf space at launch.
• Use sell-through when the product is already stocked and the goal is that the seller reaches for it first.
• Many programmes use both, with sell-in for launches and an always-on sell-through programme for everything else.

How Vouchley handles sell-through

Vouchley earns points on the sale. Your sales data reaches us in whatever form you already have it, from a CSV file to a direct connection, and the people who made each sale earn points they spend in a catalogue of real, brand-name products. You set what earns points and the monthly budget target; we build and run the programme.

Read more in the glossary, or see how it works.