Jan 11, 2021
Andrew Butt is a Co-founder & CEO of a Silicon Valley venture-backed SaaS platform called Enable, which deals with rebate management. He has been a director of several other companies and not-for-profits. He has started and grown multiple businesses into profit and positive cash flow, including exit to PE.
In this episode, Andrew talks about using rebates to incentivize distributors to meet the goals manufacturers have in mind. He shares how manufacturers create different rebate programs with various supply chains to work closely together to provide consumers better service.
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Why you have to check out today’s podcast:
- Find out how Enable can help manufacturers deal with data flow complexities and execute well the rebate programs for the different supply chains involved
- Understand why you should go for rebates rather than discounts in a B2B setup
- Find out how rebates provide a symbiotic relationship among the supply chain in the B2B sector
“Definitely have some kind of rebate incentives in place because I do genuinely believe that they can drive that behavior in a way that a pure price on its own can't do. That, I think even with rebates, keep it simple, make it clear to customers what they need to do and what benefits they can get.”
- Andrew Butt
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Topics Covered:
01:12 - How Andrew found his path to a Pricing career
02:06 - What kind of rebate is Andrew talking about
02:34 - How different is a B2B rebate from a consumer-type rebate
03:32 - Talking about rebate’s bad reputation with B2C
04:46 - Addressing rebates’ bad reputation in the B2B sector
05:40 - Why go for rebates than just discounts
07:15 - The need for data sharing between manufacturers and distributors
09:20 - How rebates work outside of the usual supply chains
10:09 - The disadvantage of manufacturers incentivizing end-customers directly
10:59 - What problem does Enable help to solve
13:31 - Automating transactions, especially where a rebate is concerned
14:22 - How Enable helps companies on what they are already doing in terms of rebate execution
15:47 - Helping companies realize the power of rebates
17:34 - How rebates can be very effective
19:02 - What is ‘ship and debit’
19:41 - Industries where he sees rebates successful aside from warehousing or distribution
21:40 - Why is hardware companies more likely to have rebates than software companies
22:37 - The most creative rebates he has seen
23:49 - Big drivers for creative behavior inside a channel
24:56 - Andrew’s best pricing advice that can greatly impact your business
Key Takeaways:
“I think rebates generally are all about driving behavior. And because they are claimed back retrospectively, you have to do something to collect the rebate. That's how it's designed to drive behavior.” - Andrew Butt
“Rebates are the currency of joint business partners that exist between trading partners. So, it's a lot more kind of ongoing than just a B2C type one-off rebate situation.” - Andrew Butt
“Rebates are not at all a bad thing like we might think about with some of those consumer nightmares. It really is about a genuine and very effective incentive program similar to what you might have with your own sales team.” - Andrew Butt
“We had many situations where manufacturers were not paying the rebate that was promised, not because they were trying to be malicious, but they just couldn't calculate it and couldn't work it out. You could have situations where distributors abused manufacturers and claimed too much more than what was due. And the whole idea that we've been talking through here, which is so powerful, was just not being executed well. Enable saw the opportunity to automate that with a SaaS software platform, which is exactly what we've done.” - Andrew Butt
“We really believe that in every trading relationship, any of the buying and selling relationships, there should be these intelligent kinds of deals, these incentive deals in place that can be kind of tracked on both sides using the same language, and then each party can be rewarded when they hit the goals.” - Andrew Butt
Connect with Andrew Butt:
Connect with Mark Stiving:
- Email: mark@impactpricing.com