You've budgeted $200,000 in co‑op and MDF this year.
Your dealers have used $40,000.
On the P&L, it shows up as "allocated." On the ground, it looks like this: a few dealers max out their funds every year, most use little or nothing, and some don't seem to know what's available to them.
Meanwhile, those same partners tell your reps: "We love your line." "We want to sell more of it." "We just need a little help with marketing." On paper, you're giving them that help. In practice, the dollars sit unused and sell‑through stays flat.
The point isn't the $160,000 that wasn't spent. It's that the sales activity those dollars were meant to create didn't happen.
You’re left wondering:
“If our dealers want to sell more, why aren't they using the money we're giving them to do it? Is the problem the dealers—or the program?”
If that sounds familiar, this article lays out a focused 90‑day plan to turn underused co‑op, MDF, and incentive programs into one shared campaign your best partners can actually run.
You’ll see how to:
- Tier partners into simple A/B/C groups
- Choose one hero offer or product family to rally around
- Build a ready‑to‑run campaign kit with simple rules and minimal reporting
All inside a single quarter. One program. One offer. One shared calendar.
Same rhythm as your key accounts, different lens
If you've read our piece on key account management, this will feel familiar. Key accounts get a 1:1 lens — specific people, specific plans. Channel tiers get a 1:many lens — groups of similar partners running the same shared campaign. Both run on the same 90‑day cycle: clarify focus, build the plan, run the play and review it. The names on the scorecard change. The cycle doesn't.
Why co‑op and MDF sit unused
Before changing the program, identify where it's breaking.
Most underperforming co-op programs have friction in one or more of four places: understanding the program, executing the marketing, knowing what to promote, or measuring what happened.
1. The rules are too complex.
Eligibility, reimbursement rates, time windows, documentation… over time, programs grow layers.
Busy dealers don’t have the patience to decode them. If it takes a PDF, an email thread, and a phone call to understand how to participate, most quietly opt out.
2. The work sits on the dealer’s shoulders.
In many programs, dealers get access to dollars, but not a plan.
They’re expected to decide what to promote, write the emails, build the ads, and track the results — all while running their own business.
Without a clear, ready‑to‑run campaign, co‑op becomes one more thing on a long list, not a practical way to move your line.
3. Support is spread across too many options.
Over the years, you add:
- Multiple product‑specific promos
- Different offers by region or dealer size
- One‑off incentives for special situations
Each idea makes sense in isolation, but together they create noise. Partners see many small, disconnected offers instead of one clear program worth organizing around.
4. There’s no simple view of who’s using it.
Finally, most manufacturers lack a basic “partner health” and program view:
- Who is eligible vs who opted in
- Which activities actually ran
- How sell‑through changed for those who participated
Without that, it’s hard to know which efforts to double down on and which to quietly retire.
The rest of this article assumes co‑op and incentives are part of your strategy. The goal is to use the next 90 days to turn them from a budget line item into one shared campaign your best dealers and distributors are eager to run.
What we mean by co‑op, MDF, and incentive programs
When we say co‑op, MDF, and incentives, we’re talking about three common tools:
Co‑op (co‑operative marketing funds): dollars a manufacturer sets aside to reimburse dealers for approved marketing activities that promote the manufacturer’s products. Often tied to past or projected purchases.
MDF (marketing development funds): discretionary funds the manufacturer can use to support growth activities with specific partners or in specific markets, usually outside the strict co‑op formula.
Incentive programs: spiffs, rebates, volume bonuses, or other rewards that encourage dealers, reps, or installers to focus on certain products or behaviors.
In this article, we treat all three as ingredients in one simple shared program, not separate, competing offers.
Weeks 1–4
One program, one hero offer, simple rules
Weeks 1-4:
Segment partners into A/B/C tiers.
Start by segmenting existing dealers and distributors into three tiers using simple criteria: current volume, growth potential, and engagement (responsiveness, willingness to try new things).
For this 90‑day sprint, A‑tier partners get the full program and most of your attention. B‑tier get a lighter version, or join once the playbook is proven. C‑tier stay on the baseline program.
A practical way to start: sort last year's revenue by partner. Mark the top 10–20 percent who also pick up the phone and try new lines when you ask — that's your A‑tier. The next band with decent volume and potential interest becomes B‑tier. Many of your key accounts will already sit inside A‑tier.
Weeks 1-4:
Select the hero offer.
Next, pick one line or program to rally the quarter around. Ask: "If our best dealers really leaned into this for one quarter, would it meaningfully change revenue or margin?"
Take a kitchen cabinetry manufacturer with a broad door‑style catalog and thin margins across most finishes. Rather than promoting the full line, they picked one upgrade — a soft‑close, full‑overlay door option with a higher margin — as the quarter's hero offer. The question they asked: "If 20 A‑tier dealers featured this upgrade in their showroom displays and one shared campaign, would it move margin?" The answer was yes, so that upgrade became the only thing the quarter's program was built around — not a new line, not a new catalog, just one clear thing to sell harder.
Your version might be a higher‑margin surface, hardware, or finish option; a system configuration that solves a specific, profitable problem; or a bundle you want presented more often in quotes. If you can't see it moving a line item on the P&L with better dealer focus, it's not a hero offer.
Weeks 1-4:
Define eligibility and support in plain language.
Translate your co‑op/MDF rules into something reps and dealers can actually remember. For each tier, answer in one or two sentences: Who qualifies? What do they get? What do they need to do? Legal and finance can keep the detailed policy — partners need a plain‑English summary that fits in an email or one slide.
Weeks 1-4:
Build a ready‑to‑run campaign kit.
Create a simple kit that turns your program into a shared campaign: dealer email templates, co‑branded social posts, in‑store or display pieces for the hero product, and a one‑page "how to run this in 30 days" guide. The test: an A‑tier dealer should be able to say yes, drop in their logo and list, and start running the campaign without inventing it from scratch.
Making dealer campaigns easier to run
One of the biggest reasons co‑op programs stall is that every dealer has to figure out "how to send this" on their own website, Facebook page, and email list. Tools like Peratomic can help by distributing a shared campaign across many dealer sites and channels at once, while still letting each partner brand it as their own. You define the offer and assets once; the platform helps get them live where they need to be..
Weeks 5–12
Make participation easy in 2‑week sprints
With the program, hero offer, and kit defined, the next eight weeks are about execution.
Treat it as four 2‑week sprints.
Weeks 5-6:
Recruit and launch with A‑tier partners.
Reps and channel managers personally invite A‑tier partners into the program, walk them through the offer and kit, and agree on what they'll run and when.
Goal: Get your best partners to clearly opt in or out and schedule their first campaign activities.
Weeks 7-8:
Support and expand.
Gather feedback on activities (training held, display updated, emails sent) from early adopters, clarify confusing parts of the kit, and invite select B‑tier partners with solid potential. Keep the hero offer and core story the same — you're expanding one program, not launching a new one.
Goal: Make sure early A‑tier partners actually run the first core activity and validate the campaign before inviting select B‑tier partners.
Weeks 9-10:
Drive adoption and sell‑through.
Focus reps on partners who said yes but haven't executed key activities. Add one support action for engaged partners — a mini event, extra display, joint outreach. Offer lagging partners a smaller way to participate.
Goal: Increase execution depth across participating partners and start seeing movement in sell‑through for the hero line.
Weeks 11-12:
Review, learn, and set up next quarter.
Compare co‑op/MDF utilization and sell‑through for participating partners vs. those who didn't run the program. Decide whether the next 90‑day cycle extends the same program, adapts it to another product family, or shifts to a different constraint.
Goal: Turn program activity into a simple decision: continue, expand, or pivot in the next 90‑day cycle.
A simple "partner health" and program scorecard
For this sprint, you only need a handful of numbers: eligible A/B partners, partners who opted in, co‑op/MDF utilization, key activities completed, and sell‑through change for the hero line vs. the prior 90 days. These metrics can live in your existing CRM or BI tools.
Eligible → Invited → Opted In → Executed → Sell-Through
Each stage helps identify where the program is breaking down. For example:
- 30 A-tier dealers eligible
- 25 invited
- 18 opted in
- 9 actually launched
- 6 generated measurable sell-through lift
If only 8 of 25 invited dealers opted in, you'd look harder at the offer, program rules, or how it's being presented. But here, 18 said yes and only 9 executed. The primary failure is execution. The next quarter's work should therefore reduce execution friction rather than increase MDF or recruit more dealers.
If utilization is low and sell-through is flat, don't write it off as a lazy-dealer problem. Use the scorecard to find where participation is breaking down — invitation, opt-in, execution, or results — and make that the focus of the next cycle.
If participation and execution go up and the hero line moves faster with participating partners than with comparable non-participants, you've earned the right to double down and refine the program next quarter.
Your Next Step:
Decide if co‑op deserves the next 90 days
Before you rebuild your co-op program, make sure it's actually the constraint worth solving.
Start with three questions:
- What percentage of the co‑op/MDF dollars you budgeted last quarter did eligible partners actually use?
- Which 3–5 dealers moved the most product with program support, and how does that compare with similar dealers that didn't participate?
- Is there one hero offer your A-tier partners could realistically rally around in the next 90 days?
If utilization is low, participation is weak, and sell-through isn't moving, your dealer program may deserve the next 90 days of focus.
But don't assume it does just because there's room for improvement. If the bigger constraint is reaching more of the right buyers, generating qualified leads, or converting existing opportunities, improving co-op first may not produce the greatest business impact.
Not sure this is the constraint to solve?
A complimentary Fásnua Marketing Focus Session can help you decide. You'll complete a short assessment first. Then we'll work together for 20–30 minutes to look at your current marketing, identify the constraint most likely to be limiting growth, and determine where the next 90 days should focus.
You'll leave with a plain-English 90-day focus statement you can discuss with your leadership team and a short list of directions to explore next.
Already know dealer co-op is the constraint?
You have the playbook. You can use the framework in this article to build and run the program internally.
Or, if you'd rather have help putting it into action, our Channel Program Sprint follows this same 90-day framework. We work with your team to tier partners, define the hero offer and program rules, build the campaign kit, launch with participating dealers, and track execution and sell-through.
Either way, the objective is the same: put the next 90 days behind the constraint that matters most — and measure whether solving it changed the business.