At a Glance

• 38% of vendor finance programs running quarterly dealer contests cannot identify a measurable change in deal quality, deal mix, or dealer activation produced by those contests over a trailing 24-month window (Secured Research)
• Most spiffs reward the deals dealers would have submitted anyway — the dealers who win them are the same dealers who lead the program every quarter regardless of incentive
• Contests that meaningfully shift behavior are structured around the deal types the program cannot otherwise get — used equipment, smaller-ticket, longer-term, deferred-payment, or first-time-financed customer
• The most expensive contest a vendor finance program runs is the one nobody on the sales side can explain to a dealer principal in one sentence

The Spiff That Pays for Volume You Already Had