Hi Tracey! I am in the B2B healthcare SaaS space, so we are very limited in what legal and compliance allow us to do.
We have 2 different incentives for our program. If someone at a practice takes a call for us, we can pay them directly. If we coordinate an onsite visit, we pay the practice directly since it’s a disruption to the whole office.
When we revamped the program, legal conducted a third-party valuation that set the incentive amounts, intended to be “fair market value for the time spent.” Legal put together the terms, but we can only pay advocates for a max of 10 calls a year. They also sign an agreement, and after completing a call or an onsite, they have to fill out a W-9 and direct deposit form. This makes the process quite complicated, requiring numerous forms for each advocate and several touchpoints. They only have to submit the financial forms once unless something changes. We do about 600 advocate activities a year, so it’s a heavy lift. Since we are subject to regulations, there is a lot we can’t do, like offer conference tickets or gift cards. Happy to chat more!