Driving Sales with Paperless Incentives

Toyota Motor Sales USA Known globally for progressive, efficient products, Toyota's decision to adopt paperless payments aligned with their efficient, clean solutions that make an environmental impact.

The Challenge

With thousands of sales professionals at over 1,400 dealers across the U.S., Toyota faced a major challenge around the production and distribution of their sales incentive payments. For years, paper checks seemed like the only legitimate payment method on which they could rely on. Yet despite its simplicity in concept, the use of paper proved to be incredibly complex, expensive and inefficient for Toyota. They had to produce the checks, purchasing large volumes of paper, ink and envelopes, and also had to establish a dedicated infrastructure of printers, computers and software; all major costs to continually produce upwards of 150,000 checks annually. Finally Toyota had to distribute these checks, typically batched for priority shipment, which cost upwards of $10 to $12. So, the distribution costs alone topped $180,000 annually.

The Solution

Toyota realized they had to find a solution that would free up their team, reduce and even eliminate their costs and get them out of the check-writing business. Their answer came with a program that quickly and effectively transitioned every incentive payment from the inefficient paper check to seamless, electronic delivery. For the solution they turned to Citi^® Prepaid Services, who helped design a fully custom-branded Toyota program that immediately eliminated their burden of checks. At the heart of this program is the customized Toyota Visa^® prepaid card, which every qualified sales professional receives a personalized version of. Sales incentives are automatically placed directly onto their card, cutting payment delivery time from weeks to days. Within weeks Toyota launched and was delivering paperless payments nationwide dramatically faster and at a fraction of the cost.

The Result

Toyota quickly eliminated the need to purchase and inventory paper, ink or envelopes. Their hardware costs to run the check process were also eliminated, requiring less space and personnel to manage. Toyota also saved countless hours producing, sorting, packaging and shipping checks, not to mention the required post-distribution management and research for inbound payment questions. The program also gave them a unique direct communication channel to their sales professionals who were usually employees of the dealership rather than Toyota.

The program's impact can be best illustrated with Toyota's most recent new market entry. When they launched the program, Toyota was also entering the U.S. truck market, a challenging segment traditionally dominated by a few select manufacturers. "When we launched our program, we decided to leverage the unique channel it gave us by putting the newly introduced Tacoma truck on the program website and materials, and even on our Toyota Card," said Warren Keckeisen, Incentives Administration Director, Toyota Motor Sales USA. "Our Citi Prepaid program allowed us to communicate directly with our individual sales professionals to educate them on our new truck line, and also allowed us to dynamically reallocate our incentive structure and enhance their performance. It was a solution that came at the right time for us."