Sales incentives for customer service representatives vs. sales representatives

Sales incentives for customer service representatives vs. sales representatives

We are pushing for more up-selling with inbound calls in our call center. Can you offer some suggestions on effective sales incentive programs for call center agents? In your experience, are gifts the best way to reward performance? Or, are less tangible rewards such as employee of the month prizes or extra flex time just as effective?

    Requires Free Membership to View

    Login

    When you register, you'll begin receiving targeted emails from my team of award-winning editorial writers on the latest customer relationship management (CRM)and call center technology issues today. Our goal is to keep you informed on the hottest issues facing this fast-changing industry.

    Hannah Smalltree, Editorial Director

    By submitting your registration information to SearchCRM.com you agree to receive email communications from TechTarget and TechTarget partners. We encourage you to read our Privacy Policy which contains important disclosures about how we collect and use your registration and other information. If you reside outside of the United States, by submitting this registration information you consent to having your personal data transferred to and processed in the United States. Your use of SearchCRM.com is governed by our Terms of Use. You may contact us at webmaster@TechTarget.com.

Are your call center agents actually customer service representatives who have been tasked to sell, or an inside sales team who are sales representatives by trade? This is important to know because people in each role (customer service vs. sales) generally have different motivations when it comes to sales incentives. The trick is to actually ask these folks what motivates them, what is of personal importance to them, what will they find valuable.

But here are some general guidelines. Sales representatives are generally quite competitive and motivated by the perception of "winning" (not just money, believe it or not). To incent this group, published stack rankings, a "president's club" trip or some other visible means of identifying "winners" works best when in combination with a good mix of variable and non-variable compensation. Customer service representatives, on the other hand, are generally motivated by the feeling of having "helped someone" and are not usually competitive, so the stacked ranking thing will go over very poorly with this group. Here, the emphasis should be on non-variable compensation with some achievement-based variable compensation mixed in. While variable compensation could look like gifts, "employee of the month" prizes or extra flex time (and these are all good ideas), I suggest just asking them. Extra dollars in their paychecks might be most welcome.

This was first published in March 2007