Sales incentives for customer service representatives vs. sales representatives

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.