How Do You Compensate a B2B Teleprospecting Rep?
If you are anything like my colleagues and I here at AG, figuring out the best way to effectively compensate a teleprospecting rep is a never ending struggle. Since 2002, we've done our best to refine the process and I think we may have achieved a keeper with our FY'10 plan.
I'd like to share the basic principles with which we go about developing our comp plans:
1. Imagine What Your Perfect Rep Looks Like (From a Performance Perspective)
Take time to sit back and imagine your perfect employee. Specifically, what kind of output do you want from them over the course of each day. Remember, there are four main areas that make for a successful teleprospector - activity, quality conversations (QC's), leads passed, and overall lead quality. Take each category listed above and determine how your "super rep" would perform in each one. There is your base line metrics for creating your comp plan.
2. Spread the Wealth
Take the total amount of your available per rep payout and divide it across the 4 areas above. Build the dollar amount earned to a crescendo. Start with a smaller amount devoted to incenting activity, a larger amount to be earned for number of QC's, an even larger amount for number of leads passed, and top it all off with the largest amount of comp devoted to the quality of those leads (as gathered from the sales people receiving them). Compensating your reps in each category ensures that you are covering all your bases. Having the largest dollar amount be tied to the overall quality of their opportunities ensures that you've got a staff that devotes the majority of their efforts on the quality of their product (their leads).
To Compete or Not to Compete?
Depending on your taste for competition in your organization, you can shake up the above format a bit to insent some healthy competition across your teleprospecting organization. At AG we have what we call the monthly leaderboard. We have cut out the activity, QC, and leads portion of the comp plan and made it a competition instead of an individual goal. The top "x" number of reps in each category receive a much larger amount of money than if we kept those goals individual. We left the quality goal as an individual so that every rep has the opportunity earn some money on a monthly basis.
Whether your want to foster some competition or not, we believe it's critical to know your super rep profile before you decide what kind of behavior you want to comp on. Once you've established that, it is our opionion that you spread the comp dollars across all of those areas. The idea here is that you've got a team of people who know that everything they do over the course of the day (whether it be making a cold dial, or following up with a sales rep do find out how a lead turned out) can earn them compensation. It makes everything important and creates a greater sense of focus and consistent drive both individually and for your whole organization.
These are some very high level details regarding how we compensate our reps. If you'd like some more detail regarding our metrics and goals please feel free to reach out to me directly at pgracey@agsalesworks.com.
How do you currently compensate your teleprospectors?