Incentive plans for inside sales can be complex, depending on the situation, what should I be on the lookout for?

Before diving into a plan design for inside sales, you must first answer several questions:

What type of inside sales are they doing?

Do they qualify for the 7i exemption or are they non exempt employee?

These questions must be answered because, if they are non-exempt, any incentive earned must be included in their hourly rate. If they are exempt, it would make it much easier to implement an incentive with less administrative costs. Assuming you conclude they are either exempt, or that the administrative burden if they aren't is "worth it," then here are a few tips for designing their incentive plans:

1. Incentives are a great way to support an initiative to change behavior, but the rest of the initiative needs to be in place as well. This may include training, systems enhancements, coaching and mentoring, etc.

2. If you really want to use incentives to motivate and excite, then you need "carrots and sticks" to be part of them. Over time you will want to migrate base salaries down as a percent of target total compensation so that the target incentive must be earned in order for the employees to maintain market-competitive pay.

3. The amount of pay at risk depends a great deal on the nature of their inside sales roles. Although it can be more complex than this, one simple division is between jobs that are primarily "inbound" and those that involve more aggressive "outbound" calling. If an inside seller mostly reacts to requests from customers and is primarily doing an order management function (perhaps with some ability to cross-sell or up-sell), then a relatively smaller percent of pay at risk (in the incentive) is appropriate. For outbound inside sales people who more strongly influence a prospect's decision to buy through their own creativity and initiative, more pay at risk (and more associated upside) would be a good idea.