Sales contests around deals closed are commonplace. Sales contests around onboarding sales reps? Not so much. But, many successful companies have proved that the latter is just as valuable as an option.

Just like any other organization, you might have put together a conventional plan to onboard your new sales reps.

• Introduce them to the rest of the team

• Teach the company offering

• Ease into selling

But how about you get a little innovative this time with your onboarding plan? Want to know how? By adding a bit of sales contests to the mix.

By adding sales games to your onboarding process, you will be able to create greater internal collaboration, new sales opportunities, and increased visibility into sales data.

Such sales incentive programs also help in boosting the effectiveness of your onboarding plan by:

• Getting your sales reps motivated and focused around key sales behaviors

• Filling your onboarding with critical sales activities

So in this blog, we have put together 5 amazing sales contests for sales onboarding. You can incorporate these contests or draw inspiration from them to create your own contests. These contests are sure to make your onboarding plan interesting, educational and insightful. Check them out below:

1. Best newcomer

Goal: The goal of this contest is to motivate your sales reps to consistently give their best performance in all the smaller contests, tasks and activities that will be assigned to them throughout their training process. These smaller contests will be created around various metrics like– lead generation, lead conversion, best sales pitch, etc., This contest will give the new reps a good headstart to stay motivated throughout the 3-months onboarding period.

Duration: 3 months

Teams: Individual

Winners: The sales rep who consistently score well in all the contests conducted throughout their 3-months training period.

Prize: The prestigious “Best Newcomer” award which the sales rep can place on his desk and bragging rights.

Competition Theme: Run a parent-child contest here. The ultimate parent contest will be this “Best newcomer” contest. And this contest’s winner will be the new hire who consistently keeps up his good performance in all the smaller (child) contests that will be conducted throughout the training period. You can create these smaller contests around various KPIs that are crucial to make your new reps sales-ready.

2.Lunch with the Sales director

Goal: To motivate your sales reps to give their best performance at a task by rewarding the winner of the contest– a chance to go out on lunch with the director of sales and pick his brain. You could create this contest around any task like– generating more leads or giving the best pitch. Let us take generating more leads here.

Duration: One day

Teams: Individual

Winners: The rep who generates more leads than others wins the contest.

Prize: The winner wins a chance to go out for lunch with the director of sales and pick his brain. This serves as a great sales incentive for your reps who are ambitious and hungry to learn more.

Competition Theme: Run this contest for one day and encourage all your reps to deliver their first demo pitch explaining the value of one of your products. Make it clear to them about what competencies their pitch will be judged upon. Score their pitch according to their performance against each of those competencies. Sales incentive for the winner (sales rep who gets the highest score) will be to go out for lunch with the director of sales of your organization.

3. First Deal

Goal: The goal of this contest is to give the encouragement and that little nudge that your reps need to close their first deal.

Duration: One month

Teams: Individual

Winners: All the reps who successfully close their first deals.

Prize: Award different ranges of prizes to the winners. The sales rep who will be the first to close a deal from the new hires group will get the biggest prize (the expensive or most desirable prize). The second person to close a deal will get the second biggest prize and so on.

Competition Theme: Run this competition for one month during the third month of the new hire training. Encourage all your reps to sell actively and try to close deals. Track their progress on a live leaderboard. Recognize and reward all the new reps who successfully close their first deals.

4. The Shadowing Contest

Goal: The goal of this contest is to make your junior reps to shadow (accompany) their senior reps for two days while selling. This helps the new reps to learn certain sales tips and tricks from their seniors.

Duration: 3 days

Teams: Individual

Winners: The rep who converts more leads than others on the third day

Prize: A gift card of a major amount

Competition Theme: Be it on the phone or on the field selling, get each of your junior reps paired up with your senior reps for two days. Encourage the new hires to learn everything they could from their seniors. On the third day, get your new reps to talk with the customers on phone and have your senior reps assist them on the floor. The rep who successfully converts more leads by the end of the day wins the contest.

5. Presentation/Demo Contest

Goal: The goal of this contest is to perfect your new sales rep’s articulation or presentation skills of two key product lines.

Duration: One day

Teams: Individual

Winners: Winner of this contest will be the rep who gives the best presentation or demo of two of your major products.

Prize: Amazon gift card plus movie tickets for the weekend

Competition Theme: This is a fairly simple contest. Run this contest for one-day and encourage all your reps to present/give a demo of two of your major products. The rep whose presentation or demo is better than everybody else in the new hire group wins the contest.

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