7 Fun Sales Contests for Retail Stores
8 minutes read
The retail market is highly competitive. To survive this competition, you need to have motivated staff who can keep your business running profitably week after week, year after year. So, as a retail sales manager, how can you make “employee motivation” as a part of your retail sales plan, and prioritize it from time to time?
Answer: Sales Contests (or sales incentive program)
A sales incentive program provides a way to have various fun and interesting sales contests regularly at your retail store. These contests are sure to inspire your sales staff to sell at a higher level consistently. Below is a list of 7 amazing sales contest that will work perfectly for a retail store.
1. Play wheel of fortune
Goal: To increase the overall store profit by the end of the contest period.
Duration: One week
Teams: Individual
Winners: All the sales reps who have achieved or exceeded the target profit.
Prize: Whatever you want to place on the wheel. This can include clothing, gift cards, candy, beauty products, or food.
Other options for prizes might include non-cash rewards such as an additional 20 minutes for lunch break, a paid day off, a coffee shop gift card, and whatever else you can think of that would be relevant and appreciated by your retail staff. Be as creative as you can. Then, let your employees spin that wheel!
Competition Theme: You know how it works—spin the wheel and pick a letter. By the end of this one-week contest, all the employees who have achieved their target profit or more than that get to pick a letter and spin the wheel. If the wheel stops at the letter that they have picked then they get the corresponding prize. Give each person 3 chances to spin the wheel.
2. Product selling contest
Goal: To promote sales of various products in the retail store.
Duration: One day contest. You can conduct product selling contests every day by choosing a different objective and theme each day.
Teams: Individual
Winners: There can be single or multiple winners for this contest
Prize: You could give the product that they sold the most on the contest day as a prize to the winners. The other gifting options include wine, chocolates, sports or movie tickets, lunch, company apparel, ipads, and anything else you would like to give away as a random prize.
Competition Theme: Product selling contests encourage your employees to sell products enthusiastically. You can conduct various contests around product selling every day.
For instance, you can create a contest called “everybody wins” which is a contest for every department. If the stocking team unloads so many boxes, the floor employees greet so many customers and the register operators make so many impulse sales. So whenever there is a really busy day in the store, reward all your staff members for their hard work by paying them extra prizes for the day. Each group is rewarded this way.
A similar idea is “Holiday Squares,” a game played during the holidays involving a board that features different products. The first employee (or all employees) who sells a product from each square wins a prize.
No matter which type of game you choose, you’re rewarding your employees for doing better work and getting more results, which means they’re more likely to make those good results a reality.
3. Retail Races
Goal: To increase the sale of a specific product.
Duration: One day
Teams: Individual
Winners: The first person each day to complete a sales goal gets a prize.
Prize: Give a day off or a half-day on the next day.
Competition Theme: This fast-paced selling idea makes for a good retail race in the store. Run this contest on the busiest days in your store. For instance, on Black Friday, offer a prize to the first person who can make an up sale.
4. Pass that Buck
Goal: To raise sales in a day.
Duration: One day (Everyday contest)
Teams: Individual
Winners: The employee who achieve a sales goal by the end of the day.
Prize: Cash prize
Competition Theme: For this game, choose a daily goal and let everyone know when their shift begins. Maybe the goal is to sell more black t-shirts. The person who sells 20 black t-shirts gets $20. They then get to keep that $20 bill until another person sells 21 black t-shirts.
The buck continues to get passed until the end of the shift. The last person with the $20 gets to keep it. This is one of the examples of sales incentives for help that adds an extra layer of competition.
5. Pop that balloon
Goal: To encourage employees to achieve specific sales goals of the day.
Duration: One day (Everyday contest)
Teams: Individual
Winners: All the employees who meet their targets.
Prize: Vary the prizes so that they range from small prizes to large prizes. You can have anything from an Ipad to Europe trip and movie ticket to company apparel.
Competition Theme: Everyone loves blowing up balloons and then popping them. Plus, balloons are affordable so get several bags full! Before you start inflating, write down prices on scraps of paper. Stuff one piece of paper in each balloon and blow it up.
Each time a goal is met, let your employee choose a balloon to pop and win a prize. They won’t know what they will win until they pop the balloon.
6. Have a Raffle
Goal: To encourage your employees to perform well and achieve their monthly targets. It could be to increase the profit, get a certain number of positive reviews from the customers or to increase the sale of a certain product.
Duration: One month
Teams: Individual
Winners: The employees who hit their targets will get the tickets. Then, raffle off the prizes and pick winners at random.
Prize: Choose prizes that will motivate your employees the most.
Competition Theme: Having raffles is another great idea for a sales contest in a retail store. Start by setting measurable goals for each member of your retail staff. Each time they hit their target, give them a specific number of raffle tickets. When the contest is over, raffle off the prizes and pick winners at random.
The better-performing employees will get more tickets, which means more chances to win. Employees can also seek face-to-face feedback from their managers in this process.
7. Fishing for prizes
Goal: The goal here is again to encourage good work from your employees by providing sales incentives in an interesting way.
Duration: one week
Teams: Individual
Winners: All the employees who successfully meet their targets
Prize: Choose the sales incentives that your employees find rewarding and useful.
Competition Theme: Let your employees go fishing for motivating prizes. Write down some relevant and sought-after prizes onto pieces of paper or even paper fish cutouts. Then, put them in a fishbowl. Use a rod, branch, or stick to let your employees “go fishing” in this bowl whenever they meet their goals. Even with a limited budget, the end result could still be positive.
Want to organize Diwali-themed sales contests at your store? Get ideas from this blog:
Looking for sales contest ideas for different months? Check out this below:
January– 7 Sales Contest Ideas for January
February– 7 Sales Contest Ideas for February
March– 8 Sales Contest Ideas for March
April– 7 Sales Contest Ideas for April
May– 8 Sales Contest Ideas for May
June– 8 Sales Contest Ideas for June
July– 8 Sales Contest Ideas for July
August– 7 Sales Contest Ideas for August
September– 8 Sales Contest Ideas for September
October– 8 Sales Contests For October
November– 8 Sales Contests for November
December– 7 fun sales contests for December
Looking for more Seasonal Sales Contest Ideas?
7 Fun Sales Contest Ideas to Motivate your Team for Thanksgiving and Black Friday
Want to give a cool and creative name for your sales contest? Get good naming ideas from these blogs:
19 Creative Retail sales contests names
Looking for creative and funny sales team names? Get ideas from these articles below:
How will you communicate your contest to your participants?
Once you have a perfect contest idea and a suitable name for it, focus on communicating it effectively to your participants. Follow our sales contest communication template to announce your contest.
Want to give out some interesting awards and prizes to your contest winners? Get ideas from these articles below:
Creative Employee Recognition Award Names for Retail.
Creative employee recognition awards.
23 Sales incentive ideas to keep your sales team motivated.
Searching for free themes for your contest?
Select from ready-made themes like NFL, Olympics and more. Select KPIs, get engaging team names, team logos, and banners to drive a contest that your participants will remember - Contest Theme Generator
Looking for a sales contest software that will automate calculations and communications?
Explore Smartwinnr’s solutions and learn how your sales contests can be enhanced into increasing productivity, decreasing agent attrition and reducing supervisory cost.
Schedule a Free Demo today to see how easy it is to use SmartWinnr to run your sales contests.
Published on Tue Dec 24 2019