Welcome to the third part in the 3-series blog post on sales contest. In the previous two parts we have discussed:

• Sales Contest Part 1: The Secrets of Running a Successful Sales Contest

• Sales Contest Part 2: How to design Sales Contest for a New Product Launch

In the last two blogs, we have already established how sales contests are the go-to solutions for sales leaders when it comes to getting desired sales outcome from their sales team. But, the question is how to choose the right kind of sales contest that motivates everyone in your team and gets the desired sales results for you? This blog presents you with some new sales contest ideas that you can use and go beyond the classic leaderboard.

Let us first take a look at choosing the right contest type for your sales team

Choosing the right type of contest and frequency of contests

Not all contests are created equal. To ensure that you have the right mix of sales contests, first figure out why you’re having the contest. Questions to ask include:

• Is it to recognize top performers?

• Do you want to improve employee confidence?

• Are you trying to promote specific sales behaviors?

• Do you need to sell more of a specific solution?

• Are you attempting to set standards of sales performance?

• Do you want to boost morale?

• Would you like to increase order size or get more new customers?

Once you have an answer, determine how many contests you need to hold each year. Then, you have to choose between large and short contests. Large contests require a lot of effort and background work. Small contests are easier to hold and manage. If you want your employees to look forward to something every month, you might consider a small, but an ongoing monthly contest.

You can customize the contests to suit your team and your desired business objectives.

Let’s now take a look at various interesting sales contest ideas that are highly effective in pulling your sales force out of a rut and inspiring them to attack the phones, push themselves the extra mile, and close more deals.

9 Sales contest Ideas:

1. SalesPerson of the month:

Goal: To drive your reps to achieve monthly sales goals.

Having an employee or salesperson of the month is a pretty straightforward way of rewarding great work on an ongoing basis. You simply present a designated award to the employee who meets a certain set of objectives throughout each month.

To get started, you’ll simply need to choose a starting month, outline a specific prize and then alert your employees. Prizes can range from time off to money or even something more creative.

This contest can be the standard contest that you can conduct on a monthly basis. It helps in tracking the progress of the sales reps and keeping them motivated to achieve monthly goals.

2. Raffle Prize:

Goal: To drive long-term sales goals and engage everyone in the contest

This game is good for longer-term sales achievements. Each salesperson obtains a raffle ticket for every sale or specific objective that they reach throughout the month. Then at the end of the month or quarter, you can have a drawing to award a large prize or a few smaller prizes.

This contest drive sales goals for a longer selling period with the payoff of having a bigger chance of winning at the end. You can also build engagement by varying the size of the goal, per ticket.

3. Pair Selling:

Goal: To encourage teamwork and allow teammates to share best practices

Match high and low performers and stress on sharing ideas among teammates. The pair with the highest sales/contacts/wins at the end of the time period wins.

Pairing team members toward a common goal helps introduce one-on-one coaching and mentorship among the team members. Individuals can share what works for them, and overall performance for the team goes up.

4. Snooze buttons:

Goal: The goal of this contest is to urge proper behavior on high-volume days so team members can receive a “snooze” button for a late start on low-volume days.

This is a solid incentive that doesn’t cost the company any dollars up-front, outside of the opportunity cost for employees to receive off-time that doesn’t impact their overall productivity. Use this type of incentive strategically so your teams can snooze on those low volume days instead of when you need them there the most.

Example: On a certain day, you need to hit a certain revenue figure. So, whichever rep hits that figure first get to arrive a little late than others the next day. He can come in at 10:00 a.m. instead of 8:00AM.

5. Slump Buster Contest:

Goal: To encourage your sales team to actively work even when the sales are slow.

This contests can be a great way to spur more activity from your sales team when times are slow. What you can do during those slow times is challenge your team to contact old or existing customers and try to sell repeat or upgraded products.

To do this, you’ll need a start and end date and an objective for your team to reach. This can be the most sales, the highest volume or even the largest single transaction. Then challenge your team to reach out to their existing contacts and see who comes out on top.

6. Most Wanted Client:

Goal: To get the best clients in your industry

Within your industry, there are probably a few big players who you’d love to have as clients. So, make this as a goal for the contest.

Outline a few “most wanted” clients and divide them up among your team so each member knows who should reach out to whom. Then reward whoever is able to make the biggest sale.

7. March Madness:

Goal: To create a fun, game-like environment to make more sales.

Another fun contest to improve sales competition could be based on March Madness. Think of sports-based brackets here. You’ll need to create a bracket that includes all of your sales staff. Then at the end of each day or week, whoever has the most sales in each individual competition will move onto the next round. At the end of the month or quarter, depending on the size of your team, you should have a final round and an eventual winner.

8. Visualizing Progress:

Goal: To help the reps visualize their progress and to create a culture of healthy competition and accountability amongst the reps.

Sometimes, contests are most effective when your team is able to actually see the progress they’re making right in front of them. So you can create a visual to put up in your office to keep track of how close your sales reps are getting to their goals.

You can make it a team competition, where you set a numerical goal for your whole sales team for the month. Then all of your reps can encourage each other and update the chart or graph visualization every time they make a new sale.

For example, on the chart you could have rep’s name, company, company or client name, revenue, and gross profit. Then set monthly targets and total the gross profit column as you go along. This will help every rep visualize their gross profit in relation to revenue, creating a culture of accountability.

Or, you can reach out to us, at contact@smartwinnr.com. And we can help you run the entire game, powered by a mobile app, accessible anytime, anywhere

9. Top This:

Goal: To create a healthy sales competition among individual sales reps.

You can set up a sales contest where your team is awarded for making the largest individual sale, rather than the most sales overall.

This would be fairly similar logistically to other contests, but would just encourage your team to try and upsell or sell multiple items to individual customers. At the end of each month or quarter, award a prize to the person who has made the largest individual sale. Allow your reps to keep a track of who’s in the lead throughout the month so that they know the number to beat.

In most cases, we have seen that creating a combination of some of these contests works better in motivating your sales reps to reach their sales goals consistently for a long period of time.

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SmartWinnr: The Leader in the Sales Contest Software

SmartWinnr is an AI-powered gamification platform that helps you to improve your sales team’s knowledge and performance by up to 60%. You can run the most effective, hassle-free, and automated contests with SmartWinnr. No tedious excel calculations, live leaderboards updated at real-time, automated nudges keep the contest engaging and exciting.

Curious to see SmartWinnr in action? Book a demo with us today!