Best Sales Contest Ideas

What is a sales contest? A sales contest is a motivational program in which rewards are given to sellers based on their number of sales and/or sales results. Many companies are using sales contests to motivate their sales teams to make even more money. Sales contests provide a good challenge because the greatest salespeople are highly competitive. They like to compete against others, just like athletes. As an event organiser, it is also essential to know the unique qualities of a sales contest.

Best sales contest ideas

There are three types of contests for salespeople:

•    Direct competition – Sellers compete with each other, and there is one winner.
•    Team effort – Teams are rewarded collectively for winning.
•    Goal contest – Rewards are given for achieving goals that may be accomplished by more than one person.

There are several reasons to implement a sales contest:

•    To motivate and incentivize salespeople to perform at their best for additional rewards
•    To research what motivates and incentivizes salespeople in your company
•    To increase overall company performance based on the data collected

There are also plenty of interesting awards and competition titles:

• Salesperson of the Month
• Flash contest
• Visualizing Progress
• “Most Wanted” Clients
• Slump Buster Contest
• Fantasy Sales Team
• Floating Prizes
• Conversion Contest
• Daily Prizes
• Boss for a Day
• Surprise Prizes
• Sales Bingo

A sales contest is one of the most effective ways to diversify your work and quickly increase sales. If you need to increase sales rapidly, regardless of your business sphere, the first thing to do is launch a contest for all employees who have any influence on sales.

However, there are some mistakes to avoid when launching a contest for salespeople. It’s also important to note that you must make the goals achievable. If salespeople are always having something dangled in front of them but can’t meet the goals, they’ll become frustrated. If you know your salespeople well enough, you’ll already know whether a sales contest is the way to go.

Everyone may be motivated differently, so knowing what drives each salesperson and discussing this with your employees is something that each sales director should do.

To hold such an event for the sake of general entertainment is a strange idea. Most people came into the business not for the purpose of laughter and fun but rather to earn money together with like-minded people. Therefore, any competition for managers should have a clear objective. These are the most popular objectives:

• To increase conversion from bid to purchase
• To increase sales of expensive products
• To increase sales of related products
• To increase sales of a specific product category
• To attract new customers to the company
• To bring customers back, etc.

First of all, before you start on this contest-oriented path, you’ll need to understand how you are going to do all of this.

Tips on how to run your contest

Like any form of employee motivation, the competition also has an internal sequence that should be followed. By violating or skipping any one of the steps, you put the whole contest at risk. Therefore, here are the shortest and clearest instructions that you need to follow to succeed:

•    Determine the theme of the competition.

It is critical that all employees understand the ultimate goal and have an equal chance to win; otherwise, the “weak” employees will leave the race by default, realizing their lack of a chance to win.

•    Determine the beginning and end time.

Like any competition, you should clearly set up the beginning and end time of the event. No changes or delays should occur. Any lack of clarity will only spoil the idea and your reputation as a manager.

•    Determine the prize.

It would seem that nothing could be simpler than coming up with a gift, but it’s not all that easy, especially when you already have high salaries and therefore can’t motivate your employees with money.

• Create a motivational board.

In addition to developing a schedule where you will trace their success, you also have to hang it in a prominent place (ideally, the dining area) and mark the results daily.

• Make it public.

At each meeting, you need to promote the event/contest so that participants are always in a state of healthy competition.

The logical conclusion of the entire competition is a summary. We recommend awarding the winner publicly. You should make the awards a bigger show so that everyone wants to be in the winner’s place next time. After all, sales competitions are not one-time events but can be repeated as often as you need within the company.

Also, keep in mind that a competition for sellers is a universal solution, but it’s relevant only for a team of three or more people. With fewer people, there is no sense in a friendly competition. We are not saying that there will be no results, but the contest won’t work as well, and a lot of time will be wasted.

If there is a sufficient number of people in your company and you can arrange a competition not just between individual people but between departments or divisions, these best sales contest ideas are what you need. With this strategy, you can dramatically raise motivation and increase the company’s turnover every two to three weeks.

Conclusion

Contests, games, and various events that are skilfully organised and executed are powerful tools for motivating a sales department. The motivating force here is the desire of a person to receive recognition from their colleagues or managers. Feel free to ask for professional help while searching for the best sales contest management platform  Judgify.

Leave your comments below and good luck!