Contest Ideas for Sales Teams

A sales contest is a motivational program in which rewards are given to sellers based on their number of sales and/or sales results. Sales contest ideas for a sales team can provide good challenges because most of the greatest salespeople enjoy a great challenge. They like to compete against others and push themselves to win. As an event organizer, it is essential to know the unique qualities of sales contests.

About the industry

The scope of the sales industry is always changing. From technology developments to governmental regulations and compliance standards, the sales industry is constantly in flux. As a salesperson, you’ll mix with a wide variety of other people in your industry. Creative sales contest ideas excite people from the industry and train them for new challenges and professional achievements.

Reasons for running contests

Sales contest and sales contest ideas for employees are one of the most effective ways to diversify work while quickly increasing sales. If you need sales from a client soon, in any business sphere, launching a contest for all employees who have any influence on sales can make a big impact. Competition gives people a sense of pride and purpose. The main goals of sales competitions should be to increase individual performance, elevate team activity, and boost overall morale.

The target audience

Sales managers, employees, employers, sellers, resellers, vendors, sales companies, and governmental organisations may be the targets of your contests and sales incentive contest ideas.

Challenges you may face

Getting sales contest budgets approved can often be challenging because such contests often need cash incentives to get people excited about them. This can add extra costs to the budget. With that in mind, sales managers and leadership can capitalise on the human tendency to work harder during a sales competition. In addition, your sales contest should offer prizes your team really wants to win.

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

Running a contest for your sales team: the process and practices

Come up with inside sales contest ideas to hold such an event that is not only for the purpose of laughter and fun but to earn money together with a close sales team. Therefore, any competition for sales managers should have a clear objective. These are the most popular and sought after practices to keep in mind:

• 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 gain returning customers

Taking advantage of social media contest ideas will also help you to raise brand awareness and will give you an opportunity to build relationships with both current and new customers. So, use social media or relevant alternative platforms for organising and processing sales contests.

Contest requirements

Sales contests can bring a burst of energy and sales to your company, but if you place contests terms and conditions incorrectly, your contest may result in failure. With a few tweaks to the rules of the contest, you can create a sales contest.

Rules

This is where you will set your official categories, the rules, terms and conditions, etc.

Like any contest, a competition for salespeople should have a proper sequence. The order of participation in the contest and terms and conditions must be written in accordance with the company goals. You will create rules based on those goals. By violating or skipping one of the steps, you put the whole contest at risk since the participants will not understand what to do to participate or win the prize.

Judging

The winner is usually determined by public voting or according to the judging criteria. The element of chance must not exist in this type of contest. It should be clear and easy to enter as well as understandable why someone is the winner and on what grounds they were chosen, unless you use a randomiser and hold events on social media.

Choose a fair jury for your contest and fair judging criteria.

How to pick the winner

Your contest should reengage current subscribers and build buzz around a new product or line. Make it clear how you will choose a winner. You may run a contest asking for suggestions about a new product or service sales. Then give a prize to the person who comes up with the best idea. This is a great way to crowdsource your brand ingenuity and pick a winner simply. Choose social media, hashtags, and juries to help with choosing your sales team winners. Ask your participants to join your LinkedIn and Facebook groups to become eligible for a chance to win something. 

Apply event tools for scoring results.

Types of contests

There are three types of contests that are generally interesting for salespeople: 

• Direct competition: Sellers compete with each other, and there is one winner. 
• Team struggle: Some teams are rewarded collectively for winning.
• Goal contest: Rewards are given for achieving goals that may be gained by more than one person.

No matter what you choose, make sure you are doing sales contests to motivate the sales teams so that they make even more money for the company.

Best contest and giveaway ideas and why they work

Running a contest for your sales team is an easy way to keep subscribers engaged and  to acquire new customers at a really low cost. It’s a no-brainer! People like free stuff, so participate in giveaways on a regular basis.

Salesperson of the month

Offer this contest to find out how much salespeople care about individual recognition and awards.

Raffle Prizes

A winner’s choice raffle refers to raffles that offer winners one of a variety of big-ticket prizes.  Offering more than one prize option ensures your fundraising raffle appeals to the greatest number of participants while still only having to fulfill one prize.

Win a favor from the boss

Want to win over your boss at work? This contest is just what’s needed. When looking to impress your manager and earn their respect, doing great work might not be enough. Use this contest idea for fun.

Team-wide goals

It is possible to offer a prize to an entire team. Before you communicate the contest to them, think about why you want to set goals and what you hope to achieve with them. If the wider team goal is completed, they win.

Prize ideas

Having an employee or salesperson of the month is a pretty straightforward way of rewarding great work on an ongoing basis. Sales contest prize ideas should comply with the team expectations. Here are some inexpensive sales incentive prize ideas that work:

• Monday morning office massage from a mobile masseuse
• Boss buys and has winner’s lunch (or breakfast) delivered for a week
• Boss cleans winner’s car
• Extra time off for a personal development pursuit
• Enroll in a training course of winner’s choice
• A vacation trip
• A ticket to a conference
• Free parking
• Fitness certificate, etc.

Use these and other creative, fun, serious, and professional incentives. Feel free to consult a professional if you are not sure what  prize to choose.

Identifying your contest idea

To identify your ideal contest participant, you should first ask a few questions. What’s the contest budget? What are the objectives? What’s the best idea for your brand? Who is your ideal contest entry? After you are through with the questions, you will have identified your perfect participant and can come up with the prizes for the target audience. Once your sales company and the sales team have provided their professional opinions, you’ll have a green light for planning the event for your employees.

Make sure to stick to the real company objectives and the budget. 

Tips for planning

Here are the instructions that you will need to follow to succeed with your ideas for a sales contest.

•   Define the objectives. 

It is critical that all participants understand the ultimate goal and that everyone has an equal chance to win.

• Choose the sales contest theme.

It’s up to you to choose the theme of the event, but make sure it fits in your budget and that you comply with the sales team’s and the company’s expectations.

•   Determine the beginning and end time.

 Like any competition, you should set up the contest timing, the beginning and end of the event. No shifts of dates or delays should take place. Changing dates will only spoil the idea and your reputation as a manager.

•   Choose the prizes.

It would seem that nothing could be simpler than coming up with a gift, but this is not always so easy, especially when you already have an increase in sales and have high salaries for your employees. 

• Create a jury board. 

In addition to the fact that you need to develop a table or schedule of where you will hold a contest, you also have to choose the judges for your contest.

• Make it public. 

Make your contests easy to access, and allow public voting. At each meeting, you need to promote the event so that participants are always in a state of healthy competition and believe in their own strength.

• Use professional contest management.

In fact, by choosing the contest management platforms, you can decide on your own event’s success, so choose wisely.

Call to action

Start right away on your new sales contest.  

Contest management

See user reviews, pricing info, and custom recommendations to improve your events. Also apply modern event technology and the best contest management. Ask for help from event experts directly. Cooperate with the top-notch contest management platforms to get the best services all in one place.

Conclusion

In a growing market and with increasingly tough competition, you need to constantly be aware of industry trends in order to increase sales and ensure the best results for your company. That’s where sales contest ideas come in handy. Organise interesting and useful contests to motivate and incentivize salespeople to perform their best for additional rewards. Research what incentives motivate the salespeople of your company, and increase the overall company’s performance from the data collected. Success!

Feel free to leave your creative sales team contest ideas in the comments below.