When it comes to acquiring new leads, lack of motivation is the biggest challenge for 66% of sales reps. In sales, motivation is one of the main factors that drive performance. How do you motivate sales teams and get them to perform better, close more deals, and successfully hit their quotas every single time? Let’s get to the basics.
Sales motivation is based on incentive compensation. Sales incentive plans are modelled to motivate teams and to encourage them to display certain positive behaviours. Without them, your team is bound to miss the mark.
But even after having a sales compensation plan in place, more often than not you need a bit of an extra push to get your sales teams to close more deals. This is where sales contests step into the picture.
Do you want your reps to make more calls?
Run a sales contest.
Your sales teams are bad at forecasting and don’t stick to the best practices that you have set?
It’s time to run a sales contest.
You have a new product hitting the market and you want your salespeople to go all out to sell it?
A sales contest should prep them.
Sales contests are the answer to a lot of problems that crop up in sales.
So, what exactly is a sales contest?
A sales contest is a game or a contest that’s held for your sales reps, at the end of which rewards are handed out to top performers. These rewards are typically non-financial in nature. It could be gift cards, electronic equipment, complementary meals, or something as simple as a personal day off.
The contests are run over a fixed period of time and are conducted to get reps moving in the direction of their goals.
Sales contests encourage healthy competition in your department and are considered to be one of the best tools to ignite motivation in your team.
Plus: happy sales reps are the best-performing sales reps. We’ve got numbers to back this up.
Optimistic sales reps are said to perform 57% better when compared to their not-so-optimistic counterparts.
How to design a good sales contest?
When designing your sales contest, it’s important to bear in mind that sales contests are all about creating friendly, not hostile, competition. The idea here is to engage the entire team.
An effective sales contest will push the whole team to reach newer heights, enhancing morale and increasing overall team activity. Sales contests should not be centered around top selling reps alone, instead, they should elevate reps who are lagging behind and need to improve their productivity.
To have the right mix of sales contests, decide on how many you need to conduct each year. Also, determine the kind of contest you want to run, whether a large contest or a smaller one. Large contests call for a greater level of planning and organization. Smaller contests on the other hand are easier to launch and manage.
Before starting out, identify the goal of having a contest. Why do you need a sales contest in the first place? Here are a few questions that your team should ask while brainstorming ideas for sales contests:
- Do you want to boost your employee’s morale?
- Do you want to build employee confidence?
- Are you looking to increase sales of a particular product or category?
- Is there a specific sales behaviour that you wish to promote among reps?
- Are you trying to set standards of sales performance?
Once you have fixed the goal, build your contest around sales behaviours that will help achieve it.
10 coolest sales contest ideas to motivate your team
Here is a list of the 10 coolest sales contest names and ideas that you can use to motivate sales.
The Daily Prize
Run a daily contest and give away a daily prize. The best part about daily competitions is that they are pretty random. Anyone can win the contest if they work really hard. It could be centered around the ‘most calls made on Tuesday’ or ‘the biggest sale on Wednesday’.
Buy a few presents, leave them in a box, the top performer gets to open a present at the end of the day.
To make it more interesting, let reps decide if they want to keep the gift or steal yesterday’s prize from a teammate.
Leave early Fridays
Most people like to leave early on Fridays. All a rep has to do is hit a predetermined target set for the whole team or department and clock off early on a Friday. You may see reps egging one another to achieve superhuman feats, just so they can be the first ones out of the door.
Get the most no’s
This is a fun sales contest where the goal is to get the most No’s or rejections on calls made. The contest gets your team comfortable with hearing “No” or “Not interested” for an answer and encourages them to get back on the phone and try again. Indirectly, the contest rewards the reps who make the most calls.
Call raffle
Reps earn a raffle ticket for every 50 calls they make. With 44% of salespeople giving up after just a single follow-up call, this contest will surely help in getting them to keep at it.
Assign a point for every 50 calls and each point gets them a raffle ticket. At the end of the contest, draw the raffle number and the rep with the winning ticket gets the prize. The contest is exciting, fun and builds team camaraderie.
Retention contest
This is a sales contest that rewards the salesperson who has retained the most number of customers over a month, quarter, or year. The contest is a great way to get your sales teams to focus on customer retention and on increasing your ROI in the process.
Upsell contest
This sales contest is focused on rewarding reps for upselling and raising revenues. The rep who makes the largest up-sell wins. The game gets your team motivated to search for opportunities to increase sales with existing customers.
Sales poker
This is another fun sales contest idea where each participating rep has to obtain 5 cards from a deck of 52 cards. Reps earn a card each time they achieve a goal. At the end of the sales period, be it a month or a quarter, the rep with the best hand of cards – wins!
The team trophy
Divide your team into smaller groups. Put top performers along with new reps. Offer rewards not for overall performance but for improved performance in a group. Reps get points every time their teammates perform well. The top performers are not going to get any better, however, they will need other reps to climb the league table and earn points. Your top achievers may share a few tips and expertise with junior reps and soon you’ll see new reps building new skills.
Take the boss’s place
Who wouldn’t want to be boss even if it’s just for a day? This contest allows reps to see things from their manager’s perspective. Most reps think that their manager has it easy. Allot points for sales numbers met. The rep with the highest points at the end of the month gets to work on a project or run meetings which are otherwise meant only for managers.
Fish for leads
Run a contest to see who can turn the most leads into clients. Get everyone on your team to contact a minimum number of leads every day. The person with the most conversions wins a fishing-themed prize like a fishing trip or a dinner at a fancy seafood restaurant.
Final thoughts
Sales contests are a sure-fire way to improve your team’s motivation, camaraderie, and most importantly their results.
Make your contests as creative and engaging as possible, your reps will then work towards winning it. Take it up a notch and gamify your sales incentives with Unomok today to get your reps to perform their best!