DESIGNING

INCENTIVES AND
CONTEST
“Win-Win” works better than “Win-Loose”
 SALES CONTESTS
A sales contest is a special selling campaign offering incentives in the form of
prizes or awards beyond those in the compensation plan.
The purpose of sales contests is to provide additional incentives to increase sales
volume, to bring in more profitable sales volume.
In addition, sales contest develop team spirit, boost morale, and make personnel
selling efforts more productive.
A successful sales incentive contest will improve individual performance and
productivity, positively impact the morale of your entire sales team,
increased sales revenue and allow you to achieve organizational goals in a short
period of time.
When contests reward each person based on exceeding their own
individual goals, EVERYONE has a chance to Win!
This method will have positive effects on your sales team by providing
motivation amongst the individuals to improve sales results, impacting
morale and employee engagement and increase profitability.
Win-Win sales incentive contests will produce lasting benefits resulting
in more engaged and effective employees who stay longer with your
company.
 Specific Objectives
1. To obtain new customers.
2. To secure larger orders per sales call.
3. To push slow-moving items, high-margin goods, or new
products.
4. To overcome a seasonal sales slump.
5. To promote seasonal merchandise.
6. To get reorders.
7. To promote special deals to distributors, dealers, or both.
8. To obtain more product displays by dealers.
MAJOR DECISIONAL AREA OF SALES CONTEST
 Specific objectives
 Contest formats
 Contest prizes
 How many prizes and how should they be awarded
 Contest duration
 Contest promotion
 Managerial evaluation of contests
 Sales Contest Ideas
• 1. Objective-based Sales Contest
• First and foremost, every sales contest needs a goal. What are you hoping to improve
amongst your sales team?
• While the simplest approach is to run a contest for overall sales revenue, a more specific
objective — like more new clients, or more revenue for XX product — is often more
effective.
• It can yield more participation and more long-term improvement amongst your sales team.
• “After utilizing sales contests centered on boosting our performance in the sales of this
service, we saw the percentage of our sales in this area double.” Better yet, she explained,
“they have stayed at that level since.”
• An objective-based sales contest often requires salespeople to develop new skills because
they’re stepping out of their comfort zone and confronting an unfamiliar topic. Thus,
objective-based sales contests tend to have more long term and lasting results.
• 1) EVERY CONTEST SHOULD HAVE A DIFFERENT GOAL
• Sales contests shouldn’t always have the same goal – they are perfect opportunities to
influence specific behaviours.
• Think about your company’s current goals. Are you trying to penetrate a specific market?
Or sell a new product?
• Let’s say that your company released a new piece of software in late November, and the
executive team set a Q1 goal to sell 5 subscriptions of that software.
• Use this insight to design a sales contest for Q1 centred on selling the most of that software.
• It’s OK to make revenue a goal for one contest, but it can’t be the goal for every one. Other
examples of great contest goals are cold calls, data quality (pick a specific metric or
metrics), and lead source.
• Make sure the objectives you choose align with your company’s objectives.
• 2) SWITCH UP THE LENGTH OF EACH CONTEST
• As soon as contests start feeling routine to your reps, they will lose interest.
Christmas is coming up this week – will a lot of your outbound reps be on vacation?
• Encourage them to maintain their A-game right up until they leave.
• Announce a new contest at the end of today: whoever has the most Connects by
noon tomorrow gets $50.
• If they are motivated to win, they’ll spend some time tonight building a lead queue.
• High productivity during the slow holidays.
• Short contests take advantage of reps’ innate sense of urgency and help keep them
totally focused.
• Changing up the length of each contest will keep reps on their toes and influence
specific behavior.
• CHANGE THE PRIZES FOR EVERY CONTEST
• (Are you seeing a theme here?) Switch up your prizes to keep your reps
engaged.
• Repetitive prizes lose meaning and your reps won’t stay focused.
• Another way to change up the prizes is by implementing both individual
and team contests.
• Individual prizes could be cash, gift cards, vacations, or even a headset
spray-painted gold.
• Team prizes are great bonding opportunities: sports game tickets, race car
driving lessons, a gift certificate to a team dinner.
• 4) Create contests that your top rep doesn’t win all the time
• Does the same rep win most of your contests? If so, give him or her a
bonus and come up with new sales contest ideas to motivate the other reps
on your team.
• 5) Don’t always use sports as a theme
• It gets old pretty quickly, and frankly… it’s a lazy choice. What is a
common language that your whole sales team speaks? The themes should
be something everyone can relate to so it inspires competition.
 sales contest mistakes
• common sales contest mistakes to avoid when setting up your contest:
• Your contest only motivates top salespeople and fails to reach your team
as a whole.
• It fails to hold your employees’ interest after the first few days.
• Improvements in performance do not last once the contest is over.
• It creates a competitive environment that hurts collaboration and
employee spirit.
• Scores are tedious and time-consuming to track.