When times are tough and prospects seem to be holding on to every dollar, your job as a sales manager is more important than ever before. Now is the time to roll out a sales contest to generate additional sales and build morale.
Offering a contest to your sales team is a smart business decision on many levels. Contests, by their very nature, infuse a competitive spirit within the sales force and provide an excellent opportunity for management to recognize and reward top achievement. In addition, a contest encourages your sales reps to achieve new levels of personal production, taps into peer pressure and generates a positive synergism within the organization.
The difficulty in designing an effective sales incentive contest is that it must be structured in a way that challenges your top producers, while at the same time, encourages average to below average salespeople to participate. A successful incentive program is a delicate balance of three key motivational factors; reward, recognition and peer pressure.
What follows are four key components that must be included in any successful sales incentive program.
1. Keep the rules simple and realistic.
Don't create a contest that is overly complicated or too difficult to understand. Make sure every sales rep participating in the contest gets a copy of the rules and clearly understands what he or she needs to accomplish in order to win. Realistic goals are ones that are specific (clear and unambiguous), measurable, attainable, relevant and time-specific. Once the contest is underway, never change the rules in midstream.
2. Promote the contest over a thirty-day period.
Don't just spring the contest on your reps and expect them to be enthusiastic about participating. For maximum results, you need to condition your sales team members to accept the contest by promoting it effectively.
