Salespeople are competitive by nature, so it’s no wonder that contests motivate them to improve their performance. However, not all sales contests are created equal, and running the same standard ones over and over will kill your team’s momentum. Variety, meaningful rewards, and everyone feeling like they can win are all important aspects of creating competitions that engage your employees and increase performance.
Here are five simple tips for better sales competition:
1. Make it a Lottery
One of the great things about lottery sales competitions is that everyone gets a chance to succeed. Every time a sales rep or an SDR hits a certain metric that you set, like booking a meeting or closing a sale, they earn a ticket to the lottery. At the end of the competition, the reps who hit that metric the most will have the most tickets to spend, but everyone still has a chance to win a prize. This is a great competition to throw into the mix because by adding some randomness to your competitions ensures that the same few people aren’t always getting the top spot–which leads to higher employee engagement, less frustration, and much higher competition results.
2. Boost Engagement
Engagement is one of the biggest reasons traditional sales competitions fail, especially for companies with sales teams spread all across the globe. We recommend using a chat or a feed-based system to allow your teams to talk, communicate big wins, and even bring a little smack talk to the next competition. After all, who doesn't like to brag a bit about that latest sale pushing you to the top or letting another team know you’re coming for them with your next call? When your teams are excited and engaged, they really bring the heat.
3. Give Rewards They Actually Want
To further incentivize your sales teams to boost performance, try letting the winners actually pick their prizes. It’s important to ask people what they want to see in a rewards shop. Otherwise, it will be completely meaningless to them. For example, if Leslie doesn’t drink wine and the prize for winning the contest is a bottle of wine, she likely won’t care if she wins or loses, meaning lowered engagement and average performance.
Survey your team to find out what prizes they would want and customize your shop based on your own employees. Remember, non-monetary gifts can be just as enticing! Oftentimes, more experience-based rewards, such as getting to leave early on a Friday or lunch with the boss, are way more meaningful.
4. Create a Sense of Urgency
A bit of urgency goes a long way, and the best way to instill that is by giving your team real-time access to sales data during a competition. When your reps see that the person sitting next to them just closed that deal, pushing them to the top of the charts, a little fire gets lit, pushing them to go the extra mile to try to grab that win for themselves. Visualizing this data through leaderboards and competition highlights makes it even easier for your reps to ingest it, so they can spend more time on the phones and in meetings and less time pouring over spreadsheets.
5. Look Forward with Forecasting
Aggregated and visualized data allows managers to make strategic decisions on a dime, and with our new forecasting tool, managers will know the results of the competition before it even ends. The new forecasting graph trends the performance of the individual participants so you can predict where each player will end up, but even more helpful if the competition will be successful at achieving the desired KPI.
The forecast is calculated with linear regression based on data added on the metric your team is competing on. The forecast function uses the average increase of your previous data points multiplied by the average result for the competition period. When we add that to the value of the latest data point, we get the value for the next data point in the forecast.
Don’t just fall into the same ruts as a sales manager! Build a better sales culture, boost those crucial KPIs, and boost your revenue through increased pipeline-building activities with SalesScreen.
