Your sales team fights hard for your company, which is probably a big reason why you’ve been successful so far. While a healthy sense of external competition is good for the company, internal competition can work wonders for your sales team.
What is Internal Competition?
“Internal competition” describes that sense of competition that the salespeople in your company feel amongst themselves. This kind of competition can increase conversions, drive sales figures, and allow you to promote and grow your team more effectively.
Here are seven ways to turn that sense of “internal competition” into an actual internal competition.
The 7 Essentials to Creating a Great Sales Contest
1. Keep it short. You can give out quarterly and annual sales awards, but it’s unlikely that you can sustain the energy of a true sales contest for more than 2-3 weeks. In addition to keeping it short, keep it moving with daily updates and announcements.
2. Create personal prizes. There are few – if any – prizes other than cash that can motivate every single member of your sales team. Therefore, we recommend allowing the individual who wins to pick his or her own prize. Create some parameters, and allow their imagination to run wild. You can even have them pick out their prize before the contest even starts, which is a good way to incentivize.
3. Give everyone the chance to win. The Houston Small Business Chronicle wrote a great article about how to create a sales contest in which everyone can win. While one grand prize is fun for the winner, it won’t encourage everyone to participate. What would you rather have: one person performing at 150% or an entire sales team performing at 100%?
4. Reinforce training. If you’ve been trying to encourage your sales team to use specific elements of their training, make it a requirement that salespeople use those techniques if they want to win.
5. Use a CRM system. Your CRM system probably has the ability to tie-in with a sales contest. Why not start using it? If you track the contest solely through your CRM system, then it’s a great opportunity to get salespeople who aren’t as skilled with the CRM system more accustomed to using the platform.
6. Encourage checkpoints. Prospects don’t go from the receiving end of a cold call to the buying stage without some events taking place in between. Unfortunately, from the upper management perspective, it can be difficult to know exactly what is taking place between the initial pitch and the final decision to buy. Use this contest as a way to encourage your sales team to update the CRM system on more than just the accounts that are buying.
7. Have fun. If your team isn’t having fun with the contest, then you might have more negative long-term effects than positive short-term ones. At the end of the day, your sales team should be a team above all else!
Have any tips of your own for creating a great sales contest?
