11 Great Sales Contest Ideas to Motivate Your Team

A sales contest uses competition and rewards to get sales teams to produce more while also incentivizing sales habits you want your sales team to adopt, such as making a certain number of cold calls or closing a certain percentage of deals. We’ve included 11 sales contest ideas you can use for inspiration.

However, getting sales contest budgets approved can often be challenging, and teams are less motivated when they can’t see their progress. A customer relationship management (CRM) tool like Pipedrive can solve this by making it easier to track individual performance with built-in sales reports that measure results in real-time. To learn more about metrics you can measure with Pipedrive, sign-up for a free trial.

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1. Highly Focused Sales Contest

While the simplest approach to running a sales contest is to base it on overall sales or sales revenue, a more specific or highly focused sales contest based on elements like more new clients or more revenue for add-on products or warranties is often more effective. It can yield more participation and more long-term improvement amongst your sales team. At least, this is what Heather Simmons found when she ran a contest for her Two Men and a Truck franchise in Madison, Wisconsin:

“As a moving company, we offer boxes and packing services in addition to our primary service, which is moving,” Simmons explained. “After utilizing sales contests focused on boosting the sales of our boxes and packing services, we saw the percentage of our sales in this area double.” Better yet, she explained, “They have stayed at that level since.”

Why It Works

By setting a specific area of focus, in this case, boxes and packing services, Simmons encouraged her team to offer these additional products—one they may have neglected or not considered as they sold the primary offering. As a result, her team developed strategies to improve boxes and packing upsells along with their moving services, and these skills and habits have remained with them long after the contest ended.

Contrast this with a general revenue contest where salespeople compete for the highest sales. While it’s possible some will learn new strategies, others will work more hours to boost their numbers. Once the contest is over, they’ll go back to their usual routine and sales will level off.

You can use a highly focused sales contest to help salespeople to develop new skills and step out of their comfort zone and into unfamiliar areas. These types of sales contests tend to facilitate a change in behavior and can have long-term and lasting results.

How to Track It

Pipedrive sales report dashboard

If your sales team uses a CRM system like Pipedrive to manage opportunities, you can generate reports showing revenue by product or product category and compare sales of individuals on your sales team. You can save your products in the CRM and turn your data table into a graphic report for more visual appeal.

2. Milestone Sales Contest

Very often, a few top earning salespeople pull ahead quickly, and the rest of your sales team loses interest as they fall too far behind. A solution to this is to run a milestone sales contest where anyone who reaches a certain number or dollar amount in sales in a given time period receives a prize.

Why It Works

Although it may not push your top salespeople as aggressively as a traditional sales contest, a milestone sales contest is great for motivating your entire team. Not only are more people rewarded and thus motivated to push ahead, but if you allow some competition, you’re certain to see some lasting excitement. If you still want to push your top performers, then consider running a hybrid contest where you add a top sales category.

How to Track It

Pipedrive’s revenue by salesperson over time report

A CRM like Pipedrive can be very helpful if your sales contest is based on a specific revenue amount over a specific timeframe. With Pipedrive, you can customize reports for each member of your sales team to include the revenue they generated over a certain date range.

3. Effort-based Sales Contest

Another way to make your contests more inclusive is to focus on effort. Dan McGraw, founder and CEO of Fuelzee, tried this strategy when he began rewarding his sales employees every time they lost a deal.

“Every time someone got a ‘no,’ we tracked it in our system, and the person with the most ‘no’s received a $100 gift card every week,” he explained. ”This might sound crazy, but you get a lot of ‘no’s when doing sales. The more ‘no’s you get, the closer you are to getting a yes. The prize of getting a yes is way larger than $100, so you still wanted to get there. This nearly doubled our outbound calls and motivated the whole team.”

Why It Works

When you reward for effort, and not just results, new and experienced salespeople alike are encouraged to take their efforts to a higher level. Many will go the “extra mile” to boost their number of calls, or other activity you’re rewarding whether that means staying late, working through lunch, or cutting down on time between calls or other efforts.

It also helps novice salespeople keep their spirits up since, in McGraw’s contest, either outcome with a client is a positive one. A “yes” might mean a fatter commission check, but a “no” still puts a check up on the board and shows they’re trying to close a deal.

How to Track It

Deals won dashboard in Pipedrive

If your employees track their leads in a CRM, generate a report on the number of deals lost, won, or deferred. Most CRM systems, including Pipedrive, can show each salesperson’s win/loss rate, which is their percentage of deals won vs deals lost. Drilling down further, you can graph the exact number of deals won and deals lost, and either post it on your dashboard or export them.

4. The ‘Loser’ Sales Contest

Yet another way to keep everyone engaged throughout a sales contest is to forget about the winner altogether. Bryan Clayton of GreenPal ran a month-long sales contest in which his employees competed not to have the fewest new supplier sign-ups.

The loser each week had to throw $20 into the company Christmas party fund.

“We got up to a pretty sizable pot this year so, needless to say, we had the best Christmas party to date this year,” Clayton explained. “You would be amazed how much fun this makes the daily grind because we compete to win and, in the end, everybody wins.”

Why It Works

Although “punishing” the loser would be inappropriate in most scenarios, the Christmas party fund makes it lighthearted and fun. Also, because Clayton focused on a specific objective—new supplier sign-ups—rather than general sales revenue, it doesn’t necessarily single out underperforming salespeople.

How to Track It

Although it depends on what you’re tracking specifically, most CRMs should be able to report these metrics without too much trouble. Using Pipedrive, you can use their built-in reports, such as sales trends in the last 90 days or sales velocity, or you can customize your own for sales of a particular product, win/loss rate, and much more.

5. Daily Sales Contest

When you design your sales contest, you’ll have to think carefully about how long the contest will run, and how frequently you’ll update the score. Most sales contests run for a month since this gives salespeople enough time to adjust and work toward their goals. On the flipside, month-long contests run the risk of going stale. Salespeople can forget or lose interest if the contest results seem so far away.

Why It Works

Daily sales contests work because they tend to stay top of mind and seem to be more achievable because you get instant feedback as opposed to waiting for an entire month or quarter. It breaks down the time period into something more manageable and keeps the sales team focused on closing sales every single day. It also gives salespeople at different levels of performance an opportunity to win.

How to Track It

Set a deadline for each day—say 4:30 p.m.—with any sales after that counting toward the next day. When you reach the time, gather your team and ask everyone to share their daily sales totals. Once again, a CRM like Pipedrive will be your friend to help tally and confirm the results.

6. Offer Experiential Prizes

Many salespeople want cash prizes and incentives, but many value experiences over cash. One company I worked for offered extravagant trips where sales reps could bring their families and where they had the opportunity to network with other top performers and upper management.

“When it comes to prizes, learn what motivates your team. Cash and ‘stuff’ are fine, but many will be motivated by experiences or even opportunities to better themselves and continue to achieve.”
—Scott Ingram, Founder, Success Media

Why It Works

Not everyone is motivated by cash and physical prizes, especially if they have plenty of those things. Using experiences can be a great way to bond with sales contest winners because sales managers and senior leaders can attend or participate in them. They can be fun ways to get to know your sales team and personally thank and recognize them for their efforts. They also create powerful memories that can last a lifetime.

How to Track It

This sales contest idea is about using a different incentive strategy than the standard cash and prizes and using experiences and training as rewards. The best way to track this is to hold the contest and compare the results to other more traditional sales contests you’ve run. If you have multiple sales teams, you can run two sales contests simultaneously-one with traditional prizes and one with experiential or training-based prizes and compare results from the two.

7. Behavior-focused Sales Contest

Often, there are key behaviors we want our sales teams to take on a consistent basis. Planning and executing a behavior-focused sales contest can help get them into the habit of engaging in certain behaviors consistently by being rewarded for them.

“A previous colleague purchased some giant, fuzzy dice and, whenever one of his reps took certain actions that should lead to closing business, he’d use the dice for a reward. That rep would roll the dice and, if they rolled doubles, they’d pull from a treasure chest he had filled with prizes like gift cards or sillier things like IOUs—who doesn’t want their boss to owe them a favor. This led to a great team atmosphere where their whole team would get up and get in on the fun, then they’d cheer and go wild when someone rolled doubles or laugh and commiserate together when they didn’t.”
—Frank Chiodo, Co-founder, Trivr Eats

Encouraging positive sales activities or behaviors through incentives or in this case through fun games and prizes helps the sales representative associate positive feelings about the sales activity. If held long enough, this type of sales contest can lead to permanent behavior change.

Why It Works

Behavior-based sales contests work because they train and reward people to engage in new or neglected behaviors that can lead to sales. If the contest runs long enough and there’s training or sharing of best practices while the contest is taking place, these sales generating activities can become daily habits that should lead to increased sales.

How to Track It

One of the best ways to track this type of sales is by using a CRM that records the behavior. For instance, if you want your sales team to increase their talk time with prospects and ask certain qualifying questions, Using a CRM that has a built-in phone with recording features that track the length of the phone call that will provide the data you need to run this type of contest.

8. Event-based Sales Contest

It can be fun to make your sales contests based on current events. Doing this keeps the contest top of mind and relevant. The types of events you can use can range from being a day of the week, a season like summer or spring, or a sporting event like the Super Bowl.

“Make contests a regular feature in your department by linking them to certain events. This can be as simple as holding a contest on the last day of the month when everyone is anxious about meeting end-of-the-month sales quotas. If you want to get a little more elaborate, tie contests to a major event in sports or pop culture. Use the release of a new Marvel movie as an occasion for a contest or hold a sports-themed contest for something like March Madness or another current event. Contests can be announced ahead of time to build anticipation.”
—Jordan Wan, Founder & CEO, CloserIQ

Why It Works

Using current events can give you momentum that already exists. If people are excited about the release of a new movie or an upcoming sporting event, why not capitalize on this energy? If your budget allows, you could center the prizes around the event, such as tickets to a movie screening or the sporting event. If you have a smaller budget, you can create prizes based on the event.

How to Track It

Tracking this type of sales contest depends on how you execute it and the type of event you choose. For instance, if you’re basing the contest on a day of the week, for when sales or efforts are typically down, you can create and pull reports based on that day of the week and measure sales or sales activities before and after the contest. This is easy with a CRM like Pipedrive that allows you to run sales reports based on a timeframe you choose.

9. Public Recognition Sales Contest

Some people aren’t motivated by cash or experiences alone. They need public recognition. They love being on stage and the center of attention, especially for their sales achievements. A public recognition contest, therefore, can be a low-cost way of motivating your team.

“One of the best sales contest strategies I’ve seen used in a B2B [business-to-business] tech sales setting involved recognition and rewards. Every employee would have their names go off on a video screen when closing a deal, and each sales rep was tracked using a whiteboard against one another—with points for each closing. This created a competitive drive and facilitated more closings and higher sales, and at the end of the month, the highest performing employee was celebrated with an outside work event at a venue of his or her choice. Some companies, over time, may elect to give out larger rewards to top performers in the form of extra commissions or even vacations.”
—Beverly Friedman, Content Manager, MyFoodSubscriptions

Why It Works

This type of sales contest works because it creates a competitive drive among sales reps, and they can visualize their performance in real time. It also works because some salespeople like seeing their names in lights and enjoy public recognition and celebration. This satisfies the basic need for significance.

How to Track

For this type of sales contest, you’d use sales reports to track which salesperson closed the most deals on a daily basis and for the month or whatever time period you’re tracking. To track the effectiveness of this type of sales contest, you can compare it to other sales contests that you‘ve run and also do a survey to find out what your sales teams think.

10. Team-based Sales Contest

One of the best ways to increase sales and engage your entire team is with a team-based sales contest. Team-based contests allow sales teams to compete against other sales teams and gives teams an opportunity to work together to reach a common or group goal. If you only have one sales team, team-based contests can work if you give the team one goal that they all have to hit. You can combine team-based goals with individual goals to make sure everyone qualifies.

Why It Works

This sales contest works because teams work together instead of against each other, and they are more inclined to help each other so everyone can win. Adding an individual element to it ensures that top performers are not carrying the entire team. If there’s a rule that requires a minimum sales contribution from every individual sales rep for anyone to qualify, you’ll get more seasoned and successful sales reps helping lower performing or newer sales reps.

How to Track

For team-based sales contests, you’d use sales reports to track which teams closed the most deals or engaged in the desired sales activity the most consistently. For instance, if you wanted to do a team contest around the most qualified sales calls by team. You could use a CRM like Pipedrive that has a built-in phone that can track calls by team or territory. The mechanism you use to track results for team contests should allow you to isolate sales results from teams.

11. Lead Generation Sales Contest

A great way to build your pipeline is incentivize lead generation. These could be new leads from existing accounts or new leads from businesses you are not working with yet. You can create a lead generation contest for prospects and existing customers to attend a special event. You can also use rewards like gift cards as incentives to the highest lead generator. To gain maximum participation, include a category that allowed for random entry so that everyone had a chance to win.

Why It Works

This type of sales contest works because keeping a healthy pipeline of new leads and new contacts keep existing accounts more secure and build new accounts, which creates new business. It works from a sales contest perspective because it places emphasis on and rewards the difficult task of prospecting for new business and making new contacts in accounts you already have.

How to Track

For lead generation contests, you’ll need to track them with reports that capture numbers of new accounts and opportunities. CRMs like Pipedrive allow you to pull reports showing leads and opportunities created. If you’re doing a contact building contest where your goal is to grow the number of contacts within accounts, you can export your contacts and use the data to track winners of your contest in Pipedrive.

Tracking Sales Contests With Dashboards

Sales contests work when you have dashboards with reports that you can refer to track contest-related metrics regularly. Creating and maintaining dashboards is easy with a CRM. In most CRMs, you can create dashboards with a few clicks, arranging reports with the metrics most important for you to track in your sales contests. Pipedrive makes creating highly visual dashboards easy and gives you the ability to customize them.

Bottom Line

There are several types of sales contests you can use to motivate and inspire your sales team. The type of sales contest you choose will depend on your business culture, the goals you’re trying to achieve, budget, and ability to track effectiveness. This list of 11 sales contest ideas is an ideal starting point for coming up with your own sales contests.

Pipedrive is a great CRM for tracking sales contests. You can create reports showing key sales metrics that can be used for sales contests, including the number of deals won and lost, revenue, and more. Sign-up for a 14-day free trial to give Pipedrive a try.

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