11 Great Sales Contest Ideas to Motivate Your Team

A sales contest leverages competition and rewards to motivate sales teams to achieve goals while incentivizing the effective sales habits you want your sales team to adopt. These might include making a certain number of cold calls or closing a certain percentage of deals. Regardless of your specific goals, we’ve included 11 sales contest ideas you can use for inspiration.

1. Run a Highly-focused Sales Contest

The most straightforward way to run a sales contest is to base it on overall sales or sales revenue; a more specific contest can be run based on things such as new clients gained. A contest based on more revenue for add-on products or warranties is often more effective because it fosters more participation and long-term improvement within the 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 when focused on selling their core products and services. As a result, her team developed strategies to improve boxes and packing upsells along with their moving services, and the habits stayed in place 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 simply 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.

How to Track It

Pipedrive sales dashboard

If your sales team uses a customer relationship management (CRM) system such as Pipedrive to manage deals, 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 to create visual reports you can share with your team.

2. Have a Milestone Sales Contest

Sometimes, a few of the highest-performing sales reps pull ahead quickly, and the rest of your sales team loses interest as they fall too far behind. To mix things up and engage all of your sales reps, try running 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

While 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 motivated to perform their best, but if you allow some competition, you’re certain to see some lasting excitement. Additionally, if you still want to push your top performers, consider running a hybrid contest where you add a top sales category.

How to Track It

Pipedrive revenue per sales rep over time

Most CRMs allow you to track which sales opportunities you won and how much revenue they generated over a given time frame. With Pipedrive, for example, you can customize reports for each member of your sales team to include the revenue they generated over a specified date range, making it easy to track for your contest.

3. Develop an Effort-based Sales Contest

Another creative way to make your contests more inclusive is to focus on effort instead of simply focusing on outcomes. Dan McGraw, Founder and CEO of Fuelzee, tried this strategy when he began rewarding his sales employees even when 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 sales activities you’re rewarding, whether that means staying late, working through lunch, or cutting down on time between calls.

It also helps novice salespeople stay motivated. In McGraw’s contest, either outcome with a client is a positive one. A “yes” might mean a bigger commission check, but a “no” still puts a check up on the board and shows they are putting forth the effort.

How to Track It

Pipedrive deals won dashboard

If your employees track their leads in a CRM, your sales operations team can generate a report that shows 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.

4. Hold a ‘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 to not have the fewest new supplier sign-ups.

The loser each week had to contribute $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,” Bryan 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

Though “punishing” the loser would be inappropriate in most scenarios, the Christmas party fund makes it lighthearted and fun. Also, since 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

Though it depends on what you’re tracking specifically, most CRMs should be able to report these metrics easily. 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. Host a Daily Sales Contest

When you design your sales contest, 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 flip side, month-long contests run the risk of going stale. Sales reps 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 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 or experience an opportunity to win.

How to Track It

Set a deadline for each day, 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 such as Pipedrive will be your friend to count and confirm the results.

6. Offer Experiential Prizes

Many salespeople desire cash prizes and incentives, but many value experiences over cash. There are many ways to reward and motivate your team with non-cash prizes, such as gift cards, extra paid time off, and public recognition.

“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

Rewarding your team with experiences can be a great way to bond with sales contest winners because sales managers and senior leaders can participate in them. They can be fun ways to build rapport with your sales team and personally recognize them for their efforts.

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. Have a Behavior-focused Sales Contest

Often, there are key behaviors you want your sales teams to perform on a consistent basis. Planning and executing a behavior-focused sales contest can help get them into the habit of consistently engaging in certain behaviors 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 bowl 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 lead 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 through fun games and prizes helps the sales rep 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 more 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, leading 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 tracks length of the phone call will give you the data you need to run this type of contest.

8. Create an 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 such as 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 and CEO, CloserIQ

Why It Works

Using current events can spark momentum that already exists. If people are excited about the release of a new movie or a 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 to the sporting event. If you have a lower 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 such as Pipedrive, which allows you to run sales reports based on a time frame you choose.

9. Have a 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 can be a low-cost way of motivating your team.

“One of the best sales contest strategies I’ve seen used in a business-to-business (B2B) 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 between sales reps and they can visualize their performance in real-time. It also works because some salespeople enjoy public recognition and celebration—it satisfies the basic need for significance.

How to Track It

For this type of sales contest, 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 conduct a survey to find out what your sales teams think.

10. Develop a 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 them 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 they all have to hit.

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. If there’s a rule that requires a minimum sales contribution from every individual sales rep in order for anyone to qualify, you’ll get more seasoned and successful sales reps helping lower-performing or newer sales reps.

How to Track It

For team-based sales contests, use sales reports to track which teams closed the most deals or engaged in the desired sales activity the most. For instance, if you wanted to do a team contest around the most qualified sales calls by team, you could use a CRM such as Pipedrive, which has a built-in phone to track calls by team or territory.

11. Host a Lead Generation Sales Contest

A great way to build your pipeline is to incentivize lead generation. These could be new leads from existing accounts or new leads from businesses you haven’t engaged with yet. You can offer rewards such as gift cards or tickets to a special event as incentives to the highest lead generator.

Why It Works

This type of sales contest works because keeping a healthy pipeline of new leads and new contacts keeps existing accounts more secure and builds 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.

How to Track It

Track lead generation contests with reports that capture the number of new accounts and opportunities. CRMs such as Pipedrive allow you to pull reports that show leads and opportunities created. For example, if you’re holding 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 identify the winners in Pipedrive.

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, your budget, and your ability to track its effectiveness. This list of 11 sales contest ideas is an excellent starting point for creating your own sales contests.

In addition to running contests, you can keep your sales team motivated by helping them see their progress toward goals in real-time. A CRM such as Pipedrive can help by making it easy to track individual performance with built-in sales reports that measure results. Sign up for a 14-day free trial today to learn more.

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