It’s that time of year — time for merry celebrations, for looming revenue targets, and for sales blitzin’! (Blitzin’, Blitzen … get it?) But there’s no reason that you can’t inject a little fun into your serious December goals.
Here are some lively sales incentive contest ideas to motivate your teams and hit your numbers.
Get a deck of cards and split your sales team into even teams. Every time someone closes a deal over a certain amount, their team gets to choose a card. At the end of the week, each team has to work together to make the best possible poker hand. (Is a flush or a full house better? Some Googling may be required!) The team that presents the best hand takes the pot of digital rewards.
If you’re trying to nurture good sales habits or if your product or service has a long sales cycle, you might want to try sales incentive contest ideas that focus on activities as well as actual contracts. Set up a point system with different values assigned to each activity. Maybe every call made or email sent to a prospect earns 1 point, every demo given is worth 5, and a contract signed is 10. Give rewards to the individual and/or team with the most points at the end of the week.
READ MORE: 11 Key Activities to Reward With Sales Incentives
A sales blitz isn’t always solely about getting sales. If you have a team with many relatively new reps or December is your slow season, you may want to work on improving or refreshing product knowledge. If your employees work remotely, maybe the blitz is their only time to get together and do some team bonding. A lighthearted game of Jeopardy! can be an engaging way to do both. Create categories for each separate product or product line, and throw in a “Company Trivia” category for fun. Make sure to split up any long-tenured reps among the teams evenly so there’s no unfair advantage.
Channel that (non-denominational) holiday spirit for an end-of-the-year push in December. Roll out the high-value digital rewards for a cheerfully competitive blitz. For every sale, the rep gets a raffle ticket. At the end of every day or week, draw a winner to give them a truly joyful treat — think $500 for Best Buy or the Apple Store, $300 for Airbnb or Hotels.com, or $200 for Spafinder.
Save yourself the trouble of ordering branded gifts or trying to guess whether sales reps would rather win an iPad or an Apple Watch. Eighty percent of employees say that getting a gift card or prepaid card as a reward from their employer makes them more productive and loyal, and 44% say they prefer those rewards to be digital, according to Blackhawk Network research. The flexibility to send digital rewards in any denomination makes them perfect for any sales incentive contest ideas you come up with, since you can adjust the reward value based on the size of the win.
Did you know giving rewards publicly makes them even more meaningful? If you’re doing your blitz remotely, check out our Microsoft Teams integration so you can send prizes during live meetings!
Hannah is a reformed journalist who has more than 15 years of experience and now focuses on content marketing for innovative tech companies.
Hannah is a reformed journalist who has more than 15 years of experience and now focuses on content marketing for innovative tech companies.
