It is easy to create a highly financed and greatly anticipated sales contest to motivate your sales team, however many sales people can become demotivated from such things. They will have fewer sales and become counterproductive due to the negative effect of having a bad two weeks and falling behind in the competition. This will lead them to feel that they have no chance of winning anything, and this process can be less productive than if there was no contest at all. In addition there may always be a ‘star player’ who always wins, leaving the rest of the sales team to win nothing and become more demotivated.

There will be different levels of sales people and therefore smaller prizes will have to be provided to go to the sales person with the best work ethic, or the biggest improvement. This will motivate any of the new starters who are not quite up to speed as the sales ‘superstar’.

The contest should also include different levels, rewarding those that not only bring in the most revenue, but book/attend the most appointments, or complete the most amount of sales. This will not always be the sales superstars and will spread the winnings between a few and give everyone a better chance.

All sales people need the opportunity to win major prizes otherwise the contest is pointless. Sales people will therefore concentrate on their job in order to be considered for any of these prizes, creating benefits for all players will spread the motivation and create an improved sales culture.