I am excited to announce that the new eBook, “Sales Contestology, A 7 Step Guide To Sales Contests” is now available for a free download at www.sales-contest.com. I co-wrote this book with Mark Repkin, an incentive and recognition industry leader, also a senior executive at the company, Certifigift.

A lot of the traffic I receive at the Sales Operations Blog, is the result of sales leaders searching for information on sales contests.  Before the creation of this eBook, the only contest resources online were a few blog posts. Mark and I have addressed an un-served need for sales professionals, by publishing this free eBook.

Sales Contestology covers the seven steps we think are most critical when planning and implementing a successful sales contest:

• Step 1: Set your sales contest objective
• Step 2: Decide how to measure your sales contest
• Step 3: Define the criteria for choosing the contest winners
• Step 4: Select Contest Prizes
• Step 5: Plan, communicate and roll-out the sales contest
• Step 6: Announce Winners/Earners | Determine contest ROI
• Step 7: Maintain control, i.e. Continue to use the Sales Contestology process

During my sales and operations career, I have created and implemented hundreds of sales contests. And, I have been a participant or supporter of contests created by colleagues and bosses.

In my experience, the sales contests that were carefully designed and implemented considering the aspects discussed in the seven steps, were far more successful that the contests that were thrown together at the last minute.

Here are some other key highlights from the book:

What is the best way to measure a contest?

• Choose the one or two metrics that will have the biggest and most direct influence on achieving your contest objective.
• A contest is not the time to introduce a new metric. Use measurements that your sales teams know how to influence and metrics where you already have baseline results. You want to be able to track the improvements or changes in the baseline metrics.
• Don’t rob Peter to pay Paul… in contest language the means that you don’t want one metric to go up while another metric goes down, so in the end you have experienced no sales lift.
• Make sure you can track and report on the contest results. Talk to your sales operations and finance partners during the planning process.
• A sale is not always a sale. In most companies there are different ways to measure sales, for example booked sales, shipped sales, top line or bottom line. Be sure to clearly spell out the definition of a sale for your contest.

Move The Middle

Design your contest in a way that motivates and influences the middle performers on your team. In most cases 10% of your team are considered top performers, 10% are new hires or poor performers, and the remaining 80% are your reliable or average performers. Getting 80% of your team to produce more, will have a much bigger impact than only motivating your top performers.

When choosing contest prizes consider….

• The budget and contest return on investment (ROI). As a general rule, the incremental sales that you plan to generate from a sales contest should help offset the cost of the contest itself.
• The size or value of the prizes in comparison to your sales team’s incentive or commission plan.
• Whether to use cash or non-cash prizes. The eBook covers some very interesting considerations and pros and cons, comparing cash and non cash.

When rolling out your sales contest:

• Incorporate a fun theme to make the contest more engaging and memorable.
• Gather feedback from key stakeholders before the contest is finalized and communicated.
• Provide contest participants with frequent status updates and positive reinforcement.

For more information and to download the free book, please visit www.sales-contest.com.

You may also be interested in the free PDF, 50 Sales Contest Themes from the Sales Operations Blog.

1. Design Ideas for Sales Contests and Spiffs
2. Sales Spiffs & Contests.. NOT a lever to drive significant and “true” lifts in sales productivity