The Sales Contest

I don't really "get" sales contests, at least in the professional world of corporate sales. Oh, I’ve won my share of them, and have the plaques and crystal decanters to prove it, but (and here’s my dirty little secret) every time I’ve won it’s been pure, dumb luck. Naturally, since that's how I've always won them, I assume that's how everyone wins them. As with many corporate sales, I've always been involved in big-ticket purchases with long sales cycles. Do you think I started working on proposals in May so that I could be sure to close deals in September to win the contest? No, that just happened to be when the client decided to buy and I was the happy beneficiary.

There are many people who think Sales Contests are great for motivation or recognition and although I, of course, think motivation and recognition are great things, I don't believe sales contests are any good at doing either of those things. Oh, sure in certain situations they work - retail, telemarketing, new product introductions ("First person to sell one of our new gas/vodka hybrid generators gets a trip to Fiji") but once you get out of that realm - not so much.

Technically, if you distribute Sales tally sheets, you have a Sales Contest all year, every year. Every rep knows where they are, where the competition is and who they want to beat.

Professional sales people are self-motivated - give them a good product, a good story, good service and point them in the right direction and they're off. A sales contest won't make your products any better, your story any more compelling or your service any better. If you've got those things, you won't need sales contests. If you don't have those things, you should be spending your sales-contest dollars on getting those things.