There is always a time of year when the mood is exhausted. As much as everyone is doing their job, tiredness starts to hit and the discouragement of the routine ends up affecting the team’s disposition.
Cold periods are normal. The holidays are still far away and the accumulation of stress ends up taking its toll at some point.
A good outlet for moments like this are small internal sales competitions. Challenges that raise the desire to sell and create an artificial motivation to revive spirits.
But like any incentive you need to have some guidelines in mind so as not to transform something that could be nice, into unwanted stress and that brings more problems.
Competition is for salespeople, not results
As much as such a competition will increase sales results, the idea should be seen as a motivator for salespeople and not just as a search for more sales.
Missing this goal can turn a union initiative into an indirect and unethical war, creating conflicts between salespeople and disrupting the professional environment.
For this, even if the general objective is to increase some number, salespeople cannot be punished if they do not reach it. Being afraid of not achieving any results can motivate sales for bad leads, dissatisfied customers and increase the churn rate in the future.
The focus of the competition must be a specific action
When thinking about a competition with salespeople, it is interesting to adjust it to correct some behaviors where there are difficulties.
Are cold connections bad? Do you have difficulties in scheduling meetings?
Find out which point is weak in the team’s performance and use the competition as a way to modify the way the activity is treated. The more targeted the action, the greater the chances of the competition serving as an educator for future behaviors.
Think of teams
Individual competitions bring personal rivalry that can end up being transferred out of the event and into personal life.
Ideally, competitions should be held in small teams, creating a role of cooperation and unity, rather than individual rivalry. Individual conflicts can generate disputes that go beyond the objective, such as accusations that they are stealing, lies and unethical methods.
Deliver prizes to teams
Another way to engage the feeling of teamwork is to ensure that the awards are made to the winning team, and are not individual.
Be it a dinner in a nice restaurant, a free afternoon or a day of paintball, the prizes made for the group make everyone feel benefited by the victory, generating good memories so that, in the future, the other teams see how important it is to work in team to win.
Thus, prizes that can generate good photos of memories and fun moments to serve as future motivation. Of course, the prizes must be good enough to serve as a motivation.
It cannot be too short, but also not too long
Too fast competition ends up not internalizing the desired behavioral changes, they happen in euphoria and let the important lessons go unnoticed.
Ideally, it should be long enough for the teams to turn around, resume and take strategic action, the recovery of a bad result is always exciting.
But if they are too long, they can get boring and tiring, hindering other results that are also important. The ideal is between two weeks and a month.
Have an updated ranking at the end of the day
A ranking is the consolidator of the results. That’s when the competition becomes visual and everyone compares their performance. It is by observing the numbers at the end of the day that each team will try harder and look for new strategies.
Motivation during play is maintained and fed by the ranking.
It can work, but be careful
Competitions like this are fun and can work very well, but that’s why it’s important to take care. The biggest one is not to transform everything that needs to be done in a new event.
If used to exhaustion, competitions can lose their meaning and end up becoming useless.
