Best Sales Contest Practices by Company Size

The following is an excerpt from Chapter 4 of our brand-new eBook: The Winner's Guide to Running Effective Sales Contests.

Not all sales organizations are created equal. Depending on the size, scope and maturity of your sales organization, you’ll want to tailor your sales contest accordingly. The fourth section of this chapter will break down sales contest best practices by company size: SMB, Mid-Market and Enterprise.

SMB Teams - A Young Foal Getting Its Legs

If you run a sales team for a growing small business or a startup, your focus should be on establishing your culture, getting your process down and getting everyone on the same page.

For these sales contests, we recommend using TV Leaderboards and sales contests involving 2-4 daily sales “activity” metrics (ex. calls, emails) and 1-2 monthly sales “objective” metrics (ex. deals, revenue).

Since SMB sales teams tend to be smaller (less than 20 reps) team sales contests are a less viable alternative.

To keep everyone engaged, our clients tend to run quarter-long “Fantasy Sales” competitions where reps compete as individuals in a league-style format with weekly-competitions.

Mid-Market/Growth - A Teen Colt Ready to Break Out

If you run a sales team for a mid-market company, you probably have a sales team of 20-50 or maybe even 100 reps, a CRM and perhaps a phone system or other sales enablement tools.

For these teams, the focus of your sales contests should be on improving sales data accuracy, CRM usage and adherence to a daily sales process.

With sales data accuracy, CRM use and process adherence as your focus, it makes sense to run sales contests that incorporate as many of your key metrics as possible. We recommend including 3-5 daily sales “activity” metrics (ex. calls, emails) and 1-3 monthly sales “objective metrics.”

Also worth noting: Mid-Market clients on Ambition have seen some of the best results running team sales competitions.

Enterprise - A Thoroughbred Hitting Full-Stride

If you run an enterprise inside sales team, your focus should be on driving the daily activities proven to attain company objectives and building camaraderie through team contests involving multiple offices.

Enterprise sales contests run by Clayton Homes and Coyote Logistics worked best by incorporating 3-4 daily sales activities (ex. calls connected, voicemails, emails) and 1-2 long-term sales goals or effectiveness metrics (ex. converted opportunities, deals closed, profit).

Our enterprise clients at Ambition have experienced tremendous success running sales contests that pitted, say, an Atlanta sales office versus a Chicago sales office.

These companies tended to run two types of contests, one using the office versus office format, the other using an intra-office format with small teams of 4-5 sales reps competing against each other.

Run Revenue-Driving Sales Contests on Ambition

Ambition is a sales management platform that syncs every sales organization department, data source, and performance metric on one easy system.

Ambition clarifies and publicizes real-time performance analytics for your entire sales organization. Using a drag-and-drop interface, non-technical sales leaders can build custom scorecards, contests, reports, and TVs.

Ambition is endorsed by Harvard Business Review, AA-ISP (the Global Inside Sales Organization), and USA Today as a proven solution for managing millennial sales teams. Hear from our customers below.

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