It's well known: the best salespeople work at the challenge. Creating commercial challenges therefore makes it possible to motivate (and even train) your sales teams, by encouraging them to surpass themselves.
How to animate a sales force?
A good manager gives specific goals for his team (quantitative but also qualitative). For example, goals that use the SMART methodology (specific, measurable, achievable, realistic and time-bound).
Many companies collaborate with Akimbo to boost the performance of their sales team, on topics of guidance, outsourcing Or of Coaching. Challenges are at the heart of the matter!
Beyond insisting on the meaning of their work, salespeople need Smell a precise direction to find their bearings and improve their performance. So offer them a good reason to give as much as they can. Beyond the numbers, they will be grateful to you.
To do this, they need to be accompanied as much as possible on a daily basis. Serve them guidebook !
Team motivation also involves career development opportunities. A promotion boosts them and contributes to creating a stimulating work environment. To reinforce this, the creation of commercial challenges is a great approach !
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What is a commercial challenge?
Definition of a commercial challenge
A commercial challenge consists in stimulating your teams during operations to regularly put your employees into competition. Challenges can be individual challenges or even collective challenges. These are generally competitions between salespeople limited in time with a treat at the key. The commercial challenge may relate to effort goals (like a number of calls made) and/or result goals (a certain turnover generated).
As a commercial challenge, for example, we can offer a reward to the salesperson who Generate the most appointments by the end of a given week. For example, a high-end telephone headset. Or an afternoon off! The commercial challenge often includes a pecuniary reward which obviously remains a motivating factor for salespeople.
Why do you have a commercial challenge?
Commercial jobs are jobs where the Notion of overtaking is omnipresent. The best profiles are attracted to the competition, The performance and the desire to win. Thus, in order to best develop a company's turnover, it is necessary to constantly stimulate their motivation. Les challenges also encourage interactions between sales teams and fortify team spirit.
In addition, hunter-oriented profiles are highly sought after by companies. It is therefore essential to take care of your teams by creating a stimulating work environment. Chez Akimbo, we often meet salespeople who have left their jobs for lack of challenge!
How to succeed in a commercial challenge?
There are several key success factors in order to succeed in a commercial challenge. First of all, you have to build it with the team in its entirety. For this to work in the long term, define simple and precise rules that every salesperson will have to follow. Ideally, the challenge will even come from them.
To make the challenge really unite the members of your sales force, involve all the sales representatives on the team. It is through this cooperation that the team spirit will be strengthened between your salespeople. Follow the course of the challenge closely. To allow regular follow-up, include in your agenda a tracking point And the Exact date of the awards ceremony.
Finally, be creative! To succeed in boosting your employees, it is important to provide them with both a challenge that suits them, and a challenge that is out of their ordinary. They will be more than grateful and will make you understand it.
Use gamification in your business challenges.
One of objectives of the commercial challenge Is to be fun for the sales force.
The fun aspect can arouse interest and curiosity among salespeople, which will encourage them to get more involved. La Gamification (or Gamification) allows companies to think about their problems in a new light and thus improves the results obtained by salespeople.
In 2019, the Octalysis Group transformed Procter & Gamble salespeople into privateers via “Masters of the Endless Sea”: a gamified CRM. The company achieved very good results: +25% for sales, +300% in interactions between employees and 100% of registered salespeople.
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How to organize effective commercial challenges?
The success of its commercial challenge will depend on its good organization. Prepare the announcement of your challenge to your sales force in advance and support the salespeople during the challenge. If you create it internally, you may make some discoveries during its implementation.
You can then create a more optimal V2 that will solve these problems and bring something new.
How do I announce a commercial challenge?
Announcing a commercial challenge depends on the context of the business and the type of challenge you want to set up.
In case you create a challenge to boost the sale of a new product as soon as it is released: avoid catching salespeople off guard. Give notice between two and three weeks before the release of the new product and the launch of the challenge. Too much innovation at once could undermine the morale of your teams. Again: try to get the idea from them!
If no preparation is necessary to launch the challenge, it can be announced 2 or 3 days before, or even the same day, as a surprise. In this case, in order to avoid any contradiction within your teams, prepare the ground. Explain in the previous weeks and months that you want to set up this type of challenge while remaining fairly evasive. You will then have to show its benefits for your team so that it is perceived as a real opportunity by salespeople.
How to support your salespeople during the challenge?
For the challenge to be beneficial for your business, it is necessary that you support your salespeople throughout it and that you manage The animation of the latter. Make frequent tracking points to know the progress of each member of your team. Listen and also take into account the Everyone's return Of them to improve it (in particular on the proposed format, the prizes at the end of the day, etc.). Remember to value salespeople. Highlight the better results of the day, the week or even the month as the challenge progresses.
This will allow you to quickly boost your teams!
How do you close a commercial challenge?
In order to best end your commercial challenge and to announce the results to your teams, plan a specific time frame. Set a specific date makes it possible to truly realize the challenge and therefore to further stimulate your sales representatives. Obviously, also announce the prizes to be won in advance so that your teams know what they are in competition. Value the winners and their performance in front of a maximum of individuals to encourage other collaborators to desire this “moment of glory”.
However, do not forget to value the effort of the whole group so as not to demotivate some... Compare the overall results of the company before and after the challenge to show all the company's sales representatives that they are in the ability to improve their usual results. In particular, assess the results obtained between the year preceding the challenge and the year in which the challenge started. Announce at the end of the challenge that another challenge will take place to show participants that they can take their revenge.
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How to create a commercial challenge? Important questions.
To create a good commercial challenge, several steps are required : Define the goals and expectations of the challenge so that the latter sells the most to salespeople, then identify the universe in which the challenge is part.
What are the objectives of a sales challenge?
For a challenge to be a seller, its goals should be specific and appealing. As objectives, we can for example retain the following:
- Improving business results;
- Encourage self-improvement;
- Create cohesion;
- Highlight best practices;
- Allow regular team-building;
- Improve your knowledge of the company and its products/services;
- Etc.
What are the expectations of your salespeople?
Vos employees expect concrete results ! Don't just sell them dreams, offer them concrete actions they can rely on throughout the challenge.
Make them understand that their hierarchy is interested in the challenge and that, thanks to good results, they could obtain the reconnaissance from their superiors. From this challenge, salespeople can also expect to find the motivation to perform their tasks more effectively or even the possibility of Increase your skills.
What is the universe in which this challenge is part?
You need to understand The framework of your challenge to know how to announce it, prepare it and better integrate your teams. It is necessary for you to create a universe specific to your challenge that is also in line with your brand image and with the universe in which your teams are progressing. To create this universe, this animation, you need to ask yourself several questions:
- What motivates your teams?
- What are their areas of interest?
- What is your brand image?
- What are the expectations of your sales force?
- What challenge is the best fit for your team?
- etc.
It is finally by asking yourself all these questions that you will be able to establish the perfect universe for your new commercial challenge!
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What indicators should be put in place for the evaluation system?
It is up to you to determine in advance The most important KPI who will determine the winner of the challenge. These KPIs will be known as soon as the challenge is presented. These indicators can be quantitative such as the turnover obtained over a given period, the number of appointments made or the number of calls made over a given period.
But they can also be qualitative. Among the indicators of this type, we can find in particular customer satisfaction or brand image. Above all, these indicators should be adapted to your commercial challenge !
What rewards should you choose?
Sales people are players, but we must not forget that the treat for the challenge is one of main motivating factors. So don't neglect it! To reward the winners, a pecuniary gratification is generally preferable to motivate your employees in the best possible way. It is also possible to give the winners high-tech gifts, a trip, tickets for a soccer match, etc.
However, other rewards such as free training, or even a promotion also attract and strongly stimulate salespeople!
Examples of business challenges
In order to Motivate your teams, numerous commercial challenges can be proposed. To choose and create the right challenge, you must first understand your expectations. Are you doing it to boost your teams and generate more turnover? or to unite your teams? This will determine the format of your challenge.
1. Commercial challenge - Human & Cohesion
This type of challenge has for objective of creating cohesion within your teams commercial. It allows a team building and offers a nice cooperation between the members of your sales force. As a commercial challenge of this type we can take this example in particular:
In groups of 2 or 3, a team must get the largest number of appointments. Every two weeks one team meets another. Thus, each team has two weeks to get as many appointments as possible. The operation is done in a group (the teams compete in a group). The winning team of the tournament will be able to choose the location of an evening for all the sales representatives: soccer match, rugby, restaurant, show, etc. and the losers will have to participate financially in this evening!
Team cohesion is the only way to win this challenge and that is the objective of this challenge, to unite your teams.
2. Commercial challenge - Sportsmanship
As a commercial challenge, we can also find individual challenges that allow you to glorify your self-esteem for example. These challenges can take place in the form of tournaments. To make this format a reality, do not hesitate to draw a table like during sports tournaments (as below).
During the competition, every week, 2 salespeople can compete. For example, whoever has the most turnover this month wins the match. Give a medal or trophy to the winner. As a reward, you can also offer him tickets for a sporting event! La The reward obtained will certainly motivate future participants!
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