Sales Challenge: Closing and Results Analysis (4/4)

Organizing a sales challenge can quickly increase the motivation of your sales force as well as your turnover.

To set up a challenge, there are several important steps:

1. Preparation and definition
2. Announcement and launch
3. Monitoring and engagement
4. Closing and review

At the end of your challenge, it is necessary to close it in a memorable way, and to draw a review from it that will be useful for your company as well as for your next challenges.

Keep the Challenge Alive

Even when finished, the challenge must remain in the minds of the participants. To do this, make an impression, either with a dedicated meeting, or a special moment during your weekly meeting (or even an evening event for larger budgets) to conclude the operation and hold an official award ceremony.

Highlight your winners. For example, create a short testimonial video (very simple with a smartphone!) where they will explain how they achieved this success and share their advice. You can then share this video with the other salespeople. The winners thus benefit from long-lasting recognition. You can also display the portrait(s) of the winner(s) online or in your premises, or even offer them a small trophy that will be proudly displayed on their desks. This recognition is motivating for future challenges, both for the winners and for others.

Indeed, as explained by Action Commerciale magazine in its latest March issue: “Recognition is the ultimate factor of motivation […] beyond the prize, it’s an element not to be underestimated.” For some, recognition is as important as the reward itself.

With Incenteev, the collaborative platform for sales forces, you can create a dedicated interface for your challenge, highlight a collaborator in a few clicks, or even share a video very simply with everyone.

To highlight the performance of the winners, you can also have them participate in internal training sessions, for example, so that they can share their best practices and feel valued.

Compile the Data

Verify the achievement of your challenge’s objectives and the increase in sales during the operation period. Analyze this data to be able to determine periods of strength and decline, as well as the progress of each participant in the challenge. This will give you the keys to understand and potentially improve your next challenge.

To confirm the effectiveness of the challenge, compare the turnover achieved during the operation with a reference turnover. Also measure the ratio between the challenge investment and the additional turnover obtained.

A few months later, you can refine the calculation of this ROI by measuring, for example, customers acquired during the challenge who ordered again afterwards, whether sales were maintained at the end of the operation, etc.

Thus, you will be able to precisely determine the contribution of your operation and you will have a history to compare with your next sales challenges.

Evaluate the Interest in your Sales Challenge

Numbers are good, but the motivation and enthusiasm created by the challenge are also important. Then evaluate your teams’ interest. This is simpler if you have used web tools (a site or platform dedicated to the challenge) because you can track behaviors. Indeed, to get an idea of each person’s engagement, you just need to look at participation on the site, the number of connections, time spent, messages/publications consulted, etc.

You will then know if the teams were interested and motivated by your challenge, and you will orient the next ones differently if necessary.

Ensure with your teams or networks that other more qualitative and lasting factors are well acquired, such as product knowledge and mastery of sales techniques.

The sales challenge is indeed a way to advance your sales force and to confirm their skills.

On Incenteev, you can quickly see who has viewed publications, each person’s participation in the challenge, etc. On the page dedicated to your operation, you can push support or training materials throughout the challenge, and even verify knowledge acquisition by creating quizzes.

The Sales Challenge in 2019: The Essential Guide to Engage Your Sales Force to Download Here

Identify and Convey Best Practices

During the challenge, you were able to closely follow your salespeople in their daily work. You surely observed good things, and less good things. Identify the best practices of the winners (as mentioned above) but not only! Everyone was able to demonstrate qualities to highlight, perhaps even the last-place finisher! Why not use them? Every small success must be valued to effectively motivate each collaborator. Then disseminate these best practices to everyone. You can even create a small white paper highlighting the people and their good advice to follow.

In this way, you allow everyone to evolve and progress by learning from their peers, and you strengthen the motivation of the individuals mentioned for their successes.

Also consider drawing out the opportunities and best practices observed at your company level: the sales made during the challenge and the feedback from your salespeople may have revealed some market trends, competition, etc. For example, untapped business sectors that prove to be in demand and have high potential. This “accelerated collaborative intelligence” can serve you in the long term. So listen carefully to your teams’ feedback!

By ending a sales challenge in this way, you make an impression, you value your sales force, and you identify the keys to succeed in your next operations and strengthen your company’s performance.

Furthermore, you benefit from a precise review, which allows you, before each new challenge, to check the history of your previous ones to make the right decisions.

However, be careful: even if the review is positive, it’s not a reason to repeat the exact same challenge, nor to repeat it all the time. Your challenge may have proven very stimulating for your teams, but if it becomes habitual (and the reward recurrent and frequent), it considerably loses its motivating aspect. Then change the reward, modify the presentation, the name, and the stakes to generate a new surprise each time. Keep in mind that a sales challenge must remain EXCEPTIONAL and UNIQUE.

The Sales Challenge in 2019: The Essential Guide to Engage Your Sales Force to Download Here