INTRODUCTION
What makes sales personnel strive for performance levels beyond “a fair day’s work”? Some sales personnel, the real self-starters, are achievement motivated and need no extra push other than the challenge of the job itself. Most sales personnel, however, do not strive for performance beyond a fair day’s work without additional motivation. Management provides the working environment, supervision, fringe benefits, expense reimbursement, and compensation (a “living wage”) - these are the hygienic factors, whose fulfillment results in the lack of job dissatisfaction but, according to Herzberg, not job satisfaction. Performance at this level results merely from the desire to fulfill the hygiene needs sales personnel, at this level, are ripe for influence by the motivation factors – ones reflecting needs for personnel growth including achievement, recognition, nature of job itself, responsibility, and promotion. The motivation factors represent needs that, when fulfilled, lead to job satisfaction. Sales management uses two main mechanisms for stimulating these needs: sales meetings and sales contests.
JOB SATISFACTION AND JOB PERFORMANCE
Think of the relationship of job satisfaction to job performance. According to Herzberg’s motivation-hygiene theory, job performance leads to job satisfaction. Many managers believe exactly the opposite- job satisfaction leads to job performance. Most studies of industrial workers show a positive relationship between job satisfaction and job performance, but there is little agreement as to the direction to this relationship or the extent to which either satisfaction or performance or both are determined by other factors. It is misleading to assume that job satisfaction leads to improved job performance. Sales personnel who are “happy in their jobs” too often are people with little ambition and frequently report to managers who either misuse performance standards or do not know how to measure performance.
The motivational practices of many companies appear directed toward making sales personnel unhappy with their current performance in an effort to stimulate improved performance. Is there danger that this will decrease job satisfaction? Or is it possible-at least among some groups of sales personnel-that decreased job satisfaction stimulates improved job performance?
In any event, then, we are better off focusing upon improving job performance rather that upon increasing job satisfaction. The purpose is to accomplish more than making sales personnel happier with their jobs. It is to improve job performances, regardless of the approach used.
SALES MEETINGS
MEANING
Sales meetings are important both for communication and motivational purposes. When sales personnel are on the road without the day-to-day opportunity for employer communication and supervision, periodic group meetings are valuable for exchanging information and ideas. They also provide occasions for motivating individual sales personnel through group pressures. Most important, they provide occasions for management to stimulate the group to raise its standards as to reasonable and acceptable performance.
Sales meetings provide opportunity to sales personnel working at different levels to come together and exchange their experiences, ideas and to solve their sales related problems. In sales meetings, sales personnel exchange information, ideas and their viewpoints. It is a type of business meeting. Such meetings are arranged periodically. It provides opportunity to salesmen to interact and gain from each other’s experiences and discuss their problems with higher authorities. Sometimes entertainment element is also added by arranging sales meetings at hill stations, places of historical importance, picnic resorts, etc. Sales meetings also promote team spirit, group cohesiveness and better coordination among salesmen working different levels. Sales meetings also provide opportunity to salesmen to exercise pressure on employer to provide additional financial and non-financial incentives. So, sales meetings are beneficial for both employer and sales force.
According to K.B.Hass, “A sales conference is an open discussion type meeting of people with similar experience and comparable rank, directed by a trained conference leader, for the purpose of solving problems through the exchange of ideas”
According to Cundiff, Still and Govoni, “Sales meetings are arranged for exchanging information and ideas of sales personnel. Sales meetings are important both for communication and motivational purposes. These meetings stimulate the group to raise its standards towards improved job performance.”
According to J.R.Doubmen, “Sales meeting is a meeting of different sales personnel working at different levels to attain predetermined objectives through mutual consultation.”
Thus, sales meetings are convened mainly to communicate with salesmen working at different places. These meetings provide opportunity to discuss sales related problems with higher authorities and experts. These meetings also motivate the sales force as they feel that they are part and parcel of the organization.
PLANNING AND STAGING SALES MEETINGS
Planning a sales meeting requires five major decisions:
(1) Defining the specific training aims,
(2) Deciding meeting content,
(3) Determining methods of conducting the meeting,
(4) Deciding how to execute (hold) the meeting, and
(5) Deciding how to evaluate the results.
Thus, once again, the A-C-M-E-E approach also assures that sales meetings, like sales training programs, are fully planned and effectively staged.
Aims: In planning any sales meeting it is important to have clearly defined objectives. The underlying purposes, of course, are to communicate and motivate. But more specific aims, jokingly called “excuses for holding a meeting,” are required. A new product may be about ready for introduction or research may have uncovered new insights on customers attitudes and behavior, and either of these could lead to meetings (of the sales training type) to communicate these matters to sales personnel and it is hoped, to motivate them. Or supervisory reports might have indicated that many sales personnel are deficient in applying sales techniques, and this could lead to sales meeting, also of the training type, aimed to improve these skills. Or there may be new company policies or sales goals requiring explanation, and the meeting may aim not only to communicate but to use this important information to motivate the group. Running throughout all meeting purposes, of course, is the common aim of altering the attitudes of sales personnel so as to modify their behavioral patterns in ways leading to improved job performances.
Other specific aims of meetings include:
• Improving the quality of sales force reports,
• Orienting sales personnel on the advertising program and showing how they can tie in their efforts with it,
• Increasing the effectiveness with which sales personnel use their time and
• Introducing new services (such as inventory control assistance) for customers.
In setting a meeting’s specific aims, the effective executive answers three important questions.
(1) Are these aims clear and attainable?
(2) Are they realistic in terms of time, audience, and other conditions?
(3) Will the probable results justify the estimated costs?
Content: Determining a meeting’s content is a matter of planning its agenda. An agenda, by definition, is a list or an outline of things to be considered or done during a meeting. Content, the C in A-C-M-E-E, derives directly from the meeting’s specific aims. Say, for example, that there is an industry rumor that a strong competitor is about to introduce a fantastic new product and company sales personnel have a high level of anxiety. Thus, a meeting may be planned with a specific aim of reducing anxiety through informing sales personnel on what the company knows the competitor’s forthcoming new product and the company’s plan for counteracting it. In this situation, content might include,
(1) What we know about X’s new product,
(2) What we think the trade’s reactions will be and why,
(3) What your company is doing, and
(4) What you should do and how.
Method: The methods (M) used in conducting a sales meeting, of course, depend upon the aim and content as well as upon the time available and meeting place. Most local sales meetings, held rather frequently, are short and participative in nature; consequently, group discussion is generally used. Regional and national sales meetings, held less often, run for two or more days, have more ambitious aims and wider content, so they utilize a mix of methods.
Execution: The execution phase, the first E in A-C-M-E-E, is of key important to meeting success. Decisions are reached on speakers, seminar leaders, meeting site, and time. Still other execution decisions, outwardly trivial, contribute significantly to a meeting’s success or failure.
Among these seemingly trivial decisions is room arrangement. Most sales meetings, because of their underlying purposes of communicating and motivating, require active participation by attendees. The conventional classroom, as found in most educational institutions, is set up for the lecture method-seats in rows and columns. To stimulate participation¸ departures from the conventional arrangement are necessary. The below figure shows four popular arrangements. The herringbone breaks up the inhibiting influence of the convenience classroom arrangement- and is widely used when the presentation is basically lecture but with some participation- with the herringbone, attendees see more of others attending than with the conventional arrangement. The workshop is appropriate when smaller groups are to hold buzz sessions on particular topics and report- round tables are preferred, but rectangular ones are also used. The inverted U-shape and the seminar or “British square” are used where considerable participation by the attendees is important.
Diagram
Among other seemingly trivial execution decisions are those on audiovisual equipment and supplies, provisions of materials to attendees (including pads and pencils), timing of breaks and refreshments and starting time and closing time. Inappropriate decisions on any of these detract from meetings effectiveness.
Evaluation: The evaluation phase, the second E in A-C-M-E-E is often neglected by meeting planners. Yet it is important, especially if management desires to improve meeting effectiveness. The basis for evaluation should be whether the meeting accomplished its aims to determine this, participant feedback is necessary. Different types of evaluation form are designed for different meetings. The best practice is to design a new form to evaluate each sales meeting held.
Diagram
TYPES OF SALES MEETINGS
1. National sales meetings: The costs of bringing the entire sales force to a central site are substantial, but national sales meetings are sometimes appropriate. If, for example, comprehensive changes in marketing or sales policies are being made, a national meeting can introduce these changes rapidly and uniformity, providing standardized explanations and answers to questions. Moreover, major executives attend a national meeting but not a series of decentralized meetings- and their attendance provides more stimulation than written or recorded messages at decentralized meetings.
There are other advantages in holding national sales meetings. Sales personnel meet informally with their counterparts from elsewhere and learn from the interchange of experience. On finding that others face and solve similar problems, sales personnel are encouraged to find their own solutions. Meeting home office personnel should result in better coordination between the office and the field. The size of the national meeting generates contagious enthusiasm. If the meeting is held at or near a factory, there is opportunity for product training and to acquaint sales personnel with technical manufacturing details.
The national sales meeting has drawbacks, in addition to the expense. It is difficult to find a convenient time for all sales personnel to attend, unless the product line is seasonal. Company routine is disrupted and competitors may cut into market share while sale personnel are away. However, more aggressive selling resulting from the national meeting should more than compensate for any temporary lapse in sales coverage.
2. Regional sales meeting: The trend is away from national and toward regional sales meetings. The reasons are several. Instead of the field sales force converging upon the central office, headquarters sales executive and personnel attend the decentralized meetings, reducing total travel costs and lowering lost selling time. Headquarters executives, brought into direct contact with field personnel, learn about current problems at firsthand. Each regional meeting has a program designed to emphasize unique problems of that region. The smaller attendance should increase participation time per person attending.
Regional sales meetings have some disadvantages. Demands on executive time may be excessive; consequently, top sales executives often rotate attendance among regional meetings. The smaller percentage of the top management in the attendance depreciates the meeting’s importance in the eyes of the sales staff and because total attendance is smaller, developing a spirit of contagious enthusiasm is more difficult.
The stimulating effect of the regional meeting is reduced further by the pressure to economize. The costs of conducting a series of meetings, for example, preclude using the top flight speakers and entertainers featured at national meetings. Furthermore, the total costs of holding several meetings may equal or exceed those of one large national meeting, because much planning and organizational expense is not fixed but is incurred separately for each meeting.
Executive opposition to national and regional sales meetings
Many sales executives oppose both national and regional sales meetings. Some say that likely results do not justify expected costs, but they admit that many benefits, such as the effect on sales force morale cannot be measured in monetary terms. Other executives, especially those in industries without slack selling seasons, contend that they can ill afford to have sales personnel away from the field, even for a week. Still others object to the demands on their own time. In a few cases, sales executives oppose national or regional meetings because of low sales force morale. They fear that sales personnel will use the meeting to compare complaints and to strengthen their convictions that the company is a bad place to work.
3. Local sales meetings: Local sales meetings are conducted weekly or biweekly by district sales managers and last from fifteen minutes to several hours. The strength of the local sales meeting is its informality, each salesperson having an opportunity to pose questions and to state personal views. Local sales meetings are occasions for sales personnel to get together, become better acquainted, and strengthen group identity.
4. Remote control and travelling sales meetings: Certain forms of sales meetings retain the national sales meetings advantages while reducing its cost and time expenditure disadvantages. Among these forms are meetings conducted by closed circuit television, sales meetings by telephone, sales meetings at home and the travelling sales meeting. They are explained as below:-
(i) Closed circuit television: Closed circuit television enables a company to hold several sales meetings simultaneously. The program is “live” at one meeting site and is telecast to others, thus retaining much of the inspirational value of the live show without incurring costs and inordinate losses of selling time. Televised sales meetings are appropriate for companies with large sales forces or large dealer organizations. Many companies use televised sales meetings to introduce new products or to launch national sales campaigns.
(ii) Sales meeting by telephone: Telephone conference calls are used for small-group meetings and discussions. Users say the group should be no larger than twenty. The meeting is conducted like other small group meetings: the sales manager welcomes the group and opens the discussion, which is guided by two rules-only one individual talks at a time, and speakers identify themselves and their cities. At the end of the call, the sales executive gives a brief summary. The telephone sales meetings save time and money, and, of course, sales personnel lose little, if any, time away from their jobs.
(iii) Sales meeting at home: Seeking to reduce the time and cost of sales meetings, some company’s mail recordings or printed material to sales personnel at their homes. One format is to record an executive conference or meeting and to provide sales personnel with cassette copies. Another is to print an illustrated script of a home office meeting for distribution to sales personnel. Executives using these formats point to three advantages:
(1) Sales personnel receive information at home, free from distractions
(2) They can review the information many times; and
(3) There are savings in time and money.
(iv) Travelling sales meetings: Certain meetings require numerous physical props. For instance, a manufacturer introducing a new product line may want to display and demonstrate each new product. It is difficult in this situation to stage regional meetings because the displays must be transported to, moved in, and set up at each of several sites. Some companies overcome this by outfitting motorized vans and trailers with products displays and conference rooms. Thus, the sales meetings moves from city to city, and at each stop sales personnel and/or dealers come aboard.
ADVANTAGES OF SALES MEETINGS
a) Sales meetings help in communicating sales policies, changes in promotional mix, modification in product, etc.
b) Sales meetings help the sales personnel in discussing their sales relating problems with higher authorities/experts.
c) Such meetings enhance the knowledge of participants as they learn by multiple exchanges of opinions, experiences, viewpoints, etc.
d) Sales meetings promote team spirit, group cohesiveness, mutual cooperation, mutual understanding, etc.
e) These meetings promote the morale of sales personnel as the sales personnel feel important, pride, respect and honour in attending the meeting. They feel the organization cares for them.
f) In such meetings, the salesmen who have shown good results honoured. It inspires other salesmen to achieve higher levels of performance.
g) Such meetings bring uniformity in selling efforts of different salesmen and sales executives.
h) National level sales meetings get coverage in media. It enhances the goodwill of the enterprise.
i) Sales meetings provide an opportunity to salesmen for self-evaluation. In the sales meetings salesmen interact with other salesmen and they get insight about their knowledge and confidence.
DISADVANTAGES OF SALES MEETINGS
a) Organizing national level and regional level sales meetings is an expensive task.
b) Routine selling activities are disturbed during meeting time.
c) Sometimes, consensus is not reached on some issues. It may lead to exchange of hot arguments which may have damaging effect on harmonious relationship among sales personnel.
d) In some sale meetings, all participants do not opportunity to speak, because of more number of participants or a few dominating sales force. In such cases, some salesmen cannot share their views, experiences, doubts, etc. This results in wastage of time and money of business organization and sales force.
SALES CONTEST
MEANING
Sales contests are special selling campaigns in which extra incentives are offered to motivate sales force towards higher sales performance. In sales contest cash prizes, prizes in the form of goods, free trips to luxury resorts, appreciation letters, honours, etc. are provided. Sales contests provide opportunity to hardworking and efficient salesperson to win prizes. These contests motivate the sales force to increase the sales volume. Sales contests boost morale of sales force and help to make personal selling efforts more productive. In sales contests, group incentives are also provided, it promotes team spirit, cooperation and understanding among sales force.
Sales contests help the organization to reduce the effect of off season sales decline. Winning an award satisfies a salesperson’s needs of recognition and achievement and also helps to promote his self-confidence. Sales contests also generate spirit of competition among the salesmen. Sales contests are more popular in the business units selling consumer goods.
According to Cundiff, Still and Govoni, “A sales contest is a special selling campaign offering incentives in the form of prizes or awards in addition to those provided in the compensation plan. The purpose of all sales contests is to increase sales volume.”
Thus, sales contests motivate sales personnel to improve their job performance, by offering them extra incentives in the form of prizes, recognition, free travels, etc.
OBJECTIVES OF SALES CONTEST
Sales contests are aimed to accomplish specific objectives, generally one per contest, within limited periods of time. Most sales contests aim to motivate sales personnel:
• To obtain new customers.
• To secure larger order per sales call.
• To push slow moving items, high margin goods, or new products.
• To overcome a seasonal sales lump.
• To sell a more profitable mix of products.
• To improve the performance of distributor’s sales personnel.
• To promote seasonal merchandise.
• To obtain more product displays by dealers.
• To get reorders.
• To promote special deals to distributors, dealers, or both.
CONTEST FORMATS
Contest formats are classified as directly or novelty. A direct format has a contest theme describing the specific objective, such as obtaining new accounts-for example, “Let’s go after new customers”. A novelty format uses a theme which focuses upon a current event, sport, or the like, as in “Let’s hunt for hidden treasure” (find new customers) or “let’s start planning gold” (sell more profitable orders). Some executives say a novelty format makes a sales contest more interesting and more fun for the participants. Others say that novelty formats are insults to mature people.
A format should be timely and its effectiveness is enhanced if it coincides with an activity in the news. The theme should bear an analogous relationship to the specific contest objective-for example, climbing successive steps on a ladder can be made analogous to different degrees of success, experienced at different times-in persuading dealers to permit the erection of product displays. Finally, the theme should lend itself to contest promotion. Hundreds of themes for novelty formats have been used, most falling intone or another of the ten general categories.
General categories of themes for sales contest with novelty formats:
1. Games:
a. Team type-football, baseball, hockey, bowling, tennis doubles, tug-of-war, soccer, etc.
b. Individual type-tennis singles, golf, wrestling, archery, fencing, broad jump, high jump, pole vault, hammer throw, discus throw, shooting match, javelin throw, bull fight, climbing the greased pole, etc.
2. Races:
a: Team type-crew, cross-country, relay, bobsled, yacht, etc.
b: Individual type-horse race, dog race, air race, soap-box derby, auto race, hurdles, dashes, marathons dog sled, trotting race, swimming races, speedboat races, etc.
3. Card games- poker, pinochle, bridge, black jack, etc.
4. Hunting or fishing- treasure hunt, big game hunt, uranium rush, gold rush, land rush, fishing derby, trapping contest, etc.
5. Travel- trip around the world to Miami, to New York, to Hollywood, to Waikiki, to the moon, to space, etc.
6. Climbing- ladders, stairs, mountains, cliff scaling, ascent to the stratosphere, etc.
7. The rising thermometer, pressure, gauge, etc.
8. Building contest- skyscraper, other new buildings, tower, smoke stacks, etc.
9. Military- naval battles, artillery engagements, bombing runs, invasions, interplanetary wars, etc.
10. Clothing contest (in one contest of this type, the salesperson earns one item of clothing at a time and appears at sales meetings clad only in those items earned up at that point) awards and merchandise for lesser awards. Some contest gives participants the option of accepting one price rather than another.
CONTEST PRIZES
There are four kinds of contest prizes: cash, merchandise, travel, and special honors or privileges. Cash and merchandise are the most common prizes. Many sales contest feature more than one kind of prize, for example, travel for large (incomplete Hve to check with amirtha)
Cash: The potency of cash as an incentive weakens as an individual’s unfulfilled needs are pushed farther up in the need hierarchy. Once basic physiological needs and safety and security needs are satisfied, whatever potency money retains as an incentive relates to unfulfilled esteem and achievement needs. Noncash prizes fill these needs better than cash.
If the compensation plan provides sales personnel with sufficient income to meet basic physiological needs and safety and security needs, a cash prize is a weak incentive unless it is a substantial sum-say, 10 to 25 of an individual’s regular annual income. A cash prize $100 means little to most sales personnel, and they exert token efforts to win it. Another objection to cash prizes is that winners mix them with other income, and thus have no permanent evidence of their achievements.
Merchandise: Merchandise is superior to cash in several aspects. Winners have permanent evidence of their achievement. The Merchandise prize is obtains at wholesale, so it represents a larger value than the equivalent cash. For the same total outlay, too, more Merchandise prizes than cash awards can be offered: hence, the contest can have more winners.
Merchandise prizes should be items desired by salespersons and their families. One way to sidestep this problem is to let winners select from a variety of offerings. From the physiological standpoint, people feel good when they are permitted to assert their individuality and take their choice. A number of “Merchandise incentives agencies”, some of them providing a complete sales contest planning service, specialize in furnishing prizes. Agencies issue catalogs with prizes stated in “points” rather than in money.
Travel: Travel awards are popular .Few things can be glamorized more effectively, than a trip to luxury resort or an exotic land. The lure of a “trip of a lifetime” is a strong incentive especially for a person to escape the job’s routine. Travel awards generally provide trips for winners and their spouses, this being advisable both to obtain the spouse’s motivational support and to avoid the spouse’s opposition to solo vacation trips by the salesperson.
Special honors or privileges: This award has many forms: a letter from a top executive recognizing the winner’s superior performance, a loving cup, a special trip to a home office meeting, or membership in a special group or club that has certain privileges. Winners in addition receive publicity through house organs or through home town newspapers. These awards provide strong incentives, as, for example they do with life insurance salesperson who pushes to get membership in the “million dollar club”.
The special honor or privilege award is used mainly by firms employing sales personnel who are almost independent “entrepreneurs”. Such awards however are appropriate wherever management desires to strengthen group identity and build team spirit. This type of awards appeals to the salesperson’s belongingness and social relations needs, which, according to Maslow, an individual strives to satisfy after fulfilling basic physiological needs and safety and security needs. It also appeals to esteem and self-actualization needs (as do all other contest awards)
HOW MANY PRIZES AND HOW SHOULD THEY BE AWARDED?
To stimulate widespread interest in the contest, it is a good idea to make it possible for everyone to win. This means that the basis for awards should be chosen with care. Contest planners recommend that present performance levels be taken into account-to motivate the average or inexperienced salesperson along with the star performer-and the basis of award be for improvement rather than total performance. Hence total sales volume is less effective as an award basis than, for example, percent of quota achieved or percent of improvement in quota achievement. Many contest offer awards to all showing improvement, but the value of individual award varies with the amount of improvement. The danger in offering only a few large prizes is that the motivational force will be restricted to the few who have a real chance of winning-the rest knowing they have no chance to win, give up before they start.
CONTEST DURATION
Contest duration is important in maintaining the interest of sales personnel. Contest run for periods as short as a week and as long as a year, but most run from one to four months. One executive claims that thirteen weeks (a calendar quarter) is ideal, another state that no Contest should last longer than a month: still another points to a successful contest lasting six months. There are no set guides. Contest duration should be decided after considering the length of time interest and enthusiasm can be maintained, the period over which the theme can be kept timely, and the interval needed to accomplish the contest objective.
CONTEST PROMOTION
Effective Contest promotion is important. To most sales personnel a contest is nothing new. Clever and attractive prizes may arouse interest, but a planned barrage of promotional material develops enthusiasm. A teaser campaign sometimes precedes the formal contest announcement; at other times, the announcement comes as a dramatic surprise. As the contest progresses, other techniques hold and intensify interest. Results and standings are reported at sales meetings or by daily or weekly bulletins. The sales manager dispatches telegrams carrying news of important developments or changes in relative standings. At intervals new or special prizes are announced.
Management encourages individuals or groups to compete against each other. Reports of standings are addressed to spouses. If the prizes selected arouse the spouse’s interest, continuing enthusiasm is generated in the home. The contest administrator should from time to time inject new life into the contest. From the start regular news flashes on comparative standings should be sent out, and, if initial contest incentives are not producing the desired results, the administrator adds the stimuli needed.
MANAGERIAL EVALUATION OF CONTEST
There are two times when management would evaluate a sales contest-before and after. Pre evaluation aims to detect and correct weaknesses. Post evaluation seeks insights helpful in improving future contests. Both pre and post evaluations cover alternatives, short and long-term effects, design, fairness, and impact upon sales force morale.
THE CONTEST VERSUS ALTERNATIVES
If serious defects exist in key aspects of sales force management, a sales contest is not likely to provide more than a temporary improvement. Deficiencies caused by bad recruiting, ineffective training, incompetent supervision, or inappropriate compensation plan are not counter balance, even temporarily let alone permanently, by a sales contest. The underline purpose of all sales contest is to provide extra incentives to increase sales volume, to bring in more profitable volume, or to do both-this purpose is not accomplished if sales force management has basic weaknesses. Other avenues to improvement of selling efficiency need exploring and evaluating at the time that as sales contest is being considered. Probably results of pursuing this other avenues are taken into account in contest planning and in the post mortem evaluation.
SHORT AND LONG TERM EFFECT
A sales contest accomplished its purpose if it increases sales volume, brings in more profitable volume, or does both in the short and long run. No contest is real success if it borrows sales from preceding month or succeeding month or both. For a visualization of the bunching of sales effect that so often occurs during a contest with compensating fall-off after it’s over. Successful contest increase both contest period sales and long run sales (although there may be temporary sales decline after the contest is over) because they inculcate desirable selling patterns that personnel retain. Furthermore, successful contest so boost the spirits of sales personnel that there is beneficial carryover effect.
DESIGN
A well-designed contest provides motivation to achieve the underlying purpose, while increasing the gross margin earned on sales volume by at least enough to pay contest costs. The contest format whether direct or novel, should tie in directly with the specific objectives, include easy-to-understand and fair contest rules, and lend itself readily to promotion.
FAIRNESS
All sales personnel should feel that the contest format and rules gives everyone a fair chance of winning the more attractive awards. While the contest is on all sales personnel should continue should feel that they have a real chance of winning something. A sales contest is unfair if its format causes some to give up before it starts and other to stop trying before it is over.
IMPACT UPON THE SALES FORCE MORALE
Successful sales contests result in permanently higher level of sales force morale. If the contest format causes personal rivalries, it may have the counterproductive effect of creating jealousy and antagonism among the sales force. Even sales personnel compete for individual awards, it is often advisable to organize teams and place the emphasis on competition among teams for recognition rather than among individuals for personal gain.
OBJECTIONS TO SALES CONTESTS
Only one in four sales departments uses sales contests. Why? Among the standard objections are these:
1. Salespeople are paid for their services under provisions of the basic compensation plan and there is no reason to reward them further for performing regular duties.
2. High calibre and more experienced sales personnel consider sales contests juvenile and silly.
3. Contests lead to unanticipated and undesirable results, such as increased returns and adjustments, higher credit loss and overstocking of dealers.
4. Contests cause salespeople to bunch sales during the competition and sales slums occur both before and after the contest.
5. The disappointment suffered by contest losers causes a general decline in sales force morale.
6. Contests are temporary motivating devices and, if used too frequently, have a narcotic effect. No greater results in the aggregate are obtained with contests than without them.
7. The competitive atmosphere generated by a sales contest weakens team spirit.
The first objection indicates misunderstanding of both personnel motivation and contest design, and the second may or may not be true in individual situations. All the other objections are overcome through good contest design, intelligent contest administration and proper handling of other aspects of sales forces management. Assuming that sales management is competent, thorough planning and effective administration of a contest can produce lasting benefits for both sales personnel and company. If a contest is used as a substitute for management, it is likely to have bad results.
Under some circumstances, nevertheless, sales contests are ill advised. When a firm’s products are in short supply, for instance, it is ridiculous to use a contest to stimulate orders, but the same firm might find a contest appropriate to lower selling expense or improve sales reports. Companies distributing industrial goods (that is, raw materials, fabricating materials and parts, installations, accessory equipment and operating supplies) do not find sales contests effective for stimulating sales- except, of course, where it is possible to take sales away from competitors. But, again, industrial goods companies use contests to reduce selling costs, improve salespeople’s reports and improve customer service. Similarly, where the product is highly technical and is sold only after long negotiation, as with many industrial goods, sales contests for stimulating sales volume are inappropriate.
CONCLUSION
Sales meetings and sales contests are two means to stimulate sales personnel. Sales meetings provide opportunities for motivating and communicating with individual sales personnel and for strengthening group identification. Sales contests provide incentives to increase profitable sales volume and achieve more specific objectives. Sales meetings and sales contests require thorough planning and effective implementation. The judicious use of meeting and contests builds individual and sales force morale and helps to accomplish company goals.
