5 Innovative Sales Contests Ideas for Life Sciences Organizations

Pharmaceuticals, Medical Devices, Veterinary, and Biotechnology or Life Sciences industry as a whole over the past few years has become highly aggressive and sales-driven. Additionally, attrition rates have been at an all-time high. It can be attributed to an extremely difficult and monotonous sales routine led by the current COVID situation, ever-changing customer needs, highly competitive market, remote work, local and national lock-down type guidelines, rapidly changing tech landscape, and advancement in diseases.

Commercial Excellence / Sales Operations functions in such organizations have been trying hard to tweak incentive programs as frequently as possible in an attempt to keep motivations upbeat and high. However, too many changes to plans end up adding complexity and create confusion for the salesforce eventually leading to a complete failure of the incentive program.

This is where sales contests help as they act as a supplementary element while helping you to keep the essence of the sales incentive program intact. The motive of a sales contest is to promote positive and healthy competition while creating a competitive atmosphere in the sales team through gamification. Here are a few sales contests that revive the sportive nature and create a healthy relationship within the salesforce.

1. President’s Club

This is an honor of choice contest where top-selling folks are identified and awarded a prestigious vacation or gate-away with their family. Typically top 5% of sales representatives are awarded by adding luxury and leisure elements to their incentives. President’s club is usually used and applicable for organizations with a large field salesforce.

2. Poker

This is similar to a poker game where a top-selling salesperson for a defined frequency is given a card. You keep doing this until you exhaust all the 52 cards in the deck. The sales representative who can make a perfect 5-card hand with his cards wins the contest and becomes eligible for a cool incentive. The nature of incentive may differ from organization to organization as the motive here is to make them participate in the game and compete with each other. Poker sales contests can work for small to mid-sized organizations.

3. Raffle

Just like a poker game without cards, a Raffle is a contest that helps add spice to the competition. If you are bored with the same sales reps winning the contests every time, a raffle contest solves your problem. Raffle tickets are handed to sales reps on achieving defined behavior or reaching a goal; let’s say making 25 calls a day. The more the number of tickets over a defined period, the higher is the probability of you winning the raffle contest and helping yourself to some cool incentives which may be electronic gadgets, lifestyle products, or resources for household chores. Raffle removes the monotony if you have ongoing sales contests and salesforce starts losing interest. Raffle contests are suited for sales organizations with large inside sales teams.

4. Championship Belt

The championship belt is a contest inspired by pro-wrestling competitions. Similar to these competitions, the winner gets to keep the belt until the next competition’s winner is announced. Until then, the winner gets to keep, wear a customized belt in the office. As an organization, you need to create a custom championship belt and use it as a revolving award. Championship belt contest is suited for in-office sales teams / inside sales teams as the belt holds no importance when your salesforce works in different territories and doesn’t get to see the rest of the team frequently.

5. Target Account

If you have an account-based sales team this is the contest you may want to try. Define a specific sales behavior, like making 20 calls or selling 200 drug packs to the account within a month. The sales rep who takes down the most no of accounts by exhibiting the behavior or achieving the goals is announced as the winner and stands to win monetary or non-monetary incentives as defined by the organization. Target accounts can be a good contest for an on-field account-driven salesforce.

Humans are competitive by nature and more so if they are in sales. Sales contests help capitalize on this competitive streak, instill a sense of pride, improve morale and help achieve overall sales goals as an organization in the process.