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13.05.2017 // Mother's Day

 A special day in the honor of mothers, Mothers Day is celebrated in several countries around the world though on different dates. In a large number of countries the Mothers Day is celebrated on the second Sunday in the month of May, but in many other countries Mothers Day is celebrated in an entirely different time of the year.

What Do People Do?

Many people remember their mothers and mother figures on Mother’s Day. Mother figures may include stepmothers, relatives, mothers-in-law, a guardian (eg. a foster parent), or a family friend. There are many different ways to celebrate Mother’s Day. They include (but are not limited to):

Giving cards, flowers, or cakes.
Family gatherings or visits.
Family breakfasts, brunches, lunches, and dinners either at home, at a café or at a restaurant.
Personal phone calls, particularly from children who live away from their mothers and/or mother figures.
Mother’s Day poems and messages.
Gifts of chocolate, jewelry, accessories, clothing, hobby equipment or tools, handmade items, or gift vouchers.
 A day at the movies with mothers and/or mother figures.
Mother’s Day is celebrated in different countries, including China where carnations are popular Mother’s Day presents. Some groups in Samoa organize elaborate song and dance performances throughout the country. They celebrate the contributions that mothers make to Samoan society.

Public Life
Mother’s Day falls on different days depending on the countries where it is celebrated. It is held on the second Sunday of May in many countries, such as Australia, Canada and the United States. It is held exactly three weeks before Easter Sunday in the United Kingdom. Sundays are usually non-school and non-working days in these countries.
Mother’s Day is an annual public holiday in countries such as Costa Rica (August 15, on the same day as Assumption Day), Georgia (March 3), Samoa (second Monday of May), and Thailand (August 12). Restaurants and cafes may be busier than usual as some people take their mothers out for a treat.

Background
Early Mother's Day celebrations can be dated back to the spring celebrations to honor Rhea, the Mother of the Gods, in ancient Greek civilization, according to some sources. Later, Mothering Sunday in the United Kingdom was traditionally a day for people to visit the church where they were baptized, although it now also celebrates motherhood in modern times.
The modern-day origins of Mother's Day can be attributed to two women – Julia Ward Howe and Anna Jarvis, who were important in establishing the tradition in the United States. Around 1870, Julia Ward Howe called for Mother's Day to be celebrated each year. It continued to be held in Boston for about 10 years under her sponsorship, but died out after that. Other sources say that Juliet Calhoun Blakely initiated Mother’s Day in Albion, Michigan, in the late 1800s. Her sons paid tribute to her each year and urged others to honor their mothers.
Many people believe that Mother’s Day is now largely commercialized, with card companies, flower shops, jewelry stores, gift shops, restaurants, hotels, and department stores advertising promotions and special deals for this event. Anna Jarvis, in her lifetime, unsuccessfully filed a lawsuit to stop the over-commercialization of Mother's Day.
Symbols
There are various ways to show an appreciation for mothers and mother figures on Mother’s Day. They include white carnations, which Anna Jarvis asked to be the official symbol for the day, as well as the International Mother’s Day Shrine. This shrine is dedicated to the preservation of motherhood. The structure is listed on the National Register of Historic Places in the United States. It is located together with a museum at Grafton, West Virginia, and aims to preserve, promote and develop the spirit of motherhood.

03.05.2017 // 25 Tips for Creating Great Marketing Videos

In recent years, videos have been making inroads in digital marketing, emerging as a powerful promotional tool for businesses to promote their wares in an exciting and engaging way. Though when it comes to video marketing, there’s some pretty definitive ‘rules’ businesses should stick to in order to get their videos right. Get them wrong and marketing videos can be more hindering to a company than profiting.

Tips for Creating Marketing Videos

Tell a Story

Instead of being overtly salesy, an effective video tells a story. As the Digital Marketing Institute notes, businesses should utilize the emotive power of video by appealing to their customer’s needs and desires.

Make Sure the Introduction Stands Out

A little like how we are unlikely to click on an email if we’re not inspired by the subject line, an incredible one fifth of viewers click off a video within 10 seconds if they’re not interested in what they see. With this in mind, the introduction of the video is vitally important and should be made inspiring, entertaining and informative, to hook the viewer and encourage them to view the whole of the video.

Create a Stimulating Title

By the same token, your video’s title should be stimulating and eye-catching in order to grab a viewer’s attention. Furthermore, by using relevant keywords in a title, the video is likely to show up on the search engines when viewers search for the topic.

Focus on the Mission and Less on the Product

Instead of being overtly focused on the product and all its benefits, channel the message of the video into the mission of the product. Dove, for example, are hailed are being experts in creating emotional viral videos that focus less on their product and more on their mission.

Don’t Be Boring

Who wants to watch a boring video? It goes without saying, if you want your business’s video marketing campaign to be successful, create exciting and inspiring videos that can never be considered boring.

Get a Little Bit Risqué!

While too much naughty content is unlikely to do the credibility of your business many favors, as Inc. writes, just the right amount can be good for page views — as long as not overdone.

Make it Mobile Friendly

With more and more people using mobile devices to get online, it’s imperative corporate videos are mobile friendly. In fact, according to YouTube, mobile video consumption increases 100% every year! Marketing videos therefore need to be able to be downloaded and enjoyed on mobile devices.

Think About SEO

Quite simply, Google loves video content and an effective video marketing campaign should have Search Engine Optimization (SEO) in mind. To ensure maximum SEO value from your videos, accompany the video with a well-written description that is tagged with relevant keywords to help boost the video’s SEO.

Include Your URL in the Video

Displaying your website address in a marketing video is a good way for companies to get exposure and generate traffic to their website through a video.

Educate Your Audience

As the Digital Marketing Institute informs, one of the most powerful ways to implement effective video marketing is to educate viewers. Often videos that offer advice, information, tips and other informative content can be more effective than a solely promotional video.

Make the Video More Atmospheric with Music

Music is a powerful tool on video content, evoking a myriad of emotions. Don’t be afraid to use music in your video that fits the mood of the message and crafts a more exciting and emotive video.

Use Video Content Generated by Customers

Putting your customers behind the camera to talk about how they have used and benefited from your product, can be a powerful way to engage viewers and appeal to prospective customers.

Include a Call to Action

Similar to how all blog posts and content should have a call to action at the end, which invites the reader to take further action, such as signing up to a newsletter, or visiting a website, so too should a marketing video. Ask yourself, what do you want viewers to do when they’ve watched the video and then encourage them to do so without being overtly salesy.

Take Viewers Behind the Scenes

Consumers love to get up close to a brand and video marketing offers the perfect opportunity to take customers behind the scenes and into your business’s ‘natural surroundings.’

Include Tutorial Videos

Posting tutorials that are relevant to your niche is a great way to connect and engage with customers. Tutorials shouldn’t give away all your industry secrets, but should be enough to entice the viewer with informative and useful content, leaving them wanting to learn more.

Keep Them Short

Online viewers often don’t have much time to spare before they’re off looking on a new site and at a new video. In this sense, shorter marketing videos can tend to work better than long ones. As Helen Klein Ross told Kiss Metrics:

“The less you say, the more likely people are to remember.”

Use a Professional Voice

Words spoken with clarity and professionalism will always come out better in a corporate video than an amateur speaker, whose lack of experience speaking on the camera is obvious. With this in mind, it might be a good idea to have an employee that is experienced on speaking in front of the camera record for the video, or even think about calling in a professional.

Use Micro-Video Apps

Along with all this talk of keeping videos short for  the viewer, it’s also true shorter content is a better format for most social platforms. As Forbes notes, short, concise content triumphs over longer forms of content, particularly on social media channels. Video marketers should consider using micro-video apps, which shorten videos to less than 10 seconds, so they’re ideal of sharing on the likes of Instagram and Twitter.

Pose Questions

Strive to create engagement and conversation with your video by asking viewers questions. Ask viewers to leave answers to the questions in a comment section below the video.

Don’t Be Preoccupied with Perfection

Videos for marketing purposes aren’t Hollywood movies and nobody expects perfection. Whilst you want the video to look professional, don’t become too obsessed with perfection that on the 50th take you still haven’t got in right.

But Don’t Forget Production Quality

That said, it’s important a marketing video is produced professionally. From the camera work to lighting, edited to voice overs, it might be a good idea to call upon the expertise of a professional video production company to ensure the video is produced in a high quality.

Use Videos to Help You Create Your Own Effective Video Marketing Strategy

Head to the likes of YouTube to see how businesses are already building videos that have managed to go viral. Featuring the likes of Coca-Cola, these ‘10 Epic Viral Marketing Videos’ on YouTube will give you some pointers on how some of the biggest and well-known brands are producing a video designed to go viral.

Build Hype Around the Launch of the Video

Instead of just going ahead and launching your video, build hype around the video by promoting its launch date on your website, blog and social media channels.

Provide Some Humor

Not all corporate videos need to be serious. On the contrary, some humour can work well in generating more interest in your video. Vidyard gives an example of a humorous marketing video that proved hugely successful — a parody by cloud invoicing provider Taulia of the award-winning commercial series ‘Get Rid of Cable’ by Direct TV. As Vidyard writes:

“The video not only delivers a laugh, but this kind of humorous take on B2B solution can really get your customers feeling connected with your brand and help you stand out in what can be a stuffy market.”

Embed a Video in Landing Pages

Think strategically about where you are going to place your marketing video. Statistics show that embedding videos in landing pages can raise conversion rates by as much as 80 percent.

With video forecast to claim more than 80 percent of all web traffic by 2019 and 90 percent of customers reporting that product videos help them make purchasing decisions, it is imperative companies create videos that resonate with their audience and ultimately help sell their services and products.

27.04.2017 // How to Use the Psychology of Colors When Marketing

Do you feel tranquilly calm when surrounded by green fields and blue skies? Or perhaps slightly alarmed when staring at a red stop sign?

Color has been known to have a powerful psychological impact on people’s behavior and decisions, and this knowledge has been harnessed all too well by designers and marketers alike. Color can often be the sole reason someone purchases a product, where 93% of buyers focus on visual appearance and almost 85% claim color to be their primary reason for purchase!

How do Colors Influence People?

Red – Creates a sense of urgency, which is good for clearance sales. Encourages appetite, thus is frequently used by fast-food chains. Physically stimulates the body, raising blood pressure and heart rate, associated with movement, excitement, and passion.

Blue – The preferred color of men. It’s associated with peace, water, tranquility, and reliability. Blue provides a sense of security, curbs appetite, and stimulates productivity. The most common color used by conservative brands looking to promote trust in their products.

Green – Associated with health, tranquility, power, and nature. Used in stores to relax customers and for promoting environmental issues. Green stimulates harmony in your brain and encourages a balance leading to decisiveness.

Purple – Commonly associated with royalty, wisdom, and respect. Stimulates problem solving as well as creativity. Frequently used to promote beauty and anti-aging products.

Orange & Yellow – Cheerful colors that promote optimism. Yellow can make babies cry, while orange can trigger a sense of caution. Used to create a sense of anxiety that can draw in impulsive buyers and window shoppers.

Black – Associated with authority, power, stability, and strength. Often a symbol of intelligence, but can become overwhelming if used to frequently.

Grey – Symbolizes feelings of practicality, old age, and solidarity. But too much grey can lead to feelings of nothingness and depression.

White – Associated with feelings of purity, cleanliness and safety. Can be used to project an absence of color or neutrality. White space helps spark creativity since it can be perceived as an unaltered, clean state.

Properly Using Color Theory

Use contrasts to reduce eyestrain and allow readers to focus their attention on specific items. Vibrancy can dictate the emotional response users have to your design.

For example, choosing brighter colors can lead users to feel more energetic, which can evoke better responses and reactions. But if your website is information-intensive, you may find that a darker color theme will make it easier for readers to process all your data.

How Are Major Brands Using Colors?

McDonald’s chooses high-energy colors like red and yellow which appeal to children, kindle appetites, and create a sense of urgency. Of course, Ronald McDonald himself is popular with the kids, but he’s also sure to agitate parents quickly. This facilitates faster customer turnover.

It’s scary to think how powerful this tactic has been for Micky D’s, which might not have been the same ridiculously big chain it is today without using red and yellow so effectively. McDonald’s sure wouldn’t be so popular trying to market all that unhealthy food using the color green!

Interestingly, the only major global brand to use green as its primary color is Starbucks. Using green shows that Starbucks hopes to promote a sense of relaxation in their cafes, inviting customers to come in for a coffee break during a stressful day.

How are you incorporating color into your branding and marketing efforts?

25.04.2017 // How to Boost Sales While Spending Less on Marketing

Marketing is a critical, yet expensive part of any modern business. Most major brand name companies spend a considerable amount of revenue on marketing; Salesforce, for example, spends a whopping 53 percent of its revenue on marketing, while social media giant Twitter commits 44 percent.

Regardless of how much your company can or wants to commit to marketing, it is nonetheless a costly affair.

Here are a few tips to help reduce those costs, and still generate leads and make sales.

How to Reduce Marketing Costs

Optimize Your Social Media Presence

While there are numerous platforms in which to market your products and services, social media is the newest; it also shows tremendous potential for marketing effectiveness at a reduced cost. Social media platforms like Facebook are a terrific medium for relatively economical, highly targetable online ads, so you can reach your target market at a reasonable price.

The social media platforms themselves enable you to build brand awareness and loyalty, both through paid as well as organic content; often the mix of both helps to generate significant buzz about your company and to generate leads. You can further positive word-of-mouth on social media by providing discounts to customers who write positive reviews. The social media platform Twitter can serve as an effective email distribution list for your company, alerting the public to new products or sales.

Finally, you can use all of the social media platforms that are out there to maintain contact with your customer base, essentially for free, and use your interactions with them to help expand it.

Leverage Data

Don’t waste your time or your company’s scarce resources advertising to consumers who are not there; instead, employ data to help shape your marketing plan, and how you execute it. A good place to start is with your current customer base; determine what makes them tick in regards to your company, and why they continue to rely on your products and services.

Online, written, and telephone surveys can help provide a window into the consumers who are buying your products. Your company could also employ other powerful tools, such as Google Analytics, to sift through marketing and online data, and the tools to help make it useful to your company. Using tools like this can help you to calibrate your marketing efforts to achieve maximum effectiveness while minimizing overall costs. Finally, ensure your company takes advantage of the troves of free and accurate data that is out there.

Government sources, such as Data.gov and the U.S. Census Bureau, can provide critical information to help you market more effectively, and at a lower cost.

Remember the Basics

Regardless of the high-tech tools, you apply, or the new frontiers in media you venture into, following long-standing marketing principles remains one of the best ways to market your company effectively while controlling overall costs. Avoiding costly mistakes, in print, online, and social media ads and posts can help prevent you from putting your company in a negative light and threatening sales.

Avoiding costly mistakes, in print, online, and social media ads and posts can help prevent you from putting your company in a negative light and threatening sales. Avoiding costly changes to your marketing strategy when the current one is working (as your detailed data clearly shows) is another way your company can manage marketing costs and still make good sales. Investing in well-trained marketing staff — through targeted recruitment, effective training, and follow-on education — is another way that you can have the most effective marketing department for the cost.

Finally, remember, one of the best ways to reduce marketing costs is to retain the customers you already have. Repeat customers are responsible for 40 percent of a given business’s revenue on average, so retaining customers is another great way to reduce the costs incurred in marketing to find new ones.

14.04.2017 // Greetings with the coming Easter

05.04.2017 // 25 Phone Sales Tips for Successful Cold Calling

Making cold calls might not be the most fun part of the sales process. But in many industries and businesses, it is necessary. To perfect the art of cold calling, take a look at some of the tips and tricks in the list below.

25 Phone Sales Tips

Prepare Yourself Mentally

Cold calls can be intimidating, especially if you’re unprepared. So before you get started, you need to get yourself in the right state of mind. This means coming up with a general script or talking points. But it also means coming up with a routine so that you’re comfortable and relaxed on each call.

Have One Goal in Mind

You should also have a specific goal in mind for each call so that you’re more likely to stay on task. Usually, your goal is to make a sale. But in some instances, your goal could be to sell a specific item, to upsell a new version of your product or even to just gather information from new prospects.

Practice Your Tone

In general, you want to sound relaxed but professional on each cold call. But you can’t hope to achieve that blend without some practice. So before and during each call, pay special attention to your tone and make note of any areas you might notice that need improvement.

Record Yourself

In addition, you might consider setting up an audio recorder on calls or practice calls so that you can hear yourself and make notes of areas that need improvement later on.

Build Up Your Confidence

Confidence is an absolutely essential part of creating a relaxed tone for cold calls. So that means you need to work on improving but also think about some of the things you do really well. And simply practicing and making a lot of calls can make you feel more confident over time.

Don’t Dwell on Small Talk

Small talk at the beginning of each call might seem friendly and natural. But too much of it can be distracting and time wasting. So say a quick hello and then try to get to the point of your call quickly.

Anticipate Obstacles

Not every cold call is going to go smoothly. In fact, there are some obstacles that might come up fairly regularly. If you notice some of those common issues, you should be able to anticipate them and come up with good responses to use on your cold calls going forward.

Keep Talking Points Handy

While you don’t necessarily need to stick to an exact script on every cold call, it can be a good idea to have a general outline. If you keep a few talking points nearby, it can help you stay on track in case you get distracted or thrown off.

Be Conversational

However, it’s important to not get too attached to those talking points. If you sound like you’re reading from a script, customers are less likely to buy. Instead, respond to each customer inquiry or response in a natural way that allows you to then lead back to your talking points.

Find a Way to Connect

If possible, it can be beneficial to find some kind of connection with your prospect early on in the call. If you’re from the same city or have a colleague in common, for instance, that can be a good way to build a rapport with them early on.

Create a Comfortable Space

When you’re making cold calls, you need to be both mentally and physically comfortable. So that means you need to set up your workspace in a way that will support you. Get a comfortable chair, put up some family photos and otherwise personalize your space.

Don’t Multitask

If you want to get a lot done, you might think that you should make cold calls while also completing other tasks. But your prospects deserve your full attention. And you don’t want to sound distracted on calls either.

Build Up Your Energy

You also don’t want to sound tired or disinterested on calls. So build up your energy with some healthy snacks or light exercise beforehand.

Put Yourself in the Customer’s Shoes

When talking to potential customers, it’s important to word things in a way that they’re likely to relate to. So think about what types of problems or needs they might have in order to better sell to them.

Keep the Focus on Their Benefit

In addition, it’s important that you always keep the focus on how your product or services can benefit them. So instead of just talking about the features you offer, focus on what your product or service can actually accomplish for your customers. For example, if you’re offering a software program, you can talk about the time saving benefits rather than outlining all the different capabilities it offers.

Highlight Your Track Record

You can also talk a bit about what your company has accomplished in order to offer some proof that it would be beneficial for customers to buy from you. For example, you can call attention to high ratings or reviews, or talk about how many years you’ve been successfully in business.

Ask Questions

You also need to fully understand your customers in order to effectively sell to them. That means that it can be a good idea to ask a fair amount of questions to gain a better understanding and keep the conversation going.

Don’t Be Pushy

However, you don’t want to be too pushy throughout your conversation. Doing so can turn customers off and ruin any future chance you might have of doing business with them.

Keep It Quick

You also don’t want your calls to run too long. If you go on and on forever, your prospects might get bored or disinterested. Or they might just not have the time to sit on the phone with you for that long, even if they are interested in purchasing. So get to your point fairly quickly and if it doesn’t work out, move on.

Make as Many Calls as Possible

Along those same lines, you also need to keep calls quick so that you can make as many of them as possible. You’re likely to get a lot of rejections, so the more calls you make, the bigger your chances are of making some sales.

Try Batch Calling

But don’t make just one or two calls at a time. Once you’re in the groove of making calls, make a lot of them. You’re likely to have all the information fresh in your mind. And you might even get more comfortable making those calls as you go.

Don’t Get Discouraged

It’s also important that you don’t get discouraged by rejection. When you’re calling people out of nowhere, you can’t expect them all to be ready to buy right away. So when you get rejections, just let it go and move onto the next call.

Take Breaks

Once you’ve made a fair amount of calls, you can take breaks to refresh and build your energy and confidence back up, especially if you need a break after some particularly harsh rejections.

Keep Records

As you make calls, you can take notes or keep records of each call in case those notes might help you make that sale or others in the future.

Follow Up If Necessary

And sometimes, making the sale might require that you make more than one call. So after your cold call, make any necessary notes and then follow up with them again later.

23.03.2017 // Features of Effective Loyalty Programs

Are you getting the most from your retail loyalty program? Or are you considering implementing a loyalty program and wondering if it’s worthwhile? A study by Accenture polled more than 25,000 consumers and unearthed some insights about what loyalty programs actually work and how to make yours more effective.

First, loyalty programs are ubiquitous — in fact, the average U.S. household has memberships in 29 loyalty programs. Second, they work: Overall, members of loyalty programs generate 12 to 18 percent more incremental revenue growth per year than non-members, the study found.

But with millions of loyalty points going unused, loyalty programs could be a lot better and deliver more value for businesses. Some 77 percent of U.S. consumers say they’re more fickle with their loyalty than ever before, making it even more of a challenge to keep them satisfied. In fact, “satisfaction” and factors such as reliability and low prices aren’t as effective as they used to be at generating loyalty. Today, you need to go above and beyond.

Key Features of Effective Loyalty Programs

What features of loyalty programs are most effective with customers?

Offers

Fifty-nine percent of U.S. consumers are loyal to brands that give them discounts, gift cards and special offers to reward their loyalty. You probably already do this; just make sure you’re tracking which offers get the best results and generate the most profits.

Personalization

Forty-one percent of U.S. consumers are loyal to brands that allow them to personalize products. Offer loyalty program members free customization, such as engraving a product or special ordering custom-color sneakers.

Innovation

Forty-one percent of U.S. consumers are loyal to brands that present them with new experiences, products or services, while 51 percent are loyal to businesses that consistently have the “latest” products available. Create special experiences for your loyalty program members, such as a VIP sale, early access to sales or early access to new products.

Celebrities

About one-fourth of U.S. consumers are loyal to businesses that partner with celebrities or “social influencers” such as popular bloggers or YouTube personalities. Try a partnership with a social media “star” your customers care about.

Family and Friends

Forty-two percent of U.S. consumers are loyal to brands their families and friends do business with. Offer loyalty program members a reward for getting friends or family to sign up, too.

Participation

Forty-four percent of U.S. consumers are loyal to businesses that involve them in designing or creating new products or services. Enlist your “VIP” customers to help choose which new products your store will carry.

Beyond the Features of Effective Loyalty Programs

Accenture offers the following tips for getting the most from your loyalty program:

• Monitor ROI. Review the cost of current loyalty programs and make sure the ROI justifies the investment. Perhaps you can eliminate some aspects of programs or change the rewards to either cost less or generate more sales. For instance, instead of giving away free gifts or gift cards, create a value-added service instead, like free personal shopping services, free gift wrapping or a year-long return window instead of 30 days.
• Think beyond dollars. Don’t just focus on getting loyal customers to spend more. Loyal customers have additional value beyond sales: They’re also a good source of new customers. Focus on retaining the happiest customers and getting them to share their opinions with new customers. More than half of the most loyal customers in the study actively recommend brands to others; 14 percent express their loyalty by publicly endorsing or defending the company on social media.
• Understand what Millennials want. When it comes to loyalty programs, Millennials care more than other age groups about interacting with businesses through multiple channels, celebrity partnerships, exclusive offers and personalized loyalty rewards.

20.03.2017 // Congratulations with the International Day of Happiness

The International Day of Happiness was introduced by the General Assembly of the United Nations during 2012 and was celebrated for the first time in 2013. Through seminars and educational tips and tools, the aim is to educate and increase public awareness of the benefits of happiness.

The original idea came from the Kingdom of Bhutan in the Himalayan region of Asia. There, the population is thought by many to be among the happiest in the world due to the holistic approach to life and the amount of importance which is placed on the well being of people and communities, as much as material wealth.

16.03.2017 // New products of the Company "Ranok-Creative"

13.03.2017 // 20 Sales Contest Ideas Guaranteed to Motivate Your Team

In order to make more sales, you need to find a way to really motivate your team. If you don’t have a huge budget to work with, that might seem difficult or even impossible to do. But there are some low budget ways you can motivate your team and incentivize great work.

Contests and other fun incentives can be a great way to bring your team together and get more done. Here are 20 different sales contest ideas you can use to do just that.

Sales Contest Ideas

Salesperson of the Month

Having an employee or salesperson of the month is a pretty straightforward way of rewarding great work on an ongoing basis. You simply present a designated award to the top salesperson or another employee who meets a certain set of objectives throughout each month.

To get started, you’ll simply need to choose a starting month, outline a specific prize and then alert your employees. Prizes can range from time off to money or even something more creative.

Raffle Prizes

If you want to make sure that all of your employees have a chance to receive awards while still getting recognized for their work throughout the month, you can set up a raffle type system.

Each salesperson or employee can obtain raffle tickets for every sale or specific objective that they reach throughout the month. Then at the end of the month or quarter, you can have a drawing to award a large prize or a few smaller prizes. This ensures that the people who do the best work have a great chance of receiving awards, while still ensuring that every small achievement receives recognition.

Winner’s Choice

Coming up with prizes can be one of the most difficult parts of running a sales contest. But there is a way to make it a bit easier. Just let the winners decide.

To do this, just pledge to give an award to the person who makes the most sales each month or quarter, then outline a selection of potential awards. The winner can then decide what they want to win, or even choose a potential prize for the next month’s winner if you want to make it more interesting.

Win a Favor From the Boss

Or you can even offer a more personalized prize for the person who makes the most sales. Let them win a favor from you!

Set up a specific timeline for the contest. Then at the end, the winner or winners can choose a favor from you as their prize. Maybe they want you to wash their car. Maybe they want to pick your brain over lunch one day. Leave it up to them — within reason, of course.

Boss for a Day

Or you could set up a sales contest where the winner actually gets to take your place for a day.

At the end of each month or quarter, the person with the most sales or points will get to run things their way for a day. Let them run a meeting, choose where to take the team for lunch and even set up shop in your corner office.

Team-Wide Goals

If you want to start a sales contest that doesn’t pit each of your team members against one another, you can instead ask them to work together to reach certain objectives.

To do this, set a team goal like a dollar amount for total sales or a number of products sold. Then keep track of your progress throughout the month and have your team members encourage each other to work toward that goal.

Daily Prizes

Not every contest has to go on for a long period of time to be effective. Instead, you can have smaller daily contests that give more people a chance to win.

For this, you’ll need some ideas for smaller prizes to offer your team, like gift cards or free snack items in the break room. Then give those prizes to the people who make the most sales each day.

Sales Madness

A la March Madness, you can set up a bracket style contest that creates friendly competitions between your salespeople throughout the month.

This one can take a bit more planning. You’ll need to create a bracket that includes all of your sales staff. Then at the end of each day or week, whoever has the most sales in each individual competition will move onto the next round. At the end of the month or quarter, depending on the size of your team, you should have a final round and an eventual winner.

Conversion Contest

When you get a list of new leads, you can start a new contest where each salesperson has the same opportunity to win no matter what their sales history looks like.

For this type of contest, you’ll need to distribute the leads evenly throughout your team so everyone has an equal opportunity. Then the person who converts the most sales within that group wins a prize.

Top This

You can also set up a sales contest where your team is awarded for making the largest individual sale, rather than the most sales overall.

This would be fairly similar logistically to other contests, but would just encourage your team to try and upsell or sell multiple items to individual customers. At the end of each month or quarter, award a prize to the person who has made the largest individual sale. You can even keep track of who’s in the lead throughout the month so that the rest of the team knows the number to beat.

Floating Prizes

You can also offer prizes or awards that go from person to person as the winner changes. This type of contest can award the largest sale throughout the month or even go from person to person at the end of each month.

To do this, you just need to identify a prize that your team members can enjoy even if they don’t get to keep it permanently. It could be a simple desk decoration or even a privilege — like the ability to choose meeting snacks. Then ensure that the prize goes from person to person when someone breaks the monthly sales record.

Team Scavenger Hunt

Each member of your sales staff likely has his or her own specialty. So you can set up a scavenger hunt style contest where your staff works in teams — pooling  their various skill sets –to complete various tasks.

For instance, you can set up a set of objectives like a sale that’s over a certain dollar amount, a sale to a brand new customer or a sale of a certain amount of different products. Then split your staff into teams and challenge them to complete every objective on the list.

Fantasy Sales Team

Think fantasy sports leagues here. This type of contest is intended to create an environment where all of your staff supports and encourages one another.

In a draft-style format, your sales people form teams. Then each “player” is awarded points for sales or other objectives reached. And the person whose team gets the most points at the end of the month or quarter wins.

Slump Buster Contest

Contests can be a great way to spur more activity from your sales team when times are slow. What you can do during those slow times is challenge your team to contact old or existing customers to try to sell repeat or upgraded products.

To do this, you’ll need a start and end date and an objective for your team to reach. This can be the most sales, the highest volume or even the largest single transaction. Then challenge your team to reach out to their existing contacts and see who comes out on top.

“Most Wanted” Clients

Within your industry, there are probably a few big players who you’d love to have as clients. And you can even make this goal into a contest.

Outline a few “most wanted” clients and divide them up among your team so each member knows who should reach out to whom. Then reward whoever is able to make the biggest sale.

Visualizing Progress Contests

Sometimes, contests are most effective when your team is able to actually see the progress they’re making right in front of them. So you can create a visual to put up in your office to keep track of how close your team or individual salespeople are getting to their goals.

You can make it a team competition, where you set a numerical goal for your whole sales team for the month. Then all of your reps can encourage each other and update the chart or graph visualization every time they make a new sale. Or you can have a chart that depicts how many sales each individual has made throughout the month so you can keep a friendly competition going.

Trade Show Objectives

If your business does any selling at trade shows or events, that can be a great opportunity for you to foster some healthy competition amongst members of your team. So you can start a day or weeklong competition where you award the person who makes the most sales just during the event.

All you need to do is alert your event staff of the competition and then create a way for them to easily track their sales during the event. At the end, offer a simple prize to the winner.

Customer’s Choice

Not every sales competition has to be just about the volume of sales made. Instead, you can create a contest where you encourage better customer service by offering an award to the person with the best customer reviews.

For this type of contest, you need to make sure that you have a way to survey your customers after they’ve completed purchases, or just periodically. Then you can present awards to the sales reps who get the highest marks from their clients or customers.

Surprise Prizes

Sometimes, sales contests are less about the actual prize and more about simply recognizing your employees. And you can also add a little bit of fun into the mix by making each prize a surprise.

To do this, you’ll need to collect some small prizes like gift cards or tiny trinkets. Then place them in small gift boxes or bags. And outline some objectives that your staff must reach in order to get a prize. Then when someone achieves one of those objectives, they can choose a box or bag without knowing what’s inside, and it’s a fun surprise for them and your whole staff.

Sales Bingo

You can also reward those little everyday tasks your team completes by creating a bingo-like game. This type of game can help you encourage your team to do all of the little things, since every box they can check off gives them a better chance of winning a prize.

For this type of game, you’ll need to create bingo cards that include different types of sales or tasks in each of the squares. One could be a sale of a certain amount. One could be getting a brand new account, and so on. Then have each of your reps keep track of their accomplishments, and then award them when they fill in a whole row or card.