First things first. To plan an effective sales contest, focus on one objective. If you try to reward your sales people for reaching, say, five goals, you open yourself up for a variety of problems:

• Instead of trying to be outstanding in one thing, the reps will settle for being pretty good in several things;
• Reps will have difficulty managing their time;
• Reps might fail to reach one or more objectives, taking the wind out of their sales even if they do well in other aspects of the contest;
• Reps will be confused over what the company really wants.

Sales managers sometimes think of sales contests as a substitute for sales management. They try to build incentives into the contest to cover every sore performance spot: e.g., not enough sales of a particular product, poor time management, too few prospecting calls.

The best contest results come from getting the entire organization focused on one important thing. If you can’t arrive at the one most important thing, you may not be ready to launch a contest.