What tools do you use to motivate and encourage your teammates to build their businesses?
Contests are a great way to build energy, create enthusiasm, and reward hardworking members of your team. But how do you hold your contests? What details are important?
The reality is, whatever works best for YOU will make holding contests most effective for your team. That said, here are some tips on how to structure a contest for maximum participation and impact!
Set The Scene
WHY are you holding a contest? The most effective motivation will come when the contest activities are tied to your teammates’ goals and interests, not only yours. Maybe you’ve got a corporate incentive period and you want to layer on an additional award for high performance. Or, perhaps it’s usually a slow month for everyone and you want your teammates to see their usual income level despite the downturn in sales.
Be clear on why you’re holding a contest now and how participation will help your teammates grow their businesses both in the short and long term.
How Long is Too Long?
How long should your contest last?
You’ll want to make the length fit the prize(s), but helping people feel successful is key to continued participation in a contest.
For a general contest or activity incentive, look at a duration of a week to a month.
By giving people a concrete time-frame to achieve specific goals -- such as a last week of the month to reach a new sales goal, or an entire month to achieve a specific rank -- you’ll help them approach the contest with a feeling that it’s doable, but challenging.
A short turnaround of the prize will also help empower your teammates to see results quickly!
For a bigger contest, perhaps something like a trip or an annual bonus, you could consider a longer timeline; however, just know that it may be more difficult to keep people motivated over 30+ days. For this type of contest, you’ll need to have consistent steps along the way for mini-milestones, surprise bonuses, and regular reminders of what people are working toward.
Be Plentiful with Prizes
In network marketing, it’s not the goal to have only one or two big winners. You want to give everyone on your team the potential to think big and work toward a scary big goal. Creating a prize structure that will support this is important when you’re creating your contest.
We’re not saying you can’t have a big prize for a single top achiever -- but by making rewards available at multiple levels, you’re telling everyone on your team that there’s a goal they can reach. Empowering progress -- no matter how larger or small -- is a great way to lead and motivate.
How have you used contests successfully to lead your direct sales team? We'd love to hear your stories, tips, and tricks! Pop on over to Instagram or Facebook or tag your post or story with #TRAKstar to make sure we connect!
