Operant’s approach to building a contest is rigorous and thorough, yet creative. The process we follow ensures your contest will be one that enhances your organizations effectiveness and is accepted by your teams and supported management.

Contest Development

The Operant process for developing sales contests includes the following steps:

A thorough review of your business strategy and current business development issues through meetings with select business development team members, managers and executive leadership.
Gaining a comprehensive understanding of your business development process, competitive landscape, the impact of business unit and regional differences on the local business development cycle, and other aspects of your business development process that impact the effort-behavior-result relationship.
The establishment of goals for your contest; what change in behavior and business performance do you want to achieve.
Establishment of a contest “board” for overseeing accuracy and fair play.
The creation of your sales contest prototype, including theme and prizes, the strategy, participant qualifications, how to play and how to win. The prototype will be designed to meet contest goals, taking the unique aspects of your business development process into consideration. The prototype also includes a preliminary contest budget and forecasted uplift in business development. A one-size-fits-all approach is never used.
The presentation of the contest prototype to your sales leaders and contest board to garner feedback for fine-tuning. This step ensures the contest has management buy-in and is one that will produce desired financial results.
The contest design is finalized based on feedback.

Operant contests are designed to be fair, productive and easy to manage. A key element of producing an efficient contest is building the behind-the-scenes tools that ensure all the necessary details are considered yet produce a smooth contest flow for your participants and managers. The scoring algorithms and tools include calculations that “level the playing field” and automate point accruals and presentation mechanisms. Your existing accounting and IT systems are used to generate contest results. Operant works your IT and Accounting departments to establish processes for tracking contest results. No new hardware or software is necessary.

Scoreboards that showcase movement among competitors in all categories of competition are used to keep contest momentum going. Typical scoreboards are housed on the client’s intranet or timely updates and announcements are made through e-mail. The scoreboard process is critical for maximizing contests results.

Operant considers the professional introduction of your sales contest to be critical to its acceptance and effectiveness. Operant has expertise in contest rollouts so that they generate healthy competition and appropriate excitement.

The system roll out will include:

Design of the roll out process, including timing, attendance, venue and material preparation.
Development of a thorough, properly organized and professional rollout presentation.
Preparation of your sales leadership team to lead a professional presentation of the sales contest. This may include one presentation or multiple presentations to various business development teams.
Use of quality promotional items.

Operant knows that accuracy in scoring and vigilance for proper play among all contestants creates a fair contest that is motivating to all. Additionally, continual updates on point accruals maintain enthusiasm for play and uplift in productivity throughout the contest.

In most cases, an Operant-designed contest will be launched with baseline performance to set the stage. From the time of launch through the end of the contest event, regular updates will be part of the event. Contest management activities are primarily the reporting point accruals and individual and team standings. Other activities include issue resolution and monitoring for unfair play.

Operant works with your IT staff to build mechanisms that automatically present contest results to the contest participants and to the full company (if appropriate) through internally available media (intranet, e-mail, etc.). During the initial stage of the contest, results are monitored extensively for accuracy.

Wrapping up the contest and promoting the winning teams and individual contestants is key to making the event memorable and one that allows for “bragging rights” for the champions. Operant chooses prizes that match the contest theme, that are valuable and that the showcase success of winners beyond the contest period. All prizes are chosen to offer lasting impact for the client organization. Trophies are typically used as secondary prizes. Cash is never used.