Request demo

7 Sales Contest Ideas for the Distributors

6 minutes read

We understand that it can be quite a challenge for you to motivate your distributor salesforce to produce the desired sales results for your company. Reasons being that:

  • They are not working directly under your influence
  • They are not connected with your brand very well as they work away from your workplace
  • You are not the only brand they are associated with

But to make your brand a success in the market, it’s crucial for you to consistently make efforts to,

  • Keep your brand at the top of your distributors’ mind
  • Engage them in your company’s initiatives
  • Instill good product knowledge amongst the distributor sales reps
  • And train them to operate according to your business standards

One of the best ways to efficiently do this is to gamify their work and learning activities. In this blog, we are introducing you to some of the most exciting sales contest ideas which you can use to run exciting sales contests for your distributor salesforce


1. The Product Knowledge Wizard

Goal: To improve the product knowledge of your distributor salesforce

Frequency: Twice a week. Conduct a quiz test once every 3 days

Winners: Top 3 reps who score highest in the quiz

Prize: The winners get Amazon gift certificates

How to run this contest? Conduct a short quiz test twice every week. Ask 5 questions in these tests on

  • Your product offerings
  • Your market condition
  • The compliances & policies in your industry
  • And your competitors

Put up the quiz scores of the individuals on a live leaderboard. Present Amazon gift cards to the top 3 reps who appear at the top of the leaderboard


2. Perfect Pitcher

Goal: To ensure that your distributor salesforce delivers a uniform product and brand message while selling

Frequency: Once every 15 days

Winner: The reps who delivers the product and brand messaging perfectly in their pitch

Prize: You can choose to give any one of these prizes– Amazon gift cards, Entertainment Tickets, or Weekend Getaway.

How to run this contest? Run a video coaching contest here. Before conducting the contest, share an example video with the distributors showing them how to perfectly deliver your brand message while pitching your products.

Then motivate them to pitch any one of your products and embed the brand messaging perfectly into the pitch. Whoever presents the best pitch wins the competition.


3. Banner of the Month

Goal: To get your distributor to display your product or brand’s banners at their outlets

Frequency: Once every month

Winner: The distributor who has the best banner displayed wins the contest

Prize: A huge cash Bonus

How to run this contest? Organize this contest between various distributor outlets. Ask them to display a good banner showing your brand and the products that you offer which are available at their outlet.

Ask them to take a picture of the banner and submit it. Once they submit the pictures of their banners, select the top 3 best banners amongst all and reward them


4. New Product Launch Contest

Goal: To increase the sales of a new product that you have launched

Duration: 3 months

Winner: The top 3 reps who sell the highest number of units of the new product

Prize: Sponsor a family holiday trip for the winners

How to run this contest? Organize this contest when you have launched a new product. Encourage your distributor sales reps to compete with each other in selling more units of the new product. At the end of the contest period, select the top 3 reps who have succeeded in selling more units of the new product than the others as the winners of this contest.


5. Spike up the sales

Goal: To get your distributor salesforce to meet a certain sales revenue target

Duration: One month

Winner: The reps who first achieves or exceeds the sales revenue target wins the contest

Prize: Huge cash bonus + Weekend get-away

How to run this contest? Run this contest for one month and set a revenue target that each rep has to achieve. Then encourage the distributor sales reps to strive to be the first ones to achieve this sales revenue target. Select the top 3 reps who first are the first ones to meet the revenue target as the winners of this contest


6. The Geo Tagging Contest

Goal: To get your distributors to geo-tag all their retail outlets in a specific territory

Frequency: Once a month

Points: 5 points per geo-tag

Winner: The distributor who successfully geo-tags all their retail outlets in the city and submits them

Prize: Cash bonus

How to run this contest? Organize this contest at the beginning of each month. Ask all your distributors to geo-tag all their outlets that are present in a particular city or territory and submit the location of those outlets.

Reward all the distributors who successfully geo-tag and submit all their outlets


7. Service at the best

Goal: To get your distributor salesforce to provide on-time and best service to the customers

Frequency: Every month

Winners: All the employees who receive good feedback from the customers for the service that they have provided

Prize: Huge cash bonus

How to run this contest? Organize this contest every month for those distributors reps who facilitate product servicing or repairing for the customers. Encourage these reps to maintain a consistent record of providing on-time and good service to the customers and get good feedback from them.

At the end of each month, analyze the customer feedback that they have received throughout the month and reward the ones who have got more number of positive feedbacks.


Want to learn about the best practices to carry out training for your distributor salesforce?

Read: 7 Best Practices to Train Your Distributors SalesForce


Want to give a cool and creative name to your sales contest? Get good contest naming ideas from these blogs below:

Top 20 Sales Contest Names
Sales Contest names in Hindi


Looking for creative and funny sales team names? Get ideas from these articles below:

25 Creative Sales Team Names
34 Funny Sales Team Names


Want to give out creative awards to your contest winners? Get ideas from these blogs below:

Creative employee recognition awards.
23 Sales incentive ideas to keep your sales team motivated


How will you communicate the contests that you organize to your participants?

Once you have a perfect contest idea and a suitable name for it, focus on communicating it effectively to your participants. Follow our sales contest communication template to announce your contest.


Looking for a sales contest software that automates the process of conducting your sales contest and takes it to a whole new level

Explore SmartWinnr’s Learning and Gamification features. Learn how to run fun, exciting, and engaging sales contests for your team through SmartWinnr. Curious to learn more about it? Book a demo today!

Published on Sat Sep 18 2021

Ready to double your sales numbers?

Schedule a demo with our team to see how SmartWinnr can drive sales productivity in your organization. Or talk to us about your challenges and if SmartWinnr can help.

Request demo Free Consultation