Nothing motivates a salesperson like the thrill of competition. That said, there is such a thing as too much competitive spirit. The challenge for managers is to keep their salespeople striving to win without encouraging them to bite each others' heads off. This is best accomplished by focusing competition away from teammates and onto the real rivals: competing vendors. "A killer instinct is good," says Bob Nelson, a motivation consultant in San Diego, California, "but it has to be focused outside the team rather than inside." Here's how to do it:



1. Single Out the Enemy

Everyone wants to play for the winning team. If your company is second in the industry, make it clear that your goal is to be number one and reinforcing that depends on beating the competition. "It's just like in sports," says Bruce Denson, CEO of Cobbs, Allen & Hall, an insurance brokerage, in Birmingham, Alabama. "Whenever there's rivalry, you try harder to win." When salespeople are sent into a client knowing that the archenemy will be vying for the same account, they'll be more motivated to position your company advantageously. A healthy rivalry can also exist among divisions within the same company. There's no harm in pitting the Northeast region against the Mid-Atlantic, as long as they aren't selling to the same clients.

Salespeople should also be encouraged to collaborate to seal deals. "We make it a practice to split commissions whenever there is cooperation on a sale," Denson says. "People bring different skills to the sales team, and a guy with a great personality or good knowledge about the marketplace who can help out may make the difference in selling an account." Team sales also help build camaraderie and focus the competition externally, rather than internally.



2. Keep Scores Posted

The more salespeople know about how the "game" is going, the hungrier they'll be for victory. "I tell my salespeople just as much about company numbers and goals as individual ones," says Brandon Steiner, CEO of a sports marketing firm in New Rochelle, New York. "Usually presidents don't want to share numbers, but this is what makes people feel more involved, as if they're part of something bigger than themselves."

Robyn Mangimelli, regional vice president of sales for the John H. Harland Company, in Atlanta, agrees, saying that fresh numbers help spur her company's regional rivalry. "When there's no benchmark to measure wins against, people are more apathetic," she says. Communicating team wins also keeps reps on their toes. "We do weekly team calls, a sort of round-robin update. Each district sales manager has fifteen minutes to share the new opportunities he's found, and positive stories about his team's progress. It almost becomes one-upsmanship," Mangimelli says. "The rivalry can become intense enough that each team of direct reports will fight and kill to help each other make the next deal."



3. Compensate for Team Wins

If there is only one jackpot bonus for the top salesperson, team members will step all over each other to reach that prize. Although most managers agree that individual rewards are usually helpful motivators, supplementing these with team rewards can foster cooperation and focus attention on company-wide goals. "I'm not an advocate of any plan where one salesperson gets to go to Hawaii and everyone else sits at home," Nelson says. "Instead, spread around the incentive dollars and have a team celebration." Steiner has applied this philosophy at his company. "Our mission is to turn our salespeople into team players and take ownership of our company's goals, so we've created more team-related incentives," Steiner says. Now half of all incentives at his company are based on group performance, rather than individual goals.

Denson took this one step further, encouraging his salespeople to buy a financial stake in the company itself. About 22 salespeople have become shareholders in the firm. Needless to say that it has his salespeople seriously competing for the company's success.