Separate points may be allowed for the terms se cured on orders. For example, fifteen additional points might be allowed for every $100 in business taken for cash in ten days, ten points for every $100 in business due in thirty days, and five points for every $100 due in sixty days. If the business is such that collections are made with the order, an additional tenth of a point may be allowed for each dollar col lected and sent in with the order. The methods of figuring contest standings so that every member of the organization will have an equal chance, and so that quality as well as quantity of business will be taken into consideration, will vary in different lines.
4. Prizes.—Salesmen will generally respond much more readily and much more enthusiastically to an appeal to their pride and their desire to win a place of honor than they will to an appeal to their pocketbooks. They will strive hard for a prize the value of which put up in money would leave them unmoved. As a general rule, unless money prizes are valuable enough to appeal sufficiently to a salesman on a strictly cash basis, contest prizes should not be money and should preferably be of a nature to allow of a suitable in scription indicating that they are prizes. Success ful contests have been waged for mere pieces of paper, cloth pennants, inexpensive buttons, the honor of see .
ing one's picture in the house organ, or for a cup or a banner to be displayed in the district office or in the salesman's home.
Furthermore, the salesman will respond to an ap peal to help others quite as readily as Ile will to an appeal to increase his own earnings or win a prize for himself. Some concerns, for example, set aside different months in the year during which the busi ness taken will be considered a tribute to different ex ecutives of the company. Salesmen will forge ahead and pile up a big business for a well-liked man altho they get nothing from it themselves other than the satisfaction of having contributed to a big month in his honor. An appeal to make a record month dur ing ,the absence of the sales manager so as to surprise him on his return, if not overdone, will bring a ready response. The board of directors of one large con cern set the business they expected to secure in a certain year as the sales manager's quota and offered to present him with an automobile if his organization were successful in producing that amount. In this contest, the score-makers got nothing but the glory of having contributed a certain number of parts to ward the sales manager's automobile.
5. Plans of contests.—There arc such a wide va riety of contests that no comprehensive list could be criven here. A few that have been successful and that have had a strong imaginative appeal may be men tioned, however.
6. One hundred point club.—One large organiza tion has what is known as a "One hundred point club." Only those who average one hundred points
per month in sales for an entire year are eligible to membership the following year. In this case, one point represents twenty-five dollars in sales. The first man to reach twelve hundred points is president of the club for the following year, the second man Nice-president, and so on. In addition to the honor which membership confers, all members of the club are brought to headquarters for a short sojourn. The membership of the club is, of course, widely advertised thru the house organ and in other ways.
7. The baseball idea.—Advantage ma.y be taken 1 of timely events in the staging of the contest. Much ingenuity has been shown in the planning of baseball contests during the summer by pitting district offices of equal strength from different sections of the coun try against one another ; and where the organization is large enough leagues have even been formed. In one case, a bogie team was pitted against the players of the organization. Orders according to their size are made to represent one-base hits, two-baggers and home runs.
In one baseball contest where conditions made it necessary to include a different number of men in each team, the team quotas were figured by assigning in dividual quotas to eacb team member, and using the total as team quotas. Then the "standing of the clubs" was figured by determining the percentage of the quota actually secured at any- given date and run .
ning that as the team's "percentage." The only prize in this baseball contest was a pennant to be awarded the team having the highest percentage and to be pre sented to that team at the next annual convention. "Batting averages" of individual team members were to be shown.
In announcing the plans for this "league" nothing was said about team captains. It was not long, how ever, before several men on one team conceived the idea of honoring one of their number with the cap taincy. Other teams quickly followed suit without suggestions from the home office. Naturally the cap tain, once elected, was looked to by the home office to show results with his team. The team members, having elected the captain, felt themselves obliged to answer his requests for extra efforts. Furthermore, each captain was encouraged by the home office to get after the weaker members of his team with the appeal that they were doing an injustice to their hard-work ing team mates by holding the team down in the per centage column. A man who might think it justifi able to slow down in hot weather so far as the house was concerned, would in all likelihood feel an obliga tion to his team mates in a contest of this kind, and would respond to an appeal which came not from the house, but from his team mates and team cap tain.