While sales floor days are very productive and have the potential to give a satisfying ROI, is it possible to leverage this investment and build on it in the long-term?

For the uninitiated, a sales floor day is a promotional corporate event designed to boost sales and create a brand buzz. It’s a favourite among channel marketers, who recognise that sales teams thrive off engaging, high-energy activities and organised shenanigans.

An events team will stage a sales floor takeover, which is often themed according to their brief – it might be for a product launch or update, or used as a brand awareness and training exercise. The sales floor will be decorated according to the theme and an itinerary of activities will commence.

The most popular activities that get the sales floor going are:

1. Competitive activities – like Batak, a test of speedy response time against a machine

2. Games with instant rewards – like Cash Cube, which showers participants with vouchers or cash that they have a set time to scoop up

3. Food and drink – and tasty treats can be themed

How to keep momentum

This sounds way too much fun to be hard work – is it profitable? You bet. All brands that undertake this kind of promotional event experience a peak in sales on the day – a boost that is still evident in the days following.

It’s not because the resellers are riding high on adrenalin, bonhomie and sugary treats – they are still in the brand zone. They’ve been educated about the product so they are confident about its features and benefits.

Unfortunately, this will diminish when the next brand moves in to execute its own sales floor day. This is a particular problem if your sales floor day events are standalone; the best way to maintain the momentum of your sales floor days’ vibes, is to integrate them into a longer-term incentives programme.

A tailored incentive programme would include elements that combine to support long-term sales objectives – it will ensure that resellers always have your brand in mind by building lasting relationships with them.

An incentive programme might combine elements like:

 An online platform to deploy and manage the incentive scheme

 A travel incentive, like a city break or adventure holiday

 Brand communications via email, SMS and social media 

 Scratchcard and prepaid card promotions

 Sales floor days and a range of other events

When my team designs all types of corporate events, including sales floor days, they are aware of the need for scalable budgets and the different aims of each event, and they are focused on achieving results.

Here are just two examples of what such events can achieve:

 A Montenegro trip for Microsoft and HP incentivised an EMEA sales team 

to achieve 203% of its target

 A regular Insight event in Berlin for NetApp has driven an increase in 

growth of 42-340% in EMEA 

To find out more on the success stories of standalone events and those that have been integrated into an incentive programme, and see a full list of the benefits of corporate events, see here.

Jo Meddings is Head of Events at Corporate Rewards.  Founded in 2002, the company partners with global brands and helps them grow by rewarding best behaviours from the people most valuable to their businesses – employees, customers and partners.