Sales Competition: Fair Formula to Add Fun

[Pen Repine]

hi gang,
my company is running a sales competition and we would like to make it interesting.
there are 3 teams from different depts, all with different numbers of members (8, 26 & 15).
we all have the same product to sell and plenty of stock
what would be a formula we could adopt to a. make the result a fair one and b. add some spice and fun to this exercise.

appreciate any quality in-put.

pen

 

[quantumdude]

To make it fair you could declare the team with the highest number of sales per person to be the winner. To add some spice and fun you could give the winner a free trip to Aruba.

 

[kenewbie]

This sort of raises an interesting point. The common argument here is the avg sale pr department would be the fair measure.

But in reality it is much easier for a single person to win in a competition where the avg counts than it is for a group of one hundred. The reason is of course the varying degrees of commitment to the task in the larger group.

You, as an individual, can be as motivated as you want in a group of one hundred, and not make a dent of difference. If you were alone in your group, however, your motivation would likely make you win.

I'm not sure how to remedy this. Perhaps there are some answers in game theory, as this seems to closely resemble a "should I clean the room if my roommate wont" type of problem.

I guess if the groups are not pre-set, and one could gauge the motivation of each individual with some certainty, it would be possible to construct fair groups of varying sizes by making sure the avg _motivation_ is equal in each group.

k