When planning, designing and implementing employee sales contests, remember these five things:

1. Make sure that each contest is staged for no longer than 30 days. Team members tend to lose interest in contests that last longer than a month.

2, Set team sales goals whenever possible and avoid pitting individual crew members against one another in monthly contests. Let them compete against other stores or other districts, but not against each other unless they're in teams. Put a different shift manager in charge of each team. It's OK to post individual cashier or server's sales or check averages (in fact, I strongly recommend it), and it's certainly OK to encourage individual achievement each shift, but tally collective effort for the contest.

3, Let the team set its own goals. For instance, if you tell your crew how much you want them to increase sales, those are your goals, not theirs. Give them their recent sales averages, and ask them what they think they can do collectively to improve those numbers. Most of the time, they'll set goals higher than what you would have.

4. Let the team pick prizes. Don't pick prizes that would motivate you; your team may have completely different perspectives. Ask them what would motivate them the most.

5. Celebrate winners. The point of recognizing contest winners is two-fold: 1) show appreciation to the achiever and 2) motivate the non-winners to do better next month.

Here are a few classic check-boosting games to help focus your team on increasing same store sales this quarter:

The "Perfect Guest Check". This contest applies directly to tableside restaurant operators but could easily be adapted to the QSR segment as well. Have a game that encourages servers to amass as many "Perfect Guest Checks" as possible on each shift. In the case of a tableside restaurant this means a guest check that includes a beverage, an appetizer, an entrée and a dessert. In a pizza or quick-serve restaurant, it would mean an appetizer, pizza/sandwich and beverage. Each "Perfect Guest Check" recorded receives a special raffle ticket (or small gift) for the individual or team. The more perfect checks you sell, the greater your odds of winning the raffle drawing at the end of the month. Pair up cooks and dishwashers on the different server sales teams to make them partners in the contest, too.

Personal Best. Record the highest sales each employee has ever posted during a single shift. Now have a contest to see who can exceed their personal bests in a team setting. Be sure to post the results, and recognize and reward the team and individual achievers.

Sales Bingo. Create a "bingo-style" game board with at least 12-16 squares with a different menu item (appetizer, dessert, beverages, specials, promotions, etc.) in each square. Servers who sell every item on the sheet, or four in a row win a prize. This classic contest is a staple of every savvy manager's playbook.

Ticket Time Dollars: You probably have specific cooking time goals set for every appetizer or entrée. And if takes too long to get that food out, service suffers, and sales drop. Here's an incentive that might help. Before a busy shift string ten or fifteen one-dollar bills on a wire behind the pass-through window. Tell the cooks that for every order that goes out beyond the targeted cooking time (measure by the time the ticket was fired), you'll remove a dollar bill. Whatever's left at the end of the shift is there's to keep.

Sales per hour. Measure sales per hour or sales per register against previous month (or year) as a fun contest for QSR cashiers/counter servers.

Highest team check average. This contest works best for servers in a tableside restaurant. Measure the individual check averages of every server and bartender, then assign them to three random teams, cipher their collective check average and encourage them to beat the other teams posted averages. Assign a different manager to each team, so that he or she can be competitive as well, and coach their team to victory.

Raffles: go to a stationery or party store and purchase a package of raffle tickets. Every time a cook, server, hostess, or drive-through cashier does something commendable, give them a raffle ticket. The more they earn, the better their chances of winning whatever it is you raffle off in a monthly prize drawing.

Once your crew is on a daily diet of fun contests and monthly incentives, the critical companion step is to implement habitual recognition and intermittent rewards. Popular no-cost and low-cost incentives include Lotto tickets, iTunes gift cards, movie tickets, doing their sidework, letting them off early, unexpected food treats, pass-around trophies, and don't forget the simplest and most-effective incentive of all: a simple and sincere thank you. Always supervise with an attitude of gratitude.

Anything worth doing is worth measuring and if you don't reward your best performers, you can bet that your competition will.

Jim Sullivan is a popular speaker at foodservice and retail industry conferences worldwide.