Sales is a known competitive field, and for a good reason. Being able to secure a large number of sales is crucial to the success of your business. To encourage your sales team and avoid burnout, turning daily sales into a friendly competition can be a great way to boost team morale.
Here, we discuss crucial sales gamification tools to help boost sales performance, drive employee engagement, and utilize a competitive environment to drive up key metrics using game-like elements.
Topics at a Glance
- What is Sales Gamification?
- Importance of Gamifying Sales
- Sales Gamification Tools
- Prioritize Constructive Competition
- Sales Gamification Examples
What is Sales Gamification?
Perhaps you remember when middle school teachers would turn learning into a game. While those games are a far cry from sales metric competitions, they have a similar goal: to make work fun. Likewise, sales gamification blends the concept of play, one of the crucial human needs regardless of age, with competition and a desire to learn continuously. By tying sales metrics to exciting events and a friendly competitive desire, gamification can stave off burnout in employees and drive up sales numbers.
By turning everyday tasks into measurable tasks, sales managers can easily track employee performance and growth, keep employees engaged, and offer tangible acknowledgments. While shoutouts are a great way to appreciate employees, nothing shows genuine appreciation like a gift card or other prize directly tied to workplace performance.
You can keep employees engaged by giving small, physical rewards for a well-done job, paired with your company's standard raise and bonus strategy. In addition, engaged employees are more likely to remain with the office long-term, helping with overall turnover.
Let’s look at ways sales gamification can improve sales team management and performance.
Importance of Gamifying Sales
With an estimated 67% of surveyed sales teams close to burnout, sales gamification is crucial to employee maintenance and avoiding high turnover. Staying off this burnout is essential to keeping your sales team healthy and lessening the stress on sales managers to keep certain key performance factors in line.
Turning sales performance into a game will revitalize your office and encourage employees to reengage with their field of work. However, when work performance is directly related to promotions and raises, there's inherent stress to daily performance, leading to faster burnout and employee turnover.
By connecting sales performance back to small rewards, sales managers and coaches can reduce some of the stress associated with overall performance and breathe a certain level of joy back to finding new sales targets and driving up performance numbers.
Sales contests can change the way your sales team performs for the better. You can use gamification as a powerful tool to boost your sales team and supercharge your KPI by driving up interest and encouraging healthy competition. With this in mind, let’s look at some valuable sales gamification tools.
Sales Gamification Tools
Gone are the days of marking spreadsheets and meticulously scribbling down sales leads. With Slack integration platforms like SalesCompete, track sales metrics while integrating sales gamification all on one platform. SalesCompete tracks sales metrics seamlessly in Slack to deliver fun, gamified sales challenges throughout the workday. Coordinate projects, compete for rewards, and work to raise sales numbers across the board with this Slack app.
With underperformance notifications, leaderboards, and more, this gamification app helps streamline sales tracking for sales managers, making it easier than ever to run games. By monitoring sales numbers accurately in one location, SalesCompete, and other gamifying apps streamline the sales process and take the stress out of running sales contests.
Of course, other platforms are embracing the gamification of sales, with HubSpot being one of the latest to adopt a more engaged sales team methodology. While plenty of gamification apps are on the market, working within one or two main programs is ideal for streamlining metric tracking and avoiding app overload.
Nothing slows down a sales team like bouncing between several apps to track metrics, so prioritizing one app integration or program from sales tracking and gamification can streamline the entire sales project. In addition, keeping your sales gamification software simple is critical to avoiding even more burnout, as your team shouldn't have to master yet another program for an office competition.
When choosing a gamification program for sales, make sure to keep in mind your team's unique needs and desires. Focus on apps that target vital sales metrics. For example, if your team deals with cold calls and outgoing sales, try and find an app that measures those numbers and offers easy organizational strategies to keep sales reps on track.
Of course, any gamified portions of the sales methodology should match your office sales goals. From closing deals and outreach to lead pipelines and more, tailor your gamification tools to your sales team’s needs.
Prioritize Constructive Competition
One thing to keep in mind before committing to sales competitions is the overall atmosphere of the office space. If your office has a history of rivalries, tension, and unhealthy competition, sales gamification may not be the best idea, at least not in full force.
Offices with past issues should stick to personal performance competitions, such as beating your record, over workplace competition. Sales managers can also set up competitions that pair sales lead as a team, encouraging communication and collaboration within the workplace.
Gamification comes in several forms, allowing for customization depending on the workplace. Tailoring each game or contest to your office’s strengths can make or break an office competition.
For example, a cold call contest may be in order if you have many contacts. Similarly, if you need a new lead pipeline for closing deals and gaining new contacts, hosting a creativity contest may be a good fit for you.
No matter what version of sales gamification for sales you prioritize, ensure you encourage healthy competition and accurate reporting and ensure that all employees know that the contests are for personal development.
Tying work performance directly to optional gamification events can lead to frustration and may slow down office turnaround and sales goals. Instead, focus on providing a sense of accomplishment to dedicated employees and cultivating a healthy competitive environment throughout the sales team and office.
Sales Gamification Examples
While we have many examples of gamification and its benefits in this article, here are a few of our favorite game examples for sales teams. These sales gamification ideas are jumping points for your office, so take creative license and make each game fit your office’s needs.
One vs. One
Nothing drives an office more than a fun rivalry. Pair the top two performing sales leads from previous games against one another. Make sure to choose a topic they may not excel in. For example, sales reps great at cold calls should attempt to craft lead pipelines, or you can showcase their main talents if there are specific sales goals in mind. No matter which event you choose, make sure to pick workers with a healthy approach to competition and offer a first and second-place reward to keep things civil in the office.
Sales Team vs. Sales Team
In-house VS. outgoing sales teams compete for the cup (or gift card if that's more your speed). This competition pairs two departments against each other in a similar metric. For example, maybe one team schedules more events than the other, or both groups go head-to-head for a cold call bash. No matter which metric you choose, set the timespan long enough for the entire team to contribute.
Self vs. Self
This sales gamification idea pairs personal career development with a competitive environment. Each employee competes against their metrics from the past quarter to see if they can one-up their best. This is a great first contest for a sales team trying out gamification for the first time. Not only does it keep things civil between contestants, it also allows for personal acknowledgment and highlights coaching opportunities for sales managers to take advantage of.
Lead Pipeline Generation
Even if you have a tried-and-true method for generating leads, this is a great creative exercise to help your team learn the stages of turning new information into a sale. Each individual or sales team should work to craft a lead generation strategy, then put said strategy to the test. Whichever group succeeds the most with their lead pipeline wins. You can also hold purely theoretical lead-generating events to develop a new and innovative strategy without compromising sales calls.
Cold Call Bash
Getting sales reps comfortable with cold calls is as simple as hosting a cold call bash. Whichever employee can make the most cold calls in a day wins this gamification event. Set the time limit reasonably small for this event, and offer bonuses for successful calls; you want to encourage your team to close instead of simply blitzing every contact on their list, after all!
If your team works on internal sales, try changing cold calls to cold messages or advertising on various Slack channels. Whatever the metric, use a gamification app or program to track calls and contact information for future follow-ups.
