Sales Team Strategy:

How Behavior Of Sales Teams Can Be Changed Using Gamification

When a sales team is stuck in the same habits for a long time, it can cause their performance to regress. So it’s essential to keep things fresh so you can ensure that your team performs at its highest level. One of the biggest buzzwords in sales team strategy is currently gamification. 

Given the popularity of gamification, it’s highly likely that you’re already familiar with the term. Gamification involves the application of several game design mechanics to business operations to help improve employee performance and motivation. 

There are several benefits of employing gamification in your sales team. One of the main advantages is that you can bring about significant behavioral change in the sales team. It’s especially effective if your sales team is currently stuck in a slump and isn’t displaying the best habits. 

Change your team’s behavior with gamification

Gamification refers to employing game design mechanics in a particular business department like sales or marketing to improve employee performance and encourage motivation. 

Some of the most common game design mechanics that you see organizations employ in their gamification strategy are points, leaderboards, and achievements. Here’s a breakdown of these basic elements. 

Points

A points system is the most basic gamification element that organizations tend to employ for their sales team. At the most basic level, the organization can define a certain amount of points that will be awarded upon the successful completion of a particular task. 

Organizations also have the option of being able to dictate how many points they’ll assign for specific tasks. For example, the gamification system can award higher points for more significant tasks. On the other hand, the system will award a moderate amount of points for more menial tasks. 

These points won’t just help motivate your employees. They’ll also help improve the organization’s ability to measure performance and track what members are contributing the most. 

Leaderboards

Another effective game design mechanic that translates well to the sales team is employing a leaderboard. Through a leaderboard, organizations can help generate a healthy sense of competition among their employees. When there’s a healthy level of competition in a sales team, the members can push one another to perform better. 

Active leaderboards are one of the key reasons why a game can be so engaging. When team members see where they rank on a leaderboard in comparison to one another, they’ll be more motivated to improve their performance or maintain their rank. 

Achievements

Lastly, the other basic component of an effective gamification strategy is implementing an achievement system. Achievements are essentially rewarded that team members will receive on achieving major milestones. In addition, they’ll be able to display these milestones on their profile in the form of achievements. 

For example, you can set achievement badges for employees who complete 100,200,500 and 1000 sales. The greater the milestone, the more the merit of the achievement.

By using these basic game design elements, an organization can employ an effective gamification strategy. Furthermore, through the impact of the strategy, organizations can completely change the sales team’s behavior. 

How Does Gamification Change The Behavior Of Your Sales Team?

Gamification is a system that has the capability of completely transforming the behavior of the sales team. Its key features are that the strategy can both improve the performance of employees and increase overall motivation. 

Here’s how sales gamification will change the behavior of your sales team!

Increase Motivation 

At the core basis of gamification is the idea of effectively increasing employee motivation. Through the implementation of points, leaderboards, and achievements, team members will have plenty of stimuli to improve their performance. 

One of the key reasons why gamification will impact the motivation of your team members is that it helps raise a healthy sense of competition. In addition, through the leaderboard system, employees will be able to assess their relative position and work on the necessary improvements. 

More Energy 

If there’s been no significant change in a sales team for a considerable time, it can be pretty easy for the team to lose energy. Monotony can have a very detrimental impact on performance, and many sales teams suffer from the issues. 

Gamification will help shake things up completely by introducing freshness to the way the sales team will operate. Through receiving points for certain tasks, employees will be able to see exactly what their contributions mean to the organization. 

Just introducing a new manner in which the team can operate, will energize the sales team and make a significant improvement to their performance. 

Greater Accountability  

Accountability is a key defining characteristic for any successful sales team. However, it can be exceedingly challenging for the organization to maintain that accountability without the proper provisions. 

So, implementing a gamification system makes it much easier for organizations to keep their sales team members accountable. They’ll be able to identify the contributions of each member and reward their performance accordingly. 

Better Communication 

Not only is a gamification system responsible for making significant improvements to the employee’s performance and motivation, but it can also prove to improve communication within the sales team. Generally, when organizations implement a gamification strategy, they do it by using a gamification dashboard. 

The dashboard will contain all the necessary information that every employee will need to access. Most of the time, these gamification dashboards will feature several social features as well. These social features can include the ability to build employee profiles and also chat with one another. 

By incorporating a system that displays all the necessary information in one place, organizations can effectively improve communication in their sales team. 

Healthy Competition 

An effective gamification system will play a key role in helping ensure that there is a healthy sense of competition among team members. The keyword in this situation is healthy. While competition can play a major role in ensuring that a sales team’s performance remains honest, the type of competition also has an impact. 

In the case of toxic competition, it can have a detrimental impact on sales performance. However, due to the game-like nature of gamification, it can help take a lot of the toxicity away from the situation. Additionally, the honest nature of the system helps ensure that the strategy garners a healthy sense of competition. 

Easier Onboarding 

If your sales team has been operating in the same manner for several years, it can be easy for them to become too set in their ways. That can become an obstacle when you’re trying to introduce new members to the team and integrate them as quickly as possible. Sometimes older members won’t be as receptive to the ideas that the new employees might bring. 

However, a gamification dashboard can make it much easier for new employees to get up to speed with the organization. They’ll be able to access all the information they need from one simple area. 

On top of that, it’ll be much easier for new employees to feel at home in the organization if they’re clear about their contributions. The dashboard can also allow them to view the profiles of other employees and determine which ones they can learn what skills from!

These are some of the main behavioral changes that you can expect in the sales team after implementing a gamification strategy. 

Conclusion

Stagnancy can settle in a sales team and start to have a detrimental impact on their performance. One of the best ways to freshen up a sales team is by implementing a gamification strategy. 

Through the use of effective game design elements, organizations can implement new positive behaviors into their sales team. These new traits will help further energize members and significantly improve their performance.

Sources:
A Beginner’s Guide to Sales Gamification

7 Proven Benefits of Sales Gamification To Boost Sales

How Sales Gamification Increases Your Sales Team’s Motivation And Performance