3 Ways Top Sales Managers Use Leaderboards to Drive Success

Over the last ten years, gamification has grown from a niche market into a multi-billion dollar industry–and for good reason. No matter the industry, markets are becoming more competitive, with greater consumer choice and a smaller pool of exceptional sales talent to choose from. 

As businesses hire and train their sales teams, they have several primary goals: to onboard the team quickly so they can start selling, to drive more closed business, and to retain top talent and keep them from going to a competitor. 

If you’ve ever built a sales team from the ground up, investing countless hours and dollars in training and enablement, only to have them quit, then you know the struggle that today’s sales managers are facing. 

The good news is that gamification is designed to help sales managers accomplish their objectives of hiring, enabling, and keeping the right salespeople to drive long-term success. Here are a few ways you can use leaderboards to gamify your sales strategy and start seeing impressive results.

1. Create healthy competition

Most salespeople have a natural, competitive drive. Sales jobs are not for the thin-skinned or those who shrivel up and disappear at the first sign of rejection. Instead, top sales teams thrive on the challenge of going head-to-head with a competitor and coming out on top. 

Gamification, and specifically leaderboards, play nicely into the competitive spirit of your team. Not only does it feed the drive to “be the best,” but it also gives all members of the team an at-a-glance picture of performance and how they are tracking to their goals. 

Your best salespeople will move heaven and earth to stay at the top of the leaderboard. Your average performers can easily see the target they have to beat and will be motivated to keep climbing, rather than slip further down the board. Your lowest performing team members will undoubtedly hate being at the bottom of your leaderboard and will very likely seek additional support and coaching to wrestle their way to a higher slot on the board.

Choose a gamification solution with the versatility to play to the unique strengths of your team. While some salespeople respond best to a team or regional challenge, where they compete alongside a group of people to accomplish a goal, others may need an added layer of individual recognition to feed their need to “win.”

2. Drive higher engagement

It’s no secret that it can be difficult to retain good salespeople–and not because they underperform, as most people might think, but because they overperform and are soon desired by competitive organizations. Employee engagement and company loyalty are the two best tools in your arsenal when it comes to the fight against attrition in your sales team. 

Exceptional performers often fall prey to disengagement after a big sale. They happily ride on the notoriety and acclaim for a while, but then fall into an easy trap of coasting along on the coattails of their previous success. Soon, they feel unplugged from the rest of the team and believe that it might be easier to just start over somewhere else, rather than re-engaging with their current team. 

Spinify helps sales leaders fight “success fatigue” by creating alerts that notify sales reps when someone is about to overtake their placement on a leaderboard. How does it help fight disengagement and “coasting?” If your salespeople receive real-time updates on the status of their actual performance, they will be far less likely to rest on their laurels. The competitive spirit is a powerful thing. It just needs a little nudge from time to time.

3. Identify coaching opportunities

Gamification works best when it is used to celebrate success and not to highlight failure. While it’s true that it can be a great motivator to help underperforming salespeople improve their performance, be careful about using leaderboards as a shame tactic. Instead, use the data you collect from your leaderboards as an opportunity to view team member progress over time and offer personalized coaching to drive the sales behaviors you want to see.

Your gamification solution should have the flexibility to show the metrics that matter to you so that you can easily identify the strengths and weaknesses of each salesperson. As an added benefit, your team will start seeing the benefits of your coaching efforts and mentorship through real-time leaderboard updates that highlight their progress.

It’s much easier to stay focused and motivated on the right behaviors when you can see positive results continuously unfolding. 

Start driving greater sales success

If you’re ready to protect the investment you’ve made in your sales team, Spinify can help. With a state-of-the-art gamification platform, we give your entire sales team the data they need to track their performance in real time. We believe that gamification should be easy, simple, and pervasive throughout your company culture. Contact us for a free trial to see how real-time leaderboards can take your sales strategy to the next level.