Five ways sales gamification can drive growth

Businesses are always looking for new ways to drive growth and the recent trend shows sales gamification is gaining popularity.

Gamification sounds fancy, but it’s simply a variation of the classic marketing strategy of holding contests and giving gifts.

The difference is that contests and giveaways attract customers, while gamification is for your employees. Considering a sales team, gamification can boost the motivation level, make them more focused, which in turn can drive growth.

So, how does this new strategy motivate workers and drive growth?

1.   Creates an environment of self-motivation

When working towards a big goal, experts suggest breaking it down into smaller, achievable tasks. These are called KPIs or Key Performance Indicators. The logic is simple. The human brain craves validation. By allowing the instant gratification and release of serotonin that gamification provides employees, you’re creating an environment of automated self-motivation.

Research in psychology shows that positive reinforcement makes people want to do better. By adding gamification to your sales strategy, you’re offering your employees the positive reinforcement of completing a task (selling more). It’s the same as if you walked up to them, patted them on the back, and said, “good job” after every sale completed. They’ll feel good, work more efficiently, bring in more sales, and drive growth for your company.

By setting KPIs like ‘number of daily calls’ and tracking performance through a point system, you can motivate your employees to increase their productivity. Spinify offers gamified elements like rewards, points, coupons, challenges, levels, and leaderboards, so you have a lot to choose from.

2. Drives healthy competition

Everyone knows that some healthy competition in the office boosts productivity. People are naturally competitive, especially salespeople. Your employees want to stand out from their colleagues, whether for a raise, promotion, or personal satisfaction.

However, left to its own devices, this feeling can often turn toxic. So, create an environment that encourages healthy competition and dissuades rivalry amongst your sales team.

How to create healthy competition?

You can set up a leaderboard where employees compete to gain points and become the top performer. For example, a person with the highest sales or a person with the most number of new customers gets awarded.

This goes back to the old strategy of an employee of the month. The game elements are simply a modern tool you use to add value to your office.

Additionally, you can set team tasks where each person’s points add up to make the team total. Also, make separate boards for projects outside of the overall count. You can interlink the points, so winning in one task improves your overall score on another board. Adding new aspects like a time limit or a team task adds another layer to the competition while still keeping it healthy.

While realizing and rewarding individual achievements, you can also set a team target where every individual performance contributes to the overall team’s score. For example, being punctual for the whole month will give the sales employee 5 individual points and 1 team point. This could result in improved team performance and bonding.

How to dissuade toxic rivalry?

The entire point of this strategy is to test your sales employees. You want them to try harder and do better, but it only works if they think they have a chance at winning. Otherwise, they’ll be tempted to simply give up.

So, make sure you only set up challenges between teams or people on the same level. That means skill as well as experience. You can make teams with an old and a new employee. Or mix it up with a classic old vs. new battle, but make sure it stays healthy. And yes, try to keep the targets achievable – and sometimes even easy ones for the low performing sales team to warm them up.

Also, leaderboards should never focus solely on sales or deals. Try to make it more inclusive, with participation and initiative being key factors.

3. Gives employees direction

A lack of consistent direction is a huge reason for the lack of growth in business. You can have the best team in the market, but they may flounder without direct action cues. With this strategy, you can assign daily to-do lists or goal posts. This is where the true genius of gamification becomes clear.

If used correctly, this strategy can streamline your entire business. You’re no longer relying on memos and daily meetings that only waste time and hurt your business. Instead, you can tell your employees what you want them to do, when, and how. All in a simple format that is easy to read and refer to. For example, If there is an urgent need to boost sales, you simply gather your sales team, and tell them that top 3 selling agents will receive a cash bonus every day for this week. No need for emails, memos, or meetings – your sales team now has an idea of the direction and will be more motivated.

Pro Tip: This technique can work like magic if you have a team of 4 – 6 people. Since you’re rewarding the top 3 performers, everyone will feel they have a chance.

4. Employee training

Traditionally employee training is done through seminars and other extra activities. But, gamification makes this a lot easier. A sales team can be trained through gamification. By creating smarter KPIs, and making sure that the sales team understand them well, you can train them without any extra hassle or cost.

For example, in a call center environment, a sales team can be rewarded for the highest sales while keeping customer satisfaction up. The highest number of sales from an agent will be rewarded ONLY if there is no negative feedback from the customer. In this case, the agent, while making sure he scores more sales will also be offering great customer service.

The purpose of the point system is not only to reward them for success. But to reward behaviors that lead to success. Don’t just give points for closing a deal. Instead, give points for converting a walk-in potential into a customer.

Utilize all of the tools you have. If you’re keeping points for good behaviors, then give out badges for completing tasks. Also, give them the chance to level up and gain rewards.

5. Transparency creates understanding

When the process is so visible and transparent, there are a lot of benefits. Managers can easily gauge where specific sales employees are lacking. You can even give advice and critique in real-time instead of waiting until the project comes to you. And employees can better understand what their weaknesses are. The overall result creates a mood of understanding where everyone is on the same page. Sales employees can also learn from other employees since the process is the same for everyone. This eliminates the need to arrange special training sessions.

As a result, there is no vagueness. When the entire team is on the same page, about company goals and plans, it drives growth. Good direction is vital if you want to keep your company from stagnating. When it comes to the bottom line, there are several factors that come into play. Sales gamification puts together many old tactics like having an employee of the month and positive reinforcement into a new game format that deals in points.

Conclusion

So, there’s no question about how well it works. The only thing you need to worry about is its implementation. How can you adapt your sales team to include this strategy? What steps will you have to take to get employees motivated to play? Spinify can help you with this easy transition.