Gamification Is More Than A Sales Contest

What is gamification? When we say “gamification,” a lot of people think of huge multiplayer games with leaderboards. Hundreds of players pitted against one another. A chaos of trying to make it to the top.

And when we talk about sales gamification, the perception is similar.

It’s just a sales contest, isn’t it? 

While gamification does include sales contests, that’s not what makes it brilliant.

When applied properly, gamification is the best possible way to drive results across your company and in the field where results matter most: sales.

Understanding gamification

Gamification is a set of principles and methods most commonly used in video games. From point tracking to leaderboards, everything about gamification serves to stimulate both intrinsic and extrinsic motivation factors in the workplace.

What does that really mean?

Let’s say you’ve got your top sales performers. They’re ultra-competitive, and angling to be the best in their team.

They’re extrinsically motivated; they want to win.

However, there are also reps who are methodical. You don’t see a lot of sales spikes with them. Instead, they move slow, increasing exponentially over time, and bring in a steady flow of revenue to your company.

They may not be top performers, but they’re making the needle move one call at a time.

Chances are, they’re the sales reps who are intrinsically motivated. They are doing their work for something other than being the best.

You’ll recognize them if they respond well to comparison feedback.

If you tell them that they’ve improved over time, they’ll beam with pride. Conversely, improvement praise would mean very little to extrinsic performers. They want to see their improvement translated to immediate results.

Often, they’re the ones whose performance improves whenever you offer them a bonus.

Gamification is the art of using that knowledge to motivate both groups, and exceed every single quota you’ve ever set.

What Does Gamification Consist Of?

The first factor that makes gamification so effective is motivation.

Gamification motivates your sales reps to perform.

We all know the feeling; cold calls can be boring when you dial the numbers day in and day out. With time, it’s impossible not to feel demotivated. You’re just going through the motions.

Gamification provides excitement.

When reps can feel rewarded for every action they take (no matter how mundane it is), they’ll be more likely to retain their engagement levels.

Consequently, gamification increases job satisfaction.

It taps into sales reps’ need for immediate gratification and recognition. Instead of waiting for the end of the quarter for the top performers to receive rewards, gamification gives rewards instantly.

Even if it’s just in the form of points.

This makes your reps more engaged. Even if they’re just performing routine tasks, they’re giving their 100% because of the promise of a tangible reward.

And when your reps are satisfied with their jobs and feel engaged every day, they’ll be more likely to stay with your company.

Congratulations: gamification has just helped you play the notoriously high sales turnover rates. 

Finally, gamification can also help you improve the performance of entire sales teams, as well as individual sales reps.

That’s where the coaching part comes in.

With Spinify, you can assess individual reps’ performance and get detailed suggestions for performance improvement and coaching. This allows you to tap into their potential, and help them translate it into results for your company and themselves.

Of course, you could do this without gamification. But it would be stuffy; Excel sheets all over, too much data to keep anyone focused on it. No entertaining way of celebrating achievements.

With gamification, hitting sales targets suddenly becomes a lot more fun.

And if it’s fun, your team is going to be a lot more productive.

How Does Gamification Work?

Typically, sales teams use the following gamification elements:

• Tiers
• Points
• Badges
• Contests
• Leaderboards
• Achievements

Spinify uses all of these elements to provide you with an engaging sales dashboard.

It all starts with points

First, you establish the KPIs you want to track.

The majority of sales teams have been using sales quotas. However, the point of gamification is to indirectly affect your sales results by reinforcing positive behavior.

It’s much better to stick to tangible actions your sales reps can perform.

For example, the number of calls and closed deals.

Then, for every KPI, you can allocate a certain amount of points that will be awarded to a sales rep that successfully performs the action.

In Spinify, you can even set up cumulative points to reward reps who have performed certain actions a significant number of times.

Sales reps get badges for important actions.

When your sales reps do something monumental (e.g. close 50 deals), they can get special badges.

This is just like a video game; if they do something out of the ordinary, they can get to wear a badge of honor.

As they get more and more points and badges, they can move through tiers (levels), establishing their reputation, and receiving the recognition they need to keep doing great work.

Feeling proud of their achievements

It’s important for intrinsically motivated sales reps to feel proud of their achievements, which is why gamification works so well.

By setting up automatic celebration (to the tune of the rep’s favorite song) whenever a rep does something amazing, you’ll be giving them the recognition they need, as well as motivating them to keep excelling.

Friendly competition

For the sales reps who want to compete, you can set up contests in Spinify.

Individual reps can play, or they can agree on teams who’ll play against one another. It’s all fun and friendly with Spinify, encouraging everyone to do their best work and get points for their team.

What About Rewards?

While the ultimate reward of gamification is feeling good about the work you do and getting results for your company, you can also give your reps physical rewards through the Reward Store on Spinify.

Simply set up a rewards system that matters to you and your reps, and…

Well, that’s it!

Spinify is simple to set up and once you do, you and your reps will be able to track progress everywhere (even on your office TVs).

It’s one and done, and it brings results like nothing else!

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