During these fall months, fantasy football often dominates office conversations. From injury alerts to real-time scoring, in and out of the workplace it wins our attention. But is it possible to direct an element of sports on your sales KPIs? The success of a handful of sales performance startups would argue you can. Sales and marketing gamification has become a multi-billion dollar industry, and these new software companies are proving the point that when done right, gamification can have a positive impact on your team. Below are a few of the common benefits of adding a competitive element to your sales team:
1. Increased focus on KPI’s
When done correctly, implementing sales gamification will motivate individual and collective sales numbers. Through having a consistent leaderboard and occasional prizes, you’re providing incentives to get your team focused on specific key revenue generating KPIs they control. This can help your sales team focus on the overall team priorities and give them the motivation to invest in their own individual KPIs. The end result: More reps hit quota and overall sales team numbers rises.
Check out: LevelEleven
LevelEleven is a sales performance platform specifically focused on key sales behaviors most likely to grow revenue. The software has the capability to send custom warnings when key metrics are low, and it launches specific competitions to spike performance where needed.
2. Team Culture
Adding a sense of friendly competition not only increases personal motivation, but it contributes to some of the most important areas of team culture. Adding a consistent competition and leaderboard naturally opens multiple communication channels for your team. From having a smack talk channel to collective time prizes, when managed correctly sales gamification can give a positive boost to your sales team’s culture.
Check out: Ambition
Ambition Sales is one of the fastest growing sales gamification platforms. This 2014 Y Combinator graduate and Tennessee-based startup is known for the company that turned work into a fantasy sports competition.
3. CRM Adoption and Usage
A constant struggle we hear time and again from sales managers is the difficulty to get their reps to correctly use the CRM. It’s common to find reps tallying numbers and recording notes on their own, outside of the team’s CRM. But one of the advantages of using sales gamification software is that it integrates directly with your CRM. If your reps aren’t actively using it, they won’t be able to compete against their teammates. By adding a competitive motivation to your reps’ sales numbers, you’re providing an extra incentive for your reps to keep up to date on their CRM data.
Check out: FantasySalesTeam
Microsoft recently acquired this popular sales gamification platform and has included direct integration into their CRM Microsoft Dynamics (among many other CRMs). The goal of FantasySalesTeam is to incentivize sales teams to achieve better results.
4. Employee engagement and motivation
Let’s be honest, sales can be hard. Every day has specific challenges, and the job itself can often be discouraging. Sales gamification platforms are designed to address these specific employee needs and to encourage and focus employees on the right goals. The right gamification software can provide the perfect motivation and encouragement your reps need. By rewarding strengths and providing constructive feedback in areas of weakness, gamification software can work wonders in helping your employees reach their full potential.
Check out: Sparta
Sparta Sales, or “sales motivation 2.0,” is a gamification platform helping sales teams drive organic revenue growth and reach their full potential. Their software is based on the premise that more focused, energized, and competitive salespeople will perform better.
5. Better one on ones
Sales coaching is one of the most important responsibilities of a manager, but the truth is that it rarely happens. Often times the excuse is that it’s hard to quantify sales, but sales gamification can help provide concrete topics for conversation. A well designed sales contest gets your reps focused on the right KPIs, and opens a natural channel to talk about those specific revenue generating numbers. It’s a lot easier to talk about last week’s competition than conducting a standard performance review, and the competition numbers can give you a place to start the conversation.
Check out: Rivalry
Though not a gamification platform, Rivalry keeps both managers and sales reps accountable for their one on ones. Through specific one on one strategy, tools, and leader boards, Rivalry helps managers structure constructive discussions with sales reps to go beyond the numbers for a better coaching experience.
6. Improved team communication
Even though sales can seem like an individual effort, it is very much a team sport. Sales teams need to work together and communicate as a whole to reach collective goals. But for some reason, important communication gets dropped every day. One of the benefits of sales gamification is not only to encourage performance, but also to allow consistent communication between your team. From regular alerts, chat groups, and team updates, gamification software aims to streamline your sales team’s communication.
Check out: Hoopla
Hoopla is a visual communication platform designed to engage employees and motivate sales teams. From real time updates and team scores, Hoopla uses custom TV channels to connect teams of all kind, whether they’re remote or all in one place.
7. It’s fun!
Sales is naturally competitive, and the opportunity to compete and win against peers can add an exciting element to a mundane day. For the same reason why so many of us love fantasy football, most of your sales reps will enjoy having more opportunities to win.
Thinking about trying out sales gamification software for your team? Here’s a list of some of the top platforms.
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