Looking for a way to bring some excitement, motivation and a sense of competition within your sales force but do not necessarily want to spend extra dollars on incentive payouts? Do you want to improve user adoption of your sales automation application but not spend time and effort on retraining or having to listen to complaints from the sales team about how the system is no good? Gamification may be the answer that you are looking for.
Gamification in sales automation refers to creating game like scenarios which include principles like garnering points, rankings, competition etc. to motivate your sales teams in a non- monetary way, although in some cases, points earned may also be redeemed for non-cash incentives if the organization so chooses. The objectives for gamification may be manifold:
Process adherence Organizations may have trouble getting their sales teams to follow recommended sales processes. Examples may include updating contact information or capturing minutes of meeting with clients. Such activities may even seem to be trivial to sales managers who do not wish spend time discussing these items with their teams and who might rather spend their time discussing more 'important' matters like specific opportunity details, sales forecasts, pipeline review etc. Gamification can address such situations effectively by reinforcing ideal behavior through reward of points to salesreps who follow the recommended sales process.
User Adoption Organizations implement sales automation software only to find that their sales teams couldn't be bothered to use them. Gamification can be a reason for the sales reps and managers to start using the application and lead them in understanding the benefits of sales automation.
Sales Engagement Sales resources tend to work in isolation. They are on the road constantly meeting clients and prospects and there isn't enough time to build employee engagement. Any internal office meeting tends to be formal reviews and planning exercises which can be quite serious affairs. Gamification can help to reduce tensions within sales teams, bring some fun into an office culture and bring about some good-natured competition and a feeling of 'know thy team'.
Gamify Sales Activities
Below are some models or examples of how a simple gamification can be designed for routine sales activities using a points system. Salesreps can be notified on their points accumulated and also be ranked vis a vis other sales reps.
Gamify activities performed on Lead and Opportunity objects by assigning them suitable points. For example
- Creating a Lead gets you 1 point.
- If the Lead is Qualified, you get 2 Points.
- If the Lead is converted to an Opportunity, you get 3 points, and so on.
Similar gamification can be performed on Account and Contact objects. For example,
- Creating an Account gets you 1 point
- Adding a contact to the account gets you 2 points
- If the contact is a decision maker (Title VP or higher), you get 3 points and so on.
Gamify Sales Performance Metrics
Sales performance metrics can be mapped to sports themes. Below is an example of mapping them to a baseball theme. Such gamification can then be included as part of the salesrep's profile which is viewed by everybody in the organization. Similar themes around other sports or games can be creatively designed.
- Batting Average- % of Leads that get converted to Opportunity. A batting average of 0.250 means 1 out of 4 Leads are getting converted
- On Base Percentage- % of Leads that get converted to Opportunity but also includes walks (standalone opportunities)
- Slugging Percentage- % of Won Opportunities upon total opportunities (A slugging percentage of 0.500 means 50% of Opportunities are won)
- Home Runs- Number of high value opportunities won (say above 10k)
- Hits- Number of Opportunities that reached a particular sales stage (say Submit Quote)
- Runs Scored- Number of Opportunities Won
- Assists- Number of Opportunities won where the salesrep is not the owner but on the sales team
- Errors- Number of Stale Opportunities
Note that control functionalties may have to be built in to the game mechanics to ensure that sales users don't enter dummy or wrong data to win points or to score more.
Hope the above gave you some ideas on how you can gamify your sales teams!