Ways To Increase Sales Team Engagement With Gamification
Sales reps are expected to learn and remember a lot of information: product and service features, industry data, regulatory rules, selling models—the list goes on and on. They can’t pay attention to everything, so how do you get them to pay attention to what really matters? The answer is engagement.
eBook Release
Closing Sales Performance Gaps Using Gamification
What if you turn your learning tracks and coaching into something that is fun, exciting, and entertaining and that actually closes sales performance gaps? Enter gamification.
What Is Engagement?
Engagement is critical to building an effective sales team. You can’t change someone’s behavior if you can’t get their attention. Think of your salespeople the same way you think about your customers: why should they listen to you? Why should they be learning new skills when they have other things to do? What’s the value proposition? What’s in it for them? Engagement is about gaining meaningful, deliberate, and purposeful attention.
Winning Hearts And Minds
Engagement is also about winning hearts and minds. This means—gaining trust. When introducing a new protocol, process, or coaching technique, the first question that may come to mind is, “Will this help me do my job better?”
Activities and content that provide value need to be:
- Relevant – Addresses current challenges and opportunities.
- Practical – The approach is achievable and repeatable.
- Useful – The technique or tool may be applied to an existing opportunity, prospect, or pipeline.
- Timely – It is content that reps can use right now.
The challenge with engaging just the mind is that we often know something is good for us, but we still don’t act on it. We wouldn’t need New Year’s resolutions if it were easy to stick with our most challenging goals. This is where engaging the heart comes in. The heart is about our hopes, dreams, aspirations, excitement, and accomplishments. And this is where gamification shines because it can build engagement like no other approach.
Here are just a few of the ways gamification satisfies our aspirations:
Storytelling
If you can’t remember what you had for breakfast, but you can remember a story you heard ten years ago—there’s a reason for that. Our brains are wired to remember stories more than ordinary facts. Effective gamification tells a good story, which drives engagement and memory retention.
Competition And Achievement
There’s no better way to a salesperson’s heart than a little healthy competition. Gamification creates competitive environments where participants vie against other team members, districts, or regions. Competition alone doesn’t make people more intelligent, but the desire to win means they’ll pay closer attention—and attention is the first step in building engagement.
Recognition
Recognition is an intrinsic motivator. Participation in gamification activities is the perfect environment to recognize participants for their achievements. No longer is learning just a compulsory exercise; it’s part of a sales culture of achievement.
Rewards
For most salespeople, landing a new piece of business is exhilarating. Likewise, offering rewards for engaging with your gamification program is a great way to tap into competitive natures, whether it’s a digital badge, a certificate, or a gift card.
Improving Performance
If you get your gamification program right, your sales team will experience an improvement in their performance, naturally leading to an uplift in sales. This newfound confidence will motivate them to continue engaging with gamification to keep improving.
In Sum
Some sales leaders see gamification as a gimmick, and it’s easy to understand why. Frankly, too much gamification is just a test surrounded by flash graphics. Gamification is an art as well as a science. When done effectively, gamification builds engagement, wins hearts and minds, and becomes an exciting part of a sales culture.
Download the eBook Closing Sales Performance Gaps Using Gamification to identify and address pain points that prevent your sales teams from achieving their goals. You can also join the webinar to learn how to close gaps for good and help sales reps who struggle to meet their quotas.
