It’s no secret that there are many benefits to gamifying your sales process. It can help onboard reps faster, encourage friendly competition, and improve overall team morale.
Gamification is easier than ever these days thanks to technology. Even if you don’t have a tool in place, it’s likely as a sales leader you’re already using it in some form. Ever organize a sales contest? Or do a dial “power hour” to encourage AEs to get more meetings? Then you’ve harnessed the power of gamification.
Not only is gamification popular, it’s a proven and effective sales performance booster. 71% of sales managers said when they implemented it amongst their sales team they saw an 11% to 50% improvement in sales performance.
In this post, we’ll share ways you can gamify your sales process to increase your revenue.
Start with sales contests
Who doesn’t love a good old fashioned contest? Contests can give your sales reps that extra push they need to meet their quota. These tend to be most effective when they are short and are at the end of the sales month, quarter, or year.
One contest that we run consistently for our sales team is a cash incentive for additional deals closed toward the end of the month. For example, this month we’re offering reps an extra $25 for every $1,000 in year one total contract value with a cap at $10k per transaction. This contest or spiff runs for four days.
By implementing something similar within your organization, it can give reps that extra push they need to get through the end of a selling month. A contest also adds a little fun to an otherwise stressful time.
Here are a few things to keep in mind when executing a contest:
- Ensure your contest will motivate sales teams. A rep needs to be motivated to participate.
The the “ ask” has to be achievable and realistic. - Set proper expectations. Make sure reps have a clear understanding of what it takes to win.
- Don’t take a “one size fits all” approach. Meaning, don’t run the same contest for your AEs as you do for your SDRs. Be sure the contest aligns with each of their respective job functions to maximize the outcome.
Display top performers and other activity metrics with leaderboards
Leaderboards are a great way to keep your sales team in sync. They can give each sales rep an idea of where they stand amongst their team members to help keep them on track to reach their monthly or quarterly goals.
Leaderboards aren’t just for closed/won deals; they can also show who has influenced the most deals (great for SDRs) or activity details from your CRM like the number of calls and emails per rep.
Gamification solutions like LevelEleven and Hoopla provide dashboards that can not only help you automate sales contests and competitions but can also create dynamic and interactive leaderboards.
Here at PandaDoc, dashboards and reports within Salesforce serve as leaderboards for our sales team, but we also introduced a fun way to engage with the entire company everytime a deal closes.
Using our integration with Zapier, we created a #saleswins channel within Slack that generates a message every time a proposal is completed in PandaDoc. The alert includes details like the rep’s name, the name of the new customer, and the dollar amount of the deal.
Since we have offices on the east and west coast and in Minsk, Belarus, the #saleswins channel is not only a chance for sales to show off their deals, but it also has garnered employee engagement across all teams.
The excitement from winning drives the entire business forward – from Marketing to Product to Customer Success. PandaDoc employees will tell you they love reacting to the deals closed with their favorite emoji.
To create your own #saleswins channel with Slack and PandaDoc, check PandaDoc for Slack.
Badges and points can help new hires meet onboarding KPIs
Use gamification by awarding a badge or points for your sales new hires. Points and badges are great prizes for when a new rep completes certain tasks or a milestone is achieved. They can give new reps a sense of accomplishment, motivate them toward specific behavior, or foster better performance.
Here’s one way to use badges (or “levels”) during employee onboarding:
- Name your onboarding or training program. “PandaDoc Taekwondo Training” for example.
- Next, define levels of the course and assign a belt color for each, similar to what you’d receive throughout real karate. A belt is awarded for each step the rep completes
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Once your rep finishes the entire program, reward them with the ‘PandaDoc Black Belt’ certifying that they’ve completed the course and are ready to start selling.
Challenges accelerate sales goals
Challenges are a great way to create a sales rep’s purpose and define parameters around their daily efforts. They are different from the other types of gamification as challenges allow for flexibility and can get sales reps to better understand high-level business goals. They can also spur creativity to help achieve their KPIs.
A couple examples of challenges are asking a rep to complete a specific sales certification outside your org or challenging them to increase their close rate from last quarter.
Challenges should be achievable but not too easy in order to keep reps engaged. Make sure that the challenge you set is aligned with a rep’s specific business goals and abilities.
Lastly, make sure the rules and desired outcome of the challenge are clear and that participants can easily monitor their progress. In a well-designed challenge, reps should be able to obtain the goal on their own or with a little help from their manager.
Let’s say you’re challenging a rep to increase their contract value for the month. Set the rep up for success by offering a few ideas on how to get there, like adding optional items to their quotes or giving the prospect 3 different sets of pricing options and allowing them to choose the best one for their budget Psst! You can do this with PandaDoc pricing tables.
When you provide some guidance and inspiration but leave room for creativity, reps can generate really great ideas (and results!)
Reps can track their progress for this challenge using PandaDoc reporting to see how many docs they’ve sent and how many were viewed and completed. The Leaderboard within PandaDoc reporting will also tell you the dollar amounts of each stage so that reps can easily track of their contract values to meet their challenge goal.
Final thoughts
Before implementing any games, challenges or other gamification tactics to your sales process, be sure you have a clear understanding of what truly motivates each of your reps to maximize participation (and results!).
Gamification won’t radically increase your revenue overnight, it can, however, boost sales, overall performance, and morale among the team. Implementing gamification should be a piece of a long-term performance management plan, not only to add fun to your sales environment but to drive positive shifts in sales behaviors.
Tell us, have you used gamification with your sales team? Let us know what worked and what didn’t in the comments below!
