How Gamification Of Sales Targets Can Make Teams Competitive

Running a successful and growing team has numerous moving parts. From keeping the sales team engaged and motivated to achieve their targets and predictive analysis, companies face several challenges in attracting and retaining top talent across teams.

At a time when 45% of the workforce feels burned out, one of the effective ways to keep the teams engaged is by leveraging technology for gamifying their KPIs, in order to bring more life into work functions.

What Is Gamification?

Gamification means adapting game-inspired elements into business tasks to change an existing process or change the behaviour of people associated. The emotions associated with playing comes can be utilized to inspire teams and individuals to bring out the desired business outcomes. Research suggests that playing video games can increase dopamine levels in the brain by as much as 100%. (Dopamine, or the feel-good hormone, is released whenever we are rewarded for a specific action.)

When used correctly, gamification can elicit results such as enhanced productivity, social recognition and the feeling of accomplishment.

Companies can capitalize on the fun, rewards and recognition aspect of gamification. The goal is to motivate the salespeople and other teams to perform better and boost their engagement in the process. A study shows that 89% of employees feel they can get better results on a task through gamification.

Gamification As A Driver For Sales Team

One of the most common complaints from sales teams is that their daily tasks become repetitive, boring and unrewarding in nature. This redundant nature of their job is the reason why an increasing number of salespeople fail to hit their yearly targets and attrition levels are at an all-time high.

So then, how can gamification help?

Leader-Boards Can Increase Competitiveness In A Team

A McKinsey research proves that praise and recognition play an important role in motivating employees. Often, this surpasses financial perks. Gamification using leader-boards and contests makes it easier to recognize and celebrate sales wins.

Live contest leader-boards and projections give the team clear visibility into where they are standing and what they need to do, to win. You could gamify the goals, KPIs and milestones to make the entire program fun and easy. Spinning up challenges motivates the sales teams and reinforces a healthy competitive spirit which in turn sets the stage for collaboration and peer learning.

Celebrating wins, both small and big with public recognition goes a long way in getting everyone involved in the game challenges.

In an organization, gamification serves as a reminder of the individual or team achievements and propels an exchange of praises which further boosts the team morale.

Rewards And Recognitions Via Gamification Can Increase The Efficiency 

Gamification in business involves setting up a rewards and incentives system for your employees. The recognition could be in the form of awards, tokens, monetary or as experiences.

In fact, 83% of employees feel motivated to perform better and work harder when they know a reward is waiting for them on completion. This means it would push and motivate teams to participate in the gaming activities your company sets up. Alongside, such games foster a friendly atmosphere that serves as a reason to continue improving themselves rather than getting complacent.

An important point to remember is to ensure that the rewards you offer are desirable to the team members.

For instance, competing for the title of “top sales achiever of the year” would require more than a badge. Chances are, a simple gesture for an extraordinary achievement may not be enough to entice employees to work hard for the title. Alternatively, you could offer a weekend getaway in a resort.

Aligning Incentives To KPIs

A gamification software can measure milestones in real-time. It helps your teams know how much they are being incentivized and on the go. A digitized incentive program can increase your sales by as much as 30%, reports a study by Accenture Consulting.

Your company can align celebration metrics such as sales quota, NPS, tasks completed, monthly or quarterly deals made and so on. The metrics could include positive behaviour such as presenteeism, training, quality of service and so on. Going a step ahead, you could segment gamification programs based on the location, teams and cohorts.

Remember to define the behaviour and milestones that would lead to these outcomes. Clarify the rules to incentivize these behaviours and any combinations including region, quantities, product types and more. It is advisable to define the performance threshold for how different teams (sales, marketing, customer support, delivery and more) can earn these incentives.

Performance Graphs Can Help Participants Gauge Their Skills And Improve 

The benefit of gamification of the rewards and recognition process for companies is that you can then use data and predictive analysis to drive your decisions.

You can customize the tracking of individual participation as well as team-wise and geographically. That way, you can get complete visibility into the sales teams for enhanced transparency. The crucial data gathered from gamification empowers you to identify the strengths and weaknesses of your workforce.

Equipped with these insights, managers, leaders and organizations can create personalized incentive programs to improve team performance. Real-time insights that are backed by data can also help in correcting the existing campaigns to improve the ROI of the reward and incentive programs.

Wrapping up

In the current environment where everyone is working extremely, it is crucial to appreciate and motivate employees consistently. Incorporating gamification into your company can change the way your employees work. It gives them the reason, rewards and incentives needed to perform better and improve themselves. The key benefit of gamification is that it makes employees feel more appreciated for the time and effort they put into making your company successful.

Whatever is the game mechanics that you choose to ensure that you understand your team and their key motivators.