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Gamification - New Way to Inspire your Sales Team
- Sumeet Shah
- Oct 13, 2021
- 4 min read
What is Gamification and Why it Works
Everybody loves playing games. Be it because of the competitive spirit one experiences, the joy of winning, the enthusiasm of participating, or just the fun of the entire process. Who said fun cannot be mixed with your professional life? Gamification is a relatively new concept in the business world and it is here to stay. Understanding how to use basic human behaviour to encourage and engage reps is at the heart of gamification. Gamification, when done effectively, creates involved and engaged teams that are driven, efficient, and bring in revenue. Gamification motivates companies' employees to connect while also instilling a sense of competition and pleasure in the workplace. Positively reinforced behaviours, using methods such as incentives or applause, are more likely to repeat. Gamification can be used in the workplace to encourage employees to perform activities that result in increased sales, leads, and discussions with qualified candidates.
Professional life can be fun but with a mix of games and a competitive environment, reps are more likely to finish tasks on time with great efficiency and win points/badges/rewards. This keeps the office young at heart and scratches out the monotonous lifestyle pattern. Change is the only constant in life, so it is always a good idea to change up the work pattern. This also increases productivity among the employees as they are more enthusiastic and curious about what is going to happen next. Because competitiveness is an aspect of selling, the concept of a performance-based contest appeals to salespeople especially. As a result, they are inspired by the gamified challenges that administrators devise and implement
Pros of Gamification
Understanding this new concept might not be a piece of cake for everyone and that is okay. Inspiring your sales team would lead to them generating more sales and accomplishing success. Hence, it is important to be updated with the trends and patterns that are being followed around the world.
Let us look at some of the benefits of the new concept of Gamification:
1. Increases Employee Engagement
Let’s be real here, everyone knows how difficult and discouraging the field of sales can be if things don’t fall into place. It is thus important to realize that your sales team needs a way out through this block to get back on track. Gamification helps in exactly that as it makes the work process a lot more fun, something people look forward to and are driven by. It increases employee engagement and their commitment towards the goal.
2. Team Spirit
While achieving success and great heights like a lone wolf can make you feel proud of yourself, working as a team sets a different tone in the environment. Gamification allows for more interaction and collaboration to take place among the employees. Cooperation will undoubtedly aid your sales reps in connecting and sharing their expertise. Your sales reps will have an open conversation on guiding principles, which will help them top the scoreboards. This happens on its own, as a result of everyday communication.
3. Better Mentorship
Gamification creates an opportunity for all the employees to learn more from each other, from their mentors, from their seniors. In general, if a sales rep has any doubt, they might not want to bother their senior or might just feel shy to ask questions which can lead to a wrong outcome. With gamification, the communication among employees increases, and a sense of comfort in asking questions is built over time. This will lead to no confusion in the process and generate positive outcomes.
4. Increase Communication Skills
Communication skills are an essential part of every organization but play a crucial role in the Sales department as it involves interacting with the customers. With that, efficient communication with peers is also essential as it would help them be updated with the latest happenings. Through gamification, various chat groups are made, strategies are discussed and people just start working as a team. We all know how difficult it is to get salespeople to keep track of all their information and data. Consider a workplace where people report on their progress regularly, collaborate to solve challenges, document their knowledge, track data, and support one another. This desire becomes a reality thanks to gamification.
Different Elements of Gamification
Lets us focus on some key elements of gamification that will help you understand the concept in a better way:
- Contests: The first step in the process would be to announce contests. Remember, including games is supposed to increase motivation and not rivalry. A healthy competition between employees who have similar prospects for success might be a good idea. This way you are not setting unrealistic expectations and giving them a fair chance.
- Scores and Badges: It is human nature to feel a sense of accomplishment and achievement after completing a task. Through the concept of scores or badges, they will be motivated each day. Note that adding points to their scoreboard is important but subtracting points from the scoreboards, under certain circumstances, is also important. Failure teaches a person more than success can and it will surely have a motivating impact on the employee.
- Feedback: It is essential for people to know what their mistakes are, or which area of work they need to improve in. Being in an authority position, you can help them understand how they went wrong in a certain situation and guide them towards success. Giving constructive feedback to your employees is nothing but a basic responsibility. Gamification creates a safe space for people to put down their thoughts and ideas.
- Challenges: Challenges are something that excites people! Keep in mind while giving a challenge that it should not be as easy as a daily task, but it also should not be as difficult as something that can be never achieved. Keeping realistic challenges that require hard work, patience, and time management would increase efficiency and drive the company towards success.
Conclusion
You can improve the sales performance of the team by effectively implementing game components. Gamification makes the job more pleasurable for employees while also making firms more productive, inventive, and prosperous. Incentivate has features built-in that can enable gamification and instil this sense of fun in your sales reps leading to better business outcomes.
