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Behind every human activity, motivation is the starting point.
Unfortunately, anyone that has been in sales knows that motivation is difficult when faced with constant rejection, tedious and often unfruitful prospecting attempts... and, of course, pressures from leadership.
In short, sales can be extremely rewarding, but it can also be endlessly frustrating.
Motivation is critical, and sales leaders everywhere do their best to motivate their teams. Training, rituals, coaching, prizes are some things that work. However, other options use human psychology to get even better results.
Positive reinforcement.
Neuroscientists are constantly reminding us that when you add a positive stimulus following a behavior that we want to enforce, we make it more likely that you will achieve behavior change.
"Positive Feedback Triggers a reward signal in the brain, reinforcing the action that caused it, making it more likely to be repeated in the future."
- Tali Sharot, Associate Professor of Cognitive Neuroscience at University College of London.
However, despite everything we know about positive reinforcement, it remains one of the most underutilized management tools today.
Here is the problem with positive reinforcement:
- It takes time to pay attention to the actions that you are trying to reinforce.
- It takes a level of visibility into these actions that not all sales leaders have today.
- Some sales leaders may not naturally feel like delivering positive reinforcement is within their natural abilities.
- Some sales leaders don't feel like positive reinforcement is necessary.
However, study after study, survey after survey, shows us that positive reinforcement is one of the reasons people stay at their job… and the lack of it is cause for leaving and finding new employment.
Fortunately, gamification gives you an easy and effective way to deliver positive reinforcement... at scale.
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What is sales gamification?
Sales Gamification uses games and game-like elements to add positive reinforcement to high-impact activities like prospecting and asking for referrals.
Turning pipeline tasks into a game can help us switch our mindset.
On a recent poll of salespeople and sales leaders that used Gamification as a way to measure their results, we know that:
- More than half of the employees felt that shifting the focus from the results to the "game" made them feel more energetic, as they felt a lot less wear on their positions.
- Around 90% assured that they increased their productivity.
Some of the companies that use Gamification on training and their sales team are:
- Aetna
- Autodesk
- Cisco
- Microsoft
- Deloitte
- Autodesk
- Bell Media
- Marketo
- Nike
- Spotify
- Verizon
How do you implement Sales Gamification?
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1. Start by creating teams.
In modern selling environments, salespeople often feel disconnected and alone.
By creating teams, and a friendly competition, you create a more connected selling environment.
2. Know the actions that have more chance of success and measure them accordingly.
Of course, every industry has its tricks.
If, for your industry, a personal visit works better than a call, assign more points to personal visits than a call, and vice-versa.
Don't forget to set points to activities that don't work as well but still work.
Not all your members might be as strong in person as on the phone, but by assigning more points to the activity you want to cultivate, you will steer members to try that new activity they might be reluctant to do.
3. Be clear on your goals and objectives.
So, the more calls your team makes, the more sales you see at the end of the month.
But, on the other hand, if you make calls a goal, your salespeople might not call the right person, not have interaction, or not compliment the call with, let's say, an email with the information.
So, be clear and specific on what you expect for each goal.
4. Make sure to encourage behaviors.
While the first instinct might be to be on the numbers, this focus might reward just a stroke of luck or just one of the natural-born salespeople we see once in a while.
By encouraging behaviors, not only you'll let the team know what is expected and induce the same discipline, but what it's more critical to cultivate behaviors that will make the whole team productive instead of just one member.
5. Know your team.
You have to know your teams and the members.
Each member reacts to a different stimulus.
Some need recognition; some are more material, and again, they have different needs .
It is essential that, as a team leader, you understand what drives your team.
If positive reinforcement is not truly an important motivator for your team, than gamification might not be a good fit.
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6. Celebrate and recognize achievements.
The right Sales Gamification tool will help you instantly recognize team and member achievements. This will immediately reward a critical behavior, making it likely to be repeated in the future.
To learn more about specific, proven strategies for using Sales Gamification... download our whitepaper.
