It can be easy for employees to get burnt out or feel unmotivated, especially in the sales industry. Whether it comes from a lack of incentives, unclear goals, or focus –– a lack of motivation among your team can have a huge impact on productivity and the success of your business.
To help combat this lack of motivation, companies are constantly searching for new techniques to better engage and connect with their employees.
Introducing Gamification
Gamification has been around for quite some time, seeing early success in HR departments for the onboarding process. However, with sales departments, it is far from a new concept. If you have offered your employees prizes or bonuses for hitting their quota or ran a sales contest encouraging employees to participate, you have incorporated gamification elements into your sales process. And there is a reason why so many companies, specifically, sales teams, do these types of things –– because they work.
Today, gamification is all around us. Take Fantasy Football, for example, where the ultimate goal is for users to win individual contests against families or friends. In the end, you hope that you are crowned the champion of your league. While bragging rights are great, there is generally a larger incentive involved (i.e., cash). Whether you win and get the pot of money, or lose and have to contribute to that large pot of money your friend is winning, you now have stakes in the game –– meaning you become more interested in the process and the outcome. The same can be said for sales gamification, it allows employees to compete and gives them the motivation to participate and win.
Let’s take a look at some of the ways gamification is used for sales teams and the impact it can have on the organization as a whole.
Create healthy competition and collaboration
In recent years, company culture has taken precedent for many job seekers when looking for work. According to a recent study, by 2026, Generation Z will make up 82 million people within the U.S. consumer population, surpassing millennials as the most populous generation. As millennials and Gen Zers continue to enter the workforce, good company culture is one of the top things they look for, and that’s not changing anytime soon. One way to create a good company culture is through collaboration and competition –– particularly in the sales department.
The sales industry often gets a bad rap for being cutthroat, however, healthy competition can be a great motivator for sales teams. To do so, promoting competition where there are support and encouragement amongst sales reps as a way to achieve this balance. Gamification can foster teamwork and create an outlet for friendly rivalries. It also allows knowledge to be shared across the organization and can contribute to a great company culture long after the competition has ended.
Increase sales performance
Visuals are processed 60,000x faster in the brain than text and over two-thirds of people are visual learners. With gamification, employees can instantly see how they are measuring up against their colleagues and get a clearer picture of where they stand. Also, seeing fellow sales reps exceeding their quotas through gamification can provide them additional motivation to reach and exceed their goals.
Gamification can provide sales leaders with data on how individual employees are doing, whether they are exceeding their quotas or if they may need extra help or training. For managers, who may not have the time to track and aggregate individual reps data, gamification can simplify and automate the process –– leaving them more time to focus on other tasks.
The average person will spend 90,000 hours at work over a lifetime. Adding gamification to your sales strategy brings more fun to work and is a proven way to increase your team’s drive and the company’s overall performance, no matter the industry or size of the company. From cold calling to closing deals, gamification can be used at any stage of the sales cycle and it is one way to ensure your team stays motivated and successful.