7 gamification strategies used by high-performing sales teams

5 mins read

Automated qualification of leads from your website and social campaigns...

gamification strategies

Healthy competition among your sales force is a great way to incentivize performance and reward success. Companies of all sizes from small businesses to Fortune 500 enterprises use Lucep to motivate their sales teams.

In this blog, we’ve included seven gamification strategies used by high-performing sales teams. Based on our experience, and that of our clients, adopting these methods can drive sales revenue into heights never achieved before.

1. Incentivize social selling and referrals

lucep for social video

Insurance is one of Lucep’s biggest verticals. Insurers, know that today’s customers are moving to digital channels to research, get quotes and purchase insurance online. On the other hand, there’s an army of agents who are still prospecting for customers in the traditional way.

To respond to this challenge, Lucep created our latest feature Lucep for Social which enables agents to turn their social networks into lead generation engines. Using Lucep, agents can add customized lead generation forms to any content on the web and then share this content with their social networks.

Leads generated are sent instantly to their mobile phone so they can contact the customer within minutes. Lucep also provides a dedicated landing page for each agent, enabling them to use social networks and messaging services for personal promotion and referrals.

2. Gamification through queue management

waiting time

waiting timeThis is based on our experience with our Lucep for banking product, which includes a queue management system deployed in banks to reduce the wait time for leads and customers before they are served in a bank branch, and the time taken to serve each customer.

In this virtual queue system, customers can get in line from anywhere on any device, and then arrive just in time for their appointment. As explained in David Maister’s “The Psychology of Waiting Lines,” the wait time pollutes the customer’s judgment about the quality of service.

Lucep enables your sales team to respond in time on the phone, and meet leads as they arrive to discuss in person. It makes the customer experience much better, and thereby increases conversion rates for sales reps using queue management to respond to leads. The reporting features include transparent sharing of response times by reps and branches, leading to gamification where everyone tries to respond faster than the rest.

3. Incentivize sales performance through a relative-merit system

Salesforce remuneration is typically based on activity or targets. In order to set targets, you will have to figure out a number in terms of sales revenue that seems hard but is realistic, at least for most of your sales reps. Then it has to be monitored and tweaked every quarter, taking into account seasonal variations and economic conditions.

An easier and more accurate and scientifically proven way is a relative-merit system. The top performer is 100%, and the rest of your team has to reach at least a percentage of this (say 80%) in order to claim that they hit the target. This is a lot harder because they have to compete with each other instead of a set target.

For instance, if you’re a car salesman selling 4 luxury cars in a month on average, and you’re expected to do 5, then just a small improvement will allow you to hit your target. But if there’s suddenly another new salesman who regularly hits 10, then you’d need to double your close rate to 8 cars a month to hit the 80% threshold in a relative-merit system.

But as a sales manager or CEO handling a sales team, it reduces your workload and gamifies everyone to aim for that No. 1 spot, or at least as close to it as possible.

4. Set incentives for achievement of activity-based goals

lucep team at fintech festival

The other option is to reward consistency in generating a sustainable stream of predictable revenue. You know that a certain sales activity, such as attending events, is going to result in new high-quality leads being generated.

So you reward reps who attend events and come out of it with qualified and actionable leads, obtained through careful choice of business targets and in-person meetings. Next time, they’ll all be competing to attend an upcoming event, and you can expect more leads than before.

5. Ongoing sales training seminars and sessions with expert coaches

Every time you attend a sales training seminar, you’ll learn something new that makes a significant difference in your sales technique and lead-to-sale ratio. We engage with sales experts as a habit for this express purpose – to learn their secrets and apply it in our own sales process.

Also, association with sales experts and getting to know them is itself a privilege in the sales industry. As a gamification strategy, provide this privilege only to the sales reps who show enough potential or have already lived up to the potential you saw in them.

6. Real-time tracking and engagement of customer activity

Zapier Freshsales Mailchimp integration

Zapier Freshsales Mailchimp integrationIn this strategy, we’re talking about gamification to reward customers and the sales team members involved for certain activities and types of engagement. For example, an email that entices customers to click on a link with a New Year offer can be tracked.

If a customer clicks, the interest they show may be enough to create a marketing-qualified lead (MQL). They can be called by a sales team member right away, while they’re checking out the offer on a landing page.

Such time-bound offers, where the customer’s interest and instant response by your sales team combine to generate new sales and revenue, are well-tested and effective gamification strategies.

7. New sales technology tested by a pilot group or branch.

republic auto lucep case study

How do you sell more cars, when each one costs hundreds of thousands of dollars? Each lead is solid gold, and car sales teams will compete viciously to get hold of anything that smells like it could lead to a test drive. Lucep helped turn this challenge into an opportunity for an automotive dealership.

You can see the full case study here and learn about how Lucep helped increase car sales (m-on-m) by 100%. In adopting our new sales technology, and the pilot group that got the app started getting a new source of leads.

The rest of their sales team started protesting that they too wanted the app. The end result is that all team members are now responding to leads faster than before, and sales team performance has been gamified into revenue they never achieved before.

In fact, Lucep is now driving the automotive sales tech of major car manufacturers and their dealerships now.

By Zal Dastur

January 3rd, 2019

Want to find out more about how to digitally transform your business?
Enter your name and number below: