This Article is Based on Two Observations:
- Continuous training is now a necessity for sales teams to meet the dual demands of a highly informed consumer and an ever-faster evolving market.
- To address this, companies implement Learning Management Systems or e-learning applications/software/platforms to provide their teams with the necessary resources for training. However, employee adoption of these LMSs is the primary obstacle these companies face.
We have already discussed the adoption issue and the main factors of employee engagement with these software solutions: the quality of the training content, the interactivity of the experience or gamification, and the mobile aspect (even more effective for training a geographically dispersed sales force).
And indeed, gamification can significantly increase your sales team’s motivation to train and adopt your company’s digital learning. Here are some examples and best practices that prove it.
Inspired by Video Games:
Here is an image from the game Guild Wars (over 7 million players in 2015) which presents a scheme almost common to all online games: the skill tree. The idea is to unlock the first skill, then unlock two more, and so on.
The Khan Academy is a smart learning platform that has implemented this system to teach various subjects to its users. Here is an example of a skill tree adapted for teaching mathematics.
Source: Khan Academy
Khan Academy today has several million learners thanks to this gamified skill acquisition system. Furthermore, a skill tree is perfectly suited for training sales reps on a new product, for example. This allows for precise visualization of one’s progress and immediate gratification upon completing a module by gaining access to the next.
Inspired by “Sports and Health” Apps:
We have already compared sales performance and sports performance, notably with the famous concept of the ‘sales coach.’ We are convinced that to meet the current challenges of sales, field managers and their teams must regain greater autonomy. To do this, they need to be given the right performance indicators: do you manage their results or their activities? An athletics coach will not tell their athlete: ‘run faster,’ but ‘lengthen your stride’ or ‘do X exercises per day.’ And it is the sum of each activity that leads to the desired result: a great running performance, a great sales performance.
Running apps like Fitbit or Running Heroes are based on exactly this idea: daily tracking of sports activity, precise technology to analyze strengths and weaknesses and then work on them. These apps also combine health data: number of calories burned, sleep quality – all factors that play a role in sports performance.
But where these applications truly succeeded is thanks to the subtle reward mechanisms they implement to motivate you to run or exercise. The first thing is being able to track every step of your progress: it’s already the best possible gratification to see, day after day, the improvement in your performance.
And to motivate the most reluctant, there’s a whole range of interactive features to explore: challenge friends, share performances on social media (who doesn’t do that today after running a half-marathon, for example?), and progress through a badge system that rewards your results.
Running Heroes, for example, offers a simple and effective gamification mechanic: by running, you earn points that you can then convert to buy rewards or donate to charities. In the same vein, Deliverun offers lunch at partner restaurants to runners who have walked more than 2km to get there.
Which Gamification Mechanics for Training your Sales Team?
The SoftwareAdvice website published a study on the best gamification mechanics to motivate employees to use their company’s LMS.
The most popular mechanic among employees is, not surprisingly, the translation of their efforts into physical rewards: but these rewards don’t necessarily have to be monetary; they can be symbolic, such as granting a temporary privilege to the one who achieves the best scores from one week to the next.
It is increasingly common today to integrate these playful elements into organizations’ digital training programs – it’s an effective and inexpensive way to motivate and challenge sales reps to train regularly.
However, these gamification mechanics are not limited to training alone: they are also a good way to boost overall sales performance.
The Fitbit of Sales Performance
Is there a Fitbit for sales performance? Certainly, a CRM records data, provides dashboards, and delivers results; but it’s a purely analytical task.
What the CRM does not provide, however (or at least not yet sufficiently), is a clear and engaging visualization of indicators and results. And that’s a large part of the success of these running apps: a clear and precise visualization of progress and relevant indicators that help us determine our areas for improvement. Numbers themselves are not motivating, whereas gamification makes exercise and effort exciting.
The mobile application allows daily tracking of the sales rep or athlete since it’s on their phone: it’s a digital coach in their pocket.
Incenteev is a mobile motivation and sales coaching application that measures suitable indicators to improve your performance and deliver daily, personalized tracking.
To revolutionize workplace engagement with gamification, download our white paper: Sales Challenge – the Keys to Success