How games are revolutionizing sales incentives

Consider these scenarios:

• Your top sales performers are doing well (as always) but you’re having trouble motivating everyone else, or “moving the middle.”
• Your brand new product launched but you haven’t seen the spark in sales you were hoping for.
• Your employees turn up to work every day but they don’t seem motivated or fully engaged.

If any of these sound familiar, then a) you’re not alone and b) you may be in need of a new type of sales contest. Problem solved.

Games are an effective tool because they address a person’s intrinsic need for competition, achievement, status and rewards. People are emotionally drawn to these experiences and because of that, the impact of using games to prompt desired behaviors has been proven successful many times over in business situations.

Case in point:

• For one telecom customer who was looking to increase video sales, we incorporated game plays into their call center environment. Not only were they able to drive over 95% engagement among their call center reps, they also increased product sales by over 30%.
• Another BIW customer was looking for an effective way to ramp up their workforce and onboard new technicians more quickly. By creating a gamified onboarding “launch pad” that focused on skills they needed to be successful in the technician role, we were able to decrease the average onboarding time from five months to three. This also resulted in a 20% increase in productivity among new technicians.

Whether your particular goal is to reinforce the behaviors that drive business or recognize specific achievements, games can help. You can use simple, short-term structures to drive immediate activities or introduce complex, multi-layered paradigms that maintain focus and commitment to a particular goal over time.

Creating the right mix of sales incentives and games can provide a particularly compelling and sustained experience that can be used to accomplish a variety of business goals, like:

• Increase sales
• Reverse lagging profits
• Sell more service plans/contract services
• Increase qualified referral acquisitions
• Maximize new product introductions/sales
• Reduce abandon rates, cycle times or incidents
• Drive behavior-based activity
• Increase CRM adoption

Sales contests are an effective motivational mechanism. Games have the ability to surprise and delight. The combination of the two is a proven way to fully engage your teams and increase revenue.