Man is by nature competitive, combative and ambitious…” says Arthur Keith.
Take the situation of a man running alone on a track versus running a race among ten others. He will push his limits to win the race when he is competing. That’s what gamification does. It harnesses competitive natural spirit to compete and win. Now putting the same elements of gamification in the sales force automation process benefits in achieving the targets set by companies. It can also modify behaviour of the sales reps in accordance with the needs of the company.
What is Gamification and How Game Mechanics Work?
Gamification is the application of typical elements of game play, such as point scoring, competition with others and rule of play, to other areas of activity to encourage engagement with a product or service or user to encourage system usage and influence expected behaviour.
People love to play games, but their daily lives are filled with boring or taxing activities. Gamification is the process of incorporating game mechanics (challenges, score points, awards, etc.) into these activities, making them more game-like, and thus more appealing. With gamification, different sets of gaming mechanics come together to stimulate action. These mechanics appeal to core human needs:
- Points appeal to our need for rewards
- Badges or awards appeal to our desire of status
- Challenges appeal to our longing for achievement
- Leadership Boards appeal to our sense of competition
How to Gamify your Field Sales Team?
In a well managed team, there are usually 30% who meet their targets simply for their skills. The next 30% require a nudge and the remaining require coaching.
Fundamentally, sales reps need to be convinced that it is possible to achieve a certain level of performance in their territory with the same product. This belief comes from peer benchmarking. By seeing others do well in the same territory.
That’s where competitive spirit and other game theory kick in. Now we know that gaming is instinct built in us. That’s why we want to be competitive and win positions and titles. Using the same game mechanics (challenge, activities, points, rewards), you can motivate the employees towards the behaviour you want to achieve.
Here are four prominent steps for it :
1. Goal Setting
Companies can define sales goals through scorecard KPIs. In our solution, we have more than 30 templates for Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) and Key Behaviour Indicators (KBIs) for field sales reps and sales teams. The solution emphasizes input KPIs to set goals relating to selling behavior in the market such as schedule adherence, SOP adherence, range or ticket size, average time to close etc. KBIs focus on input activities that actually lead to higher sales outcomes.
2. Scorekeeping & Scorecards
After setting goals at individual as well as at team & territory levels, the next thing is to reward the participants. We use the inputs from the KPI and KBI scores and display the final points that sales reps earned. There are daily and monthly leaderboard scores that display on the dashboard of all the users or field sales reps.
3. Frequent Feedback
The scoreboard shows the leading sales reps and it also shows who are not performing well. This gives the insights to the team managers or territory managers to give constant feedback. Using CuesBOT, the managers get instant nudges and notifications regarding sales going down or sales in a specific area going down.
4. Consistent Coaching
Generally, most companies spend a lot on arranging training sessions or workshops to upgrade the skills of their sales reps. Wonder if you can know exactly where your sales reps need help! You can exactly do that with BeatRoute’s digital training program. Here the territory manager gets to know performing well in upselling or cross selling, or able to sell. And accordingly, pinpoint training can be given to individuals. The managers can also see how much training the salesman has covered.
What is Unique about Our Solution?
BeatRoute intelligently records all the input behaviour demonstrated and output results achieved by every team member and then rewards it with points. When we say that the SFA app considers input behaviour for rewarding, which means it includes the activities and actions done on a customer. Whereas, output results show the achievement against set targets.
A running leaderboard shows rank status based on the points earned along with peers. The ranks keep changing on a daily basis. This nudges people to attempt climbing up on the leaderboard every day. At the end of the month the game ends with the awarding of medals before the game begins again in the new month.
The sales representatives can see peer benchmarking and know by how many points they missed a medal. This will surely encourage them to believe that they can do it as well. Thereby collectively raising the performance of the team every month.
Millennial workers like recognition for their good work and being able to show it off on their profile as a medal is what we are helping them achieve.
How BeatRoute Rewards by Performance and Behaviour
We come from a belief that target achievement can be incentivized but rewarding input activities or expected behaviour can lead to behavioral change that will be lasting and will raise the collective performance level of the team. In other words Sales is an outcome of following process. It is following the process that takes more people closer to targets and that’s what we want teams using BeatRoute demonstrate better month after month.
In a Nutshell
Gamification is a tool for motivating the workforce to achieve the end goal set by any company. It brings game-like challenges, activities, earning points and rewards into the work field for field sales reps.
In the case of FMCG companies, sales reps are direct contacts with the customers or retailers be it modern trade, general trade or HoReCa channels. In between 100s of sales reps it is difficult to align them to larger goals of the company. Therefore it is important to ensure that these sales reps are motivated to achieve the goals in alignment with the company’s larger goal.
It goes without saying that our gamification is not about running trophy events over a short period of time. Rather we believe short term games and trophies lead to people reverse gamifying everyone and in fact that results in undesired behaviour. Our gamification is about subtly inspiring field force to want to do better consistently.
If you want your sales reps to perform better, you should gamify your sales execution process. Request for free demo.
FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS
1. There is a different level of difficulty in every territory. How does BeatRoute reward points and make everyone comparable on the same leader board?
Targets are different for everybody and is already decided based on the possibilities in any territory. For KPI achievement points are rewarded on basis of relative progression toward the target, not on the absolute value of achievement. Also, BeatRoute’s algorithm factors in other differences like different no. of customers for different people in different geographies.
2. Are managers rank in the same leader board?
Managers are rewarded points based on the points earned by their team members as well as their own input activities and progression toward achieving a target or exceeding it. The BeatRoute algorithm rationalizes for different managers having different no of teams. A manager can get a lower rank than his teammate in case a specific team member does quite well against SOP adherence as well as KPI target achievement whereas the manager is not able to extract the same performance level from his other team members.
3. How can I win more points?
Only 2 ways. Firstly, the closer you get to your scorecard targets the more points you win. Secondly the more prescribed activities you do in your customer visits or interactions, the more points you win.
4. When are Points and Medals Calculated?
Points are updated at the end of the day. Medals are announced on the 3rd of every month for the last month.
5. Can Company Admin Change my Points?
No company admins can never change the points. Points are calculated by BeatRoute’s proprietary Gamification engine.
