How’s the peer mentoring on your sales team? It can improve when sales gamification, specifically in the form of competition and sales leaderboards, has a presence in your work environment.
We don’t necessarily recommend taking on sales gamification for the sole purpose of promoting internal collaboration. We think of it more as a tool to motivate sales productivity — to affect positive behavioral changes among the members of your team. Yet, we see boosts in internal collaboration — especially as it relates to mentorship — occurring as a product of gamification at company after company.
Take the Detroit Pistons, as one example.
When the Detroit Pistons released a new product, single-game suites, their sales team hesitated to take it to market. Then leadership built a competition around it. Once sales reps started getting competitive, that new product starting getting sold.
As quotas rose, motivation even found its way to reps who knew (based on rankings) that they probably wouldn’t win the competition. They saw the product could be sold and knew they could benefit from it, too. Even if they didn’t move up in the competition, selling more would get them closer to achieving their own sales goals.
Those same reps recognized that the top of the competition leaderboard yielded opportunities for mentorship. And many of them took advantage of that. They approached the competition’s leaders for insightful conversations on how they could sell the new product just as well. Then they implemented the best practices learned into their own daily activities to join in on crushing single-game suite sales.
Collectively, the Pistons’ sales team ended up achieving an annual sales goal in only six months, driving over $500,000 in sales for that particular product.
In two steps, you can motivate similar coaching.
You obviously want just that sort of collaboration to take place between your reps. It’s especially important because some of them simply don’t feel comfortable going to their superiors to request coaching. By taking these two steps, you’re giving them another option.
1. Dig in when someone rises to the top of your sales leaderboard to understand why.
2. Take whatever you find out and orchestrate a conversation around it when that top performer is around the rest of the team. For example, in a meeting, say things like:
- “Can you share what you’re doing?”
- “What’s your approach to this?”
- “Clearly you’re doing something that’s working, because you’re rocking this leaderboard.”
Some sales reps in need of coaching may pay attention to what is said and leave it at that. Others may take the opportunity to ask questions during the meeting or follow up afterward to satisfy additional curiosities. You’re opening the door for any of that to happen.
Sounds simple, right? It is. But it’s important, too. Your competition winners probably won’t go around pounding their chests, sharing what works on their own. However, you can facilitate conversations in a way that opens channels of communication and keeps those reps from appearing boastful.
You can also keep your sales leaderboards running and publicly displayed and count on some of those conversations happening on their own. It may surprise you how often peers will go out of their way to seek insight from their top-performing colleagues once opportunities to do so become more visible.
For more on this topic, read our free eBook: “Can Sales Leaderboards Hurt Motivation?”
