Having an opportunity to reflect on the past fiscal year within our business has been both refreshing and exciting, and many things crossed my mind. One of those included my conversations with clients around focuses within their sales organizations. An item that continued to come up in those discussions, besides “ I need my team to sell more,” was improving sales velocity.
Sales velocity in my experience has several different meanings to different people. Kind of like that word…oh, gee golly shucks what’s that word? Oh, yeah: “gamification.” (Read about what the word “gamification” really means here.)
Some of the common routes to better sales velocity can include: increasing average deal sizes, decreasing sales cycles, improving lead quality and/or increasing sales win rates. Many of the organizations we speak with build leaderboards and internal competitions to accomplish these things.
Why not join them and see what competition can do for your sales velocity this year?
Kick off 2014 by building a sales contest that centers on opportunity progression toward your key stages. Think of those milestones within your sales process that you would say this about: “If our team progresses opportunities to this stage, our close rates always increase significantly.”
Offer 3 points for each opportunity that progresses to the first key stage in your process. Run the contest for one month. If it’s in your budget, something like tickets to a nearby athletic event can be offered as a sales incentive for the winner. If not, bragging rights will work.
We at LevelEleven will be running similar competitions to launch the new year. Like many other companies and sales teams, ours is pumped, to say the least, to get after it here in 2014 and wax-on wins like Daniel LaRusso.
We hope you are, too.
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If you’re a Compete user, don’t leave this post quite yet; here’s how you can build this one out:
1. Competition Type
- Competition Type – Pipeline Behaviors
2. General Information
- Leaderboard or Contest Name – Q1 – Advance Those Opps: Jan 6
- Choose Winners By – Total Number of Points
- Start/End Date – Less than 1 Month
3. Behaviors to Motivate
- Behavior Name – Opportunities Modified to Stages 3, 4 and 5
- Close Date – On or After January 6th, On or Before January 31st
- Enable LeaderTV Splash
- Save Motivated Behavior
4. Prizes
- 1st Prize – Tickets to a nearby athletic event
- Leaderboard Setting – Total Number of Points
- Tie Breaker – Last to Score & Point Reserve = Min. 40 points
5. Participants/Observers
- Populate Participants & Observers
6. Encourage motivation/competition via the contest Chatter page
- Tip: Get the conversation going on the contest Chatter page to help keep your team engaged.
7. Publicly display leaderboards
- Tip: Take the competition to the next level by displaying leaderboards on monitors around the office and your team’s mobile devices.
Let us know how this sales contest idea works for you!
