Inside sales, leaders need to set up priorities based on their data on sales performance. Tracking, training and transforming sales teams based on process visibility KPIs, compliance KPIs and quality indicator KPIs etc. create incremental inside sales process improvements.
I am writing this article as a follow up to ‘Games Sale People Love To Play‘. This article shed light on Gamification and how it is transforming inside sales.
The below are 4 sales gamification KPIs Inside Sales teams should be watchful about.
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Improved Employee Engagement:
An inspired and participating workforce is every inside sales manger’s dream. This is why, engaged inside sales reps increase a firm’s productivity.
Gallup survey on workplace engagement of sales professionals, points out that only:
- 29% sales professionals were engaged,
- 51% were moderately engaged; and
- 20% were actively disengaged
In this context, a robust intervention from management is required to reduce employee’s disengagement
Case Study:
60% of inside sales team of Clayton Home were on-boarded into ‘Ambition in Summer 2014’. Efforts were expected to increase productivity, accountability, and overall performance. Their idea was unorthodox, they wanted to transform inside sales into a fantasy sports competition. Below are some remarks about employee engagement in the case study.
“Some employees checked scores and ranking every 5-10 minutes. That might have been unproductive if a focused effort hadn’t increased dramatically, too. During the championships, many employees stayed late or came in on the weekend to put in a little extra ‘playing’ time.” HBR
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Improved Employee Productivity:
Higher engagement is the direct result of smart interventions and event based leaderboards. So, the event like higher number of cold calls, follow-up interactions etc. are rewarded which eventually leads to greater number of meetings in the pipeline.
Ambition’s Gamification platform impact on Clayton-Homes sales team productivity was;
“An 18% spike in outbound calls, doubled the percentage of calls that resulted in an appointment, increased the number of transferred calls eight fold and qualified referrals by the inside sales team is now up over 200%.” HBR
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Improved Sales Force Accountability:
Almost half of the high-flying sales organizations have closely knit, monitored and strictly enforced and automated sales processes. Harvard Business Review found that almost all high performing sales teams had Gamification in common.
Gamified sales department ensure compliance by incorporating points based reward system for nudging employees to take pre-programmed work flows. This leads to sales process compliance, thus leading to accountability.
“Employees consistently said that they were most often competing with themselves, trying to beat their own personal records. Sales became more of a team effort. Reps coached each other on how to do their tasks better, celebrated each other’s rankings and held each other accountable.” HBR
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Improved And Robust Analytics:
Inside Sale teams are looking for tangible methods for evaluating talent performance, some interesting statistics around it are:
- Only about 52% professionals use analytics to evaluate and learn about talent
- About 40% of businesses don’t have a talent assessment plan that engages and retains top talent.
- Only 37% of businesses collect performance metrics that enhance employee development programs.
- Only 43% of professionals feel comfortable to take decisions on talent relying on the data available to them
- 87% are calling for their organizations to further leverage analytics.
With robust analytics inside sales teams would be motivated to do more, part of the reason why a real-time analytics empowers users. Inside sales reps can see their progress and problem areas so it can act as a self-improvement tool.
This is not a ‘carrot on the stick motivation’ but analytics based inside sales drive to create and sustain a positive organizational change. In this context, inside sales reps take risks thereby they start innovating, such courage pushes organizational learning to new levels. This intensifies immediate drive to gather feedback, recognition for achievement and energy to learn and acquire new skills within a team.
That is why, low flying Joe can pick some elevation and move to average performance. Likewise, average Mary can jet-pack to an above average performance. And high flying Mark can always get more satisfaction and status boost by coaching and guiding his peers. Consequently, such dynamic leaps by employees can reduce sales attrition. Thus reducing HR cost of hiring, training and inducting a new inside sales rep.
