The Impact of Gamification in B2B Sales [Examples Included] – Mok

Have you ever wondered if games and sales had anything in common? Come to think of it, there are quite a few things in common. For one, just as in games, there are goals to achieve in sales. To achieve these goals, certain actions have to be carried out which will take you a step closer to the end result.

For instance, your end goal may be to get ‘x’ number of face-to-face meetings with prospects in a particular week. To schedule those meetings, you need to prepare a list of qualified leads, get a hold of their details, contact them via call or email and finally set up a meeting with each one of them.

As with any game, you may face obstacles which you must overcome to achieve your goal. The obstacles you face may be that you don’t have enough qualified leads to contact, you don’t have enough time to contact each one of them, or that not all of your leads are interested in meeting with you, so on and so forth.

Introducing gamification to the sales activities makes sales reps feel encouraged, rewarded, and happy. Going by a TalentLMS survey, 89% of the respondents claimed that they were more productive when their tasks at work were gamified.

What is sales gamification?

In simple words, gamification means the addition of gaming elements (like points, rewards, levels and badges) to sales processes in an attempt to boost employee engagement and performance. When sales agents are recognized for their achievements, they are motivated to repeat the same positive behaviour in the future. That’s not all, 72% of people surveyed recently stated that gamification at work makes them want to work harder.

What are game mechanics?

Typically, 5 game mechanics are used in sales gamification programs. They are:

Points: Points have no financial or monetary value to them, there are mere numerical points, which participants earn for their performance. They are a tangible and measurable confirmation of achievement.

Leaderboards: One of the best ways to motivate a rep to give their all to an activity is to show them how well they fare in comparison to the rest of the team. Leaderboards help them see where they rank amongst others. It fosters healthy competition among reps where they are looking to outperform their teammates. It gives them a chance to prove themselves.

Badges: Badges are often used to recognize accomplishments and mastery of a skill within a group. It is used to identify expertise in a team. It provides instant gratification to the winners. Badges include virtual badges, medals or trophies.

Rewards: Much like points, rewards are non-monetary values. Participants earn rewards after completing one or more tasks. Players can also exchange their points for rewards.

Levels: When a rep has achieved a goal or completed several tasks, levels allow them to get ahead in the game. The idea of having levels is to keep the players engaged till the very end. Each level has a higher difficulty level and poses new challenges for players to overcome.

What are B2B sales?

Business to Business (B2B) refers to the relationship between one business entity with another. In B2B selling, one business sells its products or services to another. It generally involves a more complex process, covering several touchpoints that span across multiple channels. B2B companies need to have highly trained salespeople on board to drive revenue.

Here are 3 common examples of B2B sales:

1. Companies that offer professional services like market research to other companies.

2. Organizations that provide SaaS solutions like CRM to businesses.

3. Businesses that produce and distribute raw materials to manufacturing companies.

How to plan a B2B sale?

The B2B sales structure covers many factors such as seller competency, the effectiveness of the sales process, buyers’ purchasing capability and readiness to adopt.

To get all components to work together seamlessly, businesses must:

Put together a responsive B2B sales strategy
Establish the best B2B sales techniques for teams to follow
Monitor and improve sales performance

What are the challenges in B2B selling?

A report released by the Bridge Group in 2018 revealed that the average tenure of a sales rep in a B2B company dropped from 3 years in 2010 to 1.5 years. In B2B, the selling approach is complex involving consultative face-to-face selling where salespeople need to be great storytellers and possess good analytical skills.

Is gamification applicable in B2B sales?

Absolutely! A game has 3 parts to it – Players, Rules and Goals and so does the B2B sales model.

Let’s break this down for you:

Sales reps are the players.

Monthly or quarterly targets represent your goals.

The rule of the game is that you cannot fool your clients, you have to deliver by the quarter.

How to add sales gamification to B2B sales models?

There are 3 broad categories to which gamification can be applied in B2B sales. They are:

Client facing

In this category, game mechanics are applied to sales processes involved in acquiring and/or engaging new leads and existing customers. For instance, your sales and marketing team can enhance its current techniques to gain new as well as retain existing customers by incorporating game mechanics into its sales processes.

Employee facing

Sales gamification can also be applied in an internal context. It can be used to motivate sales teams and to make the sales training programs more fun and engaging. The purpose here is to help sales teams to focus on the ultimate goal which is – hit their quota and improve sales performance.

Change Management

The third and final way to apply gamification in sales is to support sales change management efforts. Change requires you to embrace something unfamiliar to you. Oftentimes salespeople are reluctant to change. Sales gamification can help them adopt new selling behaviour.

Examples of Gamification in B2B Sales

Let’s now take a look at how 3 companies successfully incorporated gamification into their B2B sales strategy.

Autodesk

Autodesk is a provider of B2B software solutions. The company used gamification to increase sign-ups on free trials for one of its software. By adding game mechanics to their marketing campaigns, they witnessed a surge in free trial usage by 18% and conversion rates by 15%.

Snowfly

This company applied gamification internally to tackle low sales engagement and high employee turnover. By deploying game mechanics, Snowfly found that the percentage of reps meeting their quotas increased from 45% to 50% and call quality improved from 38% to 51% within 3 months of using a gamification platform.

Bring

Bring is a logistics solutions provider in the Nordic region. The company added gamification to its sales change management program. They went on to introduce the ‘Bring Points’ to encourage salespeople to use their CRM to capture new sales.

Over to you

Gamification may not be the one-stop solution to a more effective sales team for all businesses, however, it’s definitely worth a shot. The concept of gamification has time and again proved to be an excellent solution to increase sales engagement.
If you are looking to enhance your sales team’s engagement, look no further. Sign up on Unomok, a top-ranked gamification platform to turn your routine tasks into highly productive, fun and engaging activities.