If your sales team is in a slump, maybe it’s time to try something new. How about playing games? Tech-infused games, engineered for adult learners, can provide a much-needed boost. Let’s look at how sales games work and how they can benefit team performance.
Game Types
There are eight main types of games that are best for improving sales team performance. Each combines entertainment with learning.
- Multiple Choice and True/False: These are great for testing knowledge and seeing if your sales reps are retaining information.
- Puzzles: Perfect for problem-solving, puzzles encourage a positive group dynamic.
- Task and Report: These are turn-taking games that can connect people in group play, even across long distances.
- Matching: Matching games make connections and link concepts, which is perfect for salespeople who must connect with customers.
- Hidden Object: These are treasure hunt-style games that build camaraderie through quests.
- Shooter: Speed and confidence come from the fast decision-making required in shooter games.
- Chase or Obstacle Course: These games also encourage fast decisions and sorting through options to find the best solution.
- Sorting: A sorting game promotes strategic thinking and can improve memory skills.
Now let’s look at how these games can help your sales team take the concepts they learned out into the real world, for more day-to-day success.
Stress Relief and Motivation
At any company, the sales team is full of potential superstars - people who can handle demanding appointments, daily rejection, and constant competition, and still make money for the company. Sales requires a remarkable level of stress management.
Over time, the daily stress of sales can cause reps to wear out and tune out. It becomes hard to keep them motivated.
That’s where games come in. Rather than boring your stressed-out staff with yet another Powerpoint presentation, imagine introducing a fun, hands-on game. While they play Jeopardy together as a team, their stress dissipates and - surprise! - their motivation returns.
Breaking the Ice
If you have new team members or sales reps who are battling shyness, games can break the ice. Gamification encourages people to break past emotional barriers because they require intense focus on learning new information.
It’s the perfect opportunity for team-building. The shared experience of gaming can transform a shaky team into a refreshed group, bursting with newfound camaraderie. Plus, games are proven to reduce training time and produce 50% higher net sales per employee.
All Learners Welcome
Another benefit of games is that they welcome all kinds of learners. Many people don’t really benefit from reading reports and listening to lectures - especially not your socially-focused salespeople.
Games are perfect for the learning styles of salespeople, who are often kinesthetic (let me do it) and visual (show me how to do it). Instead of telling them, you can show them information using interactive games.
Friendly Competition
Your sales reps are competitive people. They enjoy a bit of friendly rivalry, which is exactly what games provide. Who doesn’t love having bragging rights?
Playing games can be a welcome relief for companies with cutthroat cultures and teams that have taken a turn for the negative. Games provide the kind of positive competition sales teams need.
Retention of Information
Research on “the forgetting curve” shows that people forget about 50% of the information they learn within one hour. After a week, 90% of new information is forgotten forever.
That’s discouraging news if you’re trying to train your sales team on new policies and data. How do you teach them new things in a way that will stick? Games.
The hands-on experience of playing games presents new information in an engaging and memorable way that boosts long-term retention. Plus, it offers a long-lasting reference point for your entire staff: “Remember what we learned during the trivia game?”
Two-Way Feedback
As games break down learning barriers and boost staff morale, they also set the stage for deeper, more genuine conversations about difficult topics. View this openness as an opportunity.
Maybe your sales team is struggling with high client turnover. Maybe you’re introducing a new error-reduction program. Maybe the company health care plan is changing. These are all challenging topics for a company to address.
Use games to help your staff navigate tricky topics and encourage honest, two-way feedback. It’s a great way to build long-term trust within your department and across the company.
Creating a Call to Action
Every great salesperson knows you have to leave clients with a call to action: a clear next step. Games give your sales team itself a call to action.
Imagine an obstacle-course game that teaches your sales staff how to close deals more quickly. The game is called “Fast Close” and it hammers that idea - close fast, close fast, close fast. When your sales reps leave the gaming experience, they walk away with a clear call to action: close sales more quickly. The idea is absolutely burned into their minds.
Games are perfect for groups of any size, especially those of 100 people or more. And they help people feel satisfied with the learning experience because they receive a clear takeaway. After a gaming experience, your salespeople can hit the streets for their next sales calls, confident that they’re on the right track.
Ready to try a little gamification? It might be just the boost your sales team needs. Connect with Option Technologies, a digital learning company that helps companies improve sales performance through interactive games.
