People like fun n’ games.
If yours is like most sales organizations, there is at least one program or motivational initiative with a fun theme to it, possibly involving sports or other games. A desire for recognition and winning brings out something extra in us, and what better place than sales to showcase that, where there’s motivation to scale new heights against the competition and to personally and professionally benefit.
According to gamification.org – a terrific collection of resources – gamification is “the process of adding Game Mechanics and Rewards in non-game contexts to boost Engagement, Loyalty and Fun!” If that doesn’t seem intuitive, you’ll recognize it from first-hand experience because a popular application of gamification is frequent flyer programs. Gamification is simply a methodical approach to engage your audience, create a two-way give-and-take, and connect with people’s motivations and aspirations.
In a business context, engagement through games can be targeted towards customers, sales reps, partners and even employees. Let’s break gamification strategy down to its core components:
Game mechanics are the building blocks of the process. Gamification.org says these “are constructs of Rules and Feedback Loops intended to produce enjoyable Gameplay that can be applied and combined in any context.” According to gamification.org, there are 24 distinct blocks to assemble. Here we will focus on a few most important for sales enablement and productivity.
In sales as in life, you have two kinds of people:
- Those who are self-motivated (intrinsic).
- Those who need an outside factor to motivate them (extrinsic).
To appeal to these types, from the 24 items described by gamification.org, we have created logical groupings called intrinsic (what matters to the individual) and extrinsic (about an aspect of the game or community) to organize the building blocks of game mechanics. We’re not claiming to have the final word on these groupings, but rather invite your input on them.
| Intrinsic | Extrinsic |
| Achievements | Appointments |
| Behavioral Momentum | Bonuses |
| Blissful Productivity | Cascading Information Theory |
| Discovery | Combos |
| Epic Meaning | Community Collaboration |
| Free Lunch | Countdown |
| Loss Aversion | Infinite Gameplay |
| Ownership | Levels |
| Points | Lottery |
| Quests | Progression |
| Urgent Optimism | Reward Schedules |
| Status | |
| Virality |
When you combine the right mix for extrinsic or intrinsic motivation personalities, you can leverage these to achieve superior results from sales reps and sales organizations. Take stock within your group of who is likely to belong to one group or the other, and apply the right levers.
Think about these game building blocks and consider their application to sales, and where you could implement them. For example, they could be part of a compensation structure, employee retention plan or customer service scores directed at the inside sales rep team. As you can see, gamification can have many avatars!
We shall stop here in this article, and continue with the next component — Game Design — in the next post.
This article first published on Focus. This is the first post in a multi-part series about: (a) the concept of gamification, (b) its business uses and applications, (c) trends and forces accelerating its importance, (d) quantitative analysis considerations, and (e) how it can used to drive sales enablement and productivity. This post introduces the concept of gamification.