Every sales team is made up of a diverse cast of characters. From James, who has won every single sales competition for the last four months, to Sarah, the new hire who is just trying to get her feet under her. The reality is that most sales managers are running sales competitions that only a very few reps have a chance to win. This inevitably leads to unnecessary turnover, low sales numbers, and a completely unmotivated sales team. So how can you start running sales competitions that work for your whole team and not just the top-performing reps? Let’s first take a look at who makes up your team and how you can identify them.
Your Player Types
According to renowned psychologist Richard Bartle when studying people who played video games, people fall into four main categories of personalities: Killers, Achievers, Explorers, and Socializers. Each player type or personality type will engage with different kinds of sales competitions, so as a rule of thumb, diversity is king. So let’s dive into what sales competitions resonate with each member of your team.
Killers- Sales Closed
Killers are what most people would consider the ideal sales rep. They are driven, dedicated, stubborn, and hardworking, oftentimes pushing themselves to go the extra mile to earn that win and beat out their coworkers. With that said, they only make up 1-2% of the population, so it's likely your team is not filled with killers.
Killers love to compete. If you want to motivate your killers with competition, try running a simple "meetings booked" or "sales closed" competition. Killers will make the calls and push the right clients to close those deals to ensure that they stay at the top of the leaderboards.
Achievers- Visual Competitions
Achievers can be great sales reps, but unlike killers, they are much more interested in setting their own targets and achieving their goals. Achievers make up about 10% of the population. When it comes to sales, achievers want to be able to set their own path to success and choose their own goals.
If you want to engage the achievers on your team, try running a competition based on visualization so they can see their progress toward their goals. Achievers tend to lose motivation when they feel like they are spinning their tires, so competitions like our multi-target competition or our time-based competitions help achievers actively see how their daily contributions are adding up to that final goal.
Explorers- Outreach Competitions
Explorers are a bit harder to engage, as much of their work helps build revenue outside of the traditional way sales reps operate. Explorers are a massive asset to any team, as they like to get in the weeds, do their research, and find the next industry or company to target. This, in turn, can lead to huge revenue increases when you focus that energy in the right direction.
Your explorers love outreach, and they are workhorses when it comes to the top of your sales funnel. So why not reward all that prospecting by running an outreach competition? Try setting up a competition based on calls made that last over a minute or emails sent to clients. Your explorers will love being rewarded for the work that engages them the most.
Socializers- Lottery Competitions
Socializers make up a massive 70% of the population and are motivated by social clout like shoutouts from peers and managers and love building a community at work. When you run traditional sales competitions, your socializers are oftentimes quick to fall off the leaderboards, which in turn completely demotivates them.
You can easily engage this massive swath of your workforce by running competitions that keep them engaged, even if they aren’t the top rep. Our lottery competitions give reps a ticket every time they complete the target objective of the competition, which gives them a chance to win the big prize at the end. Your top performers will have a much higher chance of winning, but even that rep who only books one meeting still has a chance to win, keeping your whole team engaged throughout the competition.
Running a diverse array of competitions is extremely important to the success of any salesforce. Start running competitions as diverse as your team with our arsenal of dozens of creative sales competitions.
