You’ve probably heard the word before: gamification. It might sound like just another buzzword, but we’re here to assure you it’s not—and it’s something that can result in real, tangible benefits for your sales team.
Don’t get us wrong: platforms like Salesforce offer a lot. Indeed, Salesforce is probably the best-known and most trusted CRM platform out there. But it doesn’t contain everything, and its gamification features are limited.
So what’s the big deal? What exactly is gamification, and how can it make an already fantastic Salesforce experience even better? Read on to find out!
What is gamification?
In short, gamification is using game elements to make a non-game activity more engaging. Gamification has a wide range of applicability. It includes everything from the mundane (such as accumulating miles points from airlines) to creating a full user experience around completing a goal (such as learning a foreign language through Duolingo).
Because it recognizes achievement and maximizes personal motivation through different game-based functions—winning points, levelling up, earning badges—gamification can lead to boosts in individual and group performance like nothing else.
The term “gamification” was coined in 2002, and it’s only grown since then, in tandem with ever-increasing digitalization. In the present day, gamification’s success is based on the fact that it’s often subtle, it’s prevalent, and it works.
But why? The answer is pretty simple: gamification incorporates key drivers of human behavior. These include a love of competition, a feeling of personal achievement, and a sense of prestige. Nearly everyone feels these motivating feelings to some extent, giving gamification its potency and applicability across a wide range of fields: from health and fitness, to education, to travel, and yes—you guessed it!—sales.
How Salesforce users can benefit from gamification
Gamification’s psychological basis has real-world effects, which directly result in its ongoing popularity. We can break down the benefits of gamification into three main categories:
An increase in employee engagement.
It should come as no surprise that sales has the unfortunate (but not undeserved) reputation as being repetitive, dull, and stressful. However, there is hope! By adding fun into work, and thereby fostering social connectivity, gamification has been shown to lead to happier and more motivated employees.
A psychology-based performance boost.
When accounting for the three main motivators of gamification—competitiveness, achievement, and prestige—it’s easy to turn any activity, no matter how mundane, into an interesting if not outright exciting endeavor. Whether you’re gamifying the sales funnel or even daily to-do tasks, it’s absolutely possible to harness the power of psychology through gamification to boost your sales agents’ motivation.
Improved teamwork, collaboration, and social connectivity.
Gamification is at its most successful when it combines individual initiative and group cooperation. Through social collaboration (and competition!), gamification facilitates team camaraderie and individual motivation like nothing else.
Gamification vs. CRM platforms
There’s something else you might be wondering: just how does a gamification platform differ from a CRM one?
- Gamification is centered on providing a certain user experience—namely, allowing customers or employees to participate in game-based activities to reach a certain goal or obtain a desired result.
- Meanwhile, CRM platforms allow a company to gain better knowledge of its customer base through insights such as purchase history and buying habits. An efficient CRM system delivers actionable insights to businesses on how to improve their customer outreach and experience.
Gamification with Salesforce
Salesforce isn’t known for being a gamification-oriented platform. It does offer recognition badges and rewards to monitor progress, track metrics, encourage performance, and celebrate accomplishments.
Salesforce’s gamification capabilities have definitely increased over previous years, but are still insufficient for ambitious teams that prioritize gamification as a core component of their workflow. While undoubtedly useful in their respective platforms, Salesforce’s gamification features will only do so much to spur on sales success in particular.
There’s a solution to this problem, however. If you’re looking for a more concrete way to boost your agent performance and don’t want to sacrifice the many benefits of using Salesforce, why not give Plecto a look—especially as it integrates with Salesforce?
Why Plecto is the perfect gamification platform for Salesforce
Salesforce is one of Plecto’s most popular integrations, and there’s three main reasons why:
- Seamless integration with all your Salesforce data. You can import almost all of your Salesforce data into Plecto, including custom objects.
- Ready-to-to targets. With prebuilt Salesforce KPIs, it’s quick and easy for you to get set up in Plecto.
- Tons of gamification features catered to your needs. Unlike Salesforce’s gamification features, Plecto’s are specifically intended to help sales teams (and other teams too) boost their KPIs. You can check them out here:
Contests
They’re an extrinsic motivator, as they’re based on the winners receiving rewards and recognition. They give agents extra incentive and focus, and promote healthy, fun competition—what’s not to love about contests? Choose between Plecto’s Mountain Climb, Race in Space, as well as the classic leaderboard theme—and customize your avatar too!
Instant Notifications
Celebrate the accomplishments of your team or individual agents in real time with instant notifications. These fun alerts will pop up onscreen when a milestone is reached. Agents can customize their notifications with a nice message, funny video, or even light and sound effects! (via Philips Hue and Sonos)
Achievements
These personalized marks are the perfect means to recognize and motivate employees. They’re fun and visual, and can be customized to fit your team’s unique culture.
The Spinning Wheel
Last but definitely not least, the Spinning Wheel is a true wheel of fortune—you’ll never know which spot you’ll have the privilege of landing on! A perfect way to build camaraderie among teammates—and see if the top performers can handle the heat!
The Reward Store
Who doesn’t love a nice bottle of wine or a restaurant gift card for two? With Plecto’s Reward Store, it’s easy to give agents prizes for a job well done. Here’s how it works: for every task completed, agents earn virtual coins that can be redeemed for real-world rewards.
Conclusion
Whether through motivating contests or recognition of individual achievements, gamifying your Salesforce data is guaranteed to boost your sales agents’ motivation, morale, and success! Combined with Salesforce’s vast range of features and capabilities, you can create a sales team that’s truly unstoppable—and generate the revenue to match.
Interested yet? Check out some of Plecto’s case studies below, from companies who successfully implemented gamification practices and saw their sales soar.
Plecto Stimulates Competition and Sales Across 90+ Sunrise Retail Stores
Ageras Nordic Has “Best Year in Company’s History” with Plecto’s Help
If Forsikring Creates Motivated Contest Champs with Plecto
Ready to give Plecto a try? Sign up here for a free 14-day trial, and contact us at any time to learn more about what Plecto can do for your sales team.
