Human beings are psychologically wired to play games, to go on mini-quests, to feel pleasure in hitting small, reachable goals. This is why videos games and gambling are so addictive in certain people; we are rewarded by short bursts of upward progress and by the occasional random item that is tossed our way. You can harness this power for your business and turn your direct sales or network marketing field into an army of revenue-producing machines. How? Let’s take a look at some major ways that gamification can improve your business for the better:
Unite your team.
While friendly competition is important, your sales force also has a lot to gain by collaborating. However, it is difficult for a group of people to come together unless they have a common purpose, and oftentimes “mission statements” are too abstract to really be very effective. Gamification helps to turn your abstract company goals into specific, concrete actions that everyone can get behind.
Pivot attention.
The overall goal of your business may stay roughly the same, but you may often find that you need to change the focus of your sales team temporarily. For example, if you have just released a new product and you need to push it heavily during its launch, adding game elements that reward distributors who make those early sales may help you push forward much faster. At Krato (krato.com), we recommend pushing bite-sized tasks, which are time specific to the opportunity at hand.
Harnesses competition for good results.
Competition at work obviously has benefits as well as a dark side. You want your field to compete in terms of the revenue, preferred customers and distributors that they bring in, but you certainly don’t want them to get into petty political disputes that waste time. Gamification allows you to harness the natural competitive drive of your field and focus it exclusively towards producing more sales and engagement. The Krato (krato.com) Journey Mobile App does this by leveraging a leaderboard that everyone can see, providing recognition and helping new team members to have something specific to reach for.
Gamification makes work more fun—and therefore more productive.
In this day and age, we can all accept that a person who is not engaged and who doesn’t find their business interesting will be much less productive than someone who is actually having fun with what they do. Many times the difference between work that seems like drudgery and work that is engaging is a person’s mindset. While you don’t have direct control over the minds of your party plan or MLM selling teams, you can engineer an environment that is more likely to cultivate engagement by using gamification techniques.
Behavior modification through Gamification is certainly not the only strategy that you should use to increase your sales revenue, but it is a powerful tool to have at your disposal, and it is certainly more than just the latest buzzword. It allows you to use the psychology of your salespeople to your (and their) advantage, and it makes work more interesting for everyone. If you think that your team could use a boost in motivation, then consider turning some key aspects of your business into a game using the Journey Mobile App from Krato (krato.com), and you may just see some great results.