Makeda WatermanA company that uses creative team building strategies to keep a sales team motivated can accomplish two goals: employee engagement and increased revenue. In a recent report on HR research statistics from Gallup, “34% of American workers are engaged at work.”
Too many US employees are disinterested at work, which stunts productivity and revenue.
As a Salesforce Administrator for a year, I share best practices that have helped teams reach their potential. The next time you need to spark engagement among a sales team, try these helpful idea.
Team Building Strategies for Sales Teams
1) Mini Offsite
A mini offsite is a great team building activity for sales teams. Picture yourself and the team in a room for 3 hours with food and role-playing activities to challenge your sales skills. It can expose a professional’s strengths and weaknesses in front of their boss.
It can be uncomfortable to be honest about losing a long lasting client or not achieving quarterly quota. But it can also be the beginning of an opportunity to learn how to improve your skills.
2) Strategy Games
Splitting your reps into small groups to strategize and compete against others can be a great team building activity. One example is the egg drop game.
The classic egg drop is an activity where a team is separated into small groups with a budget of $5,000 in the game. They are given tape and straws to make a container to ensure the egg inside does not break after it is dropped a few times. The masking tape represents a $100 item, and each straw represents $250. The sales team put their math skills to the test by trying to stay within budget.
While these group-strategy activities aren’t sales related, they give reps a chance to work together and have fun. And it can actually be productive to shake up the normal workday.
3) Team Contests
Team contents create healthy competition and conversations about best practices was shared more openly among team members.
As a sales manager, it is important to use contests outside of the organization during lunch or after work hours. Here are a few contests that can help a manager identify personality traits that can be nurtured with guidance:
- Sports games: bowling, baseball, table tennis
- Charity: Ask the team to raise funds for a charitable organization and reward the group with the highest donations.
- Holidays: Costume contest award for the most creative outfit
4) Display Sales Results in the Office
I remember being a Salesforce Administrator and building sales dashboards for the entire sales team. Once the CRM is on the opening page, the team could view pie charts and line graphs of the quarterly performance of each team member. A company that has a flat screen TV in the lobby to keep clients entertained can afford to add a few more visuals around the office.
The goal isn’t to call out lower performing reps, but rather to improve the overall team performance with healthy competition around sales numbers. Here are a few places you can add the annual revenue, reputable clients and progress of the team:
- Televisions in the lunchroom. This strategy can encourage departments outside of sales to start conversations with the team to inquire about their work. By having this data present around the office, executives can also get involved in the conversation. Your sales reps will appreciate the recognition from the C-suite.
- Mobile Sales updates. You can set up email notifications with CRM software to update specific departments (i.e., marketing, product management) on accounts closed on the sales team with departments that work with sales.
A sales rep that feels isolated will not perform as well as one who feels like they’re part of the team. You can personalize the activities by asking the team what interests them to find the activity that will keep them motivated whether sales are up or down.
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