Why Games Can Sharpen Your Team’s Sales Skills

We are all looking for ways to sharpen our focus, improve our skills and stay on top of our game.  Books, training and presentations are all highly valuable and instructive, helping salespeople to brush up on their abilities, tap into their natural brilliance and keep up to date with current trends and philosophies.  Games are a valuable addition to this complement of learning tools because they can engage salespeople in creative ways.

Don’t underestimate the power of fun to shake up your sales teams and fill them with renewed motivation and enhanced skills.

Here’s a selection of some of the types of games you can play, and their benefits:

– Role Playing

Role playing games provide a safe environment to try out new strategies and techniques.  They build confidence and encourage people to problem solve.  Throw different and tricky situations at them and see how they’re handled.  Make them fun and add a little humour into the mix.

– Computer Games

Set up a tournament or a league based on computer games to bring out the competitive spirit in your sales team.  Being competitive is often seen as a negative attribute in society at large, but sales is a competitive environment, and a competitive nature is common to most successful people.

Salespeople are driven to succeed and competition fuels their competitive edge.  You’re competitive because you want to win more business than your rivals, you’re competitive because you want your clients to succeed, and you’re competitive because you want to identify more opportunities.

Although often just thought of as a means of entertainment, research by the University of Colorado, Denver has shown that organisations that use computer games to train employees have smarter, more motivated workers who possess higher skills than those who don’t.

– Anyone for tennis, or cricket or football?

Play some team sports where your salespeople must rely on their teammates and push each other to perform well.

– Board Games

In our high-speed 24/7 digital age we seem to have lost touch with traditional board games, but not only are they fun, they can also be fantastic learning tools.  Pick games that involve buying and selling, such as Monopoly, but change the rules slightly.  Allow your colleagues to negotiate, barter or use other means to secure a sale.  Afterwards, they can discuss which methods worked the best and why.

– Selling ice to an Eskimo

You know the old saying, which is used to suggest that a great salesperson can sell almost anything to anyone.  Well, put that into practice in a game environment by giving your colleagues a card with a bizarre ‘product’ on it, say a colour or an insect, and get them to sell it to the rest of the team.  This game encourages people to think on their feet, to promote the product’s traits and to demonstrate how these will benefit the client.

Games are a Learning Booster

Games cultivate creativity, foster teamwork and cooperation, sharpen the competitive edge and teach problem solving skills.  They are also fun, which is a big learning booster.

Try and make games a regular part of your team’s schedule, perhaps every Friday afternoon or at least once a month.  Then watch how this play has some seriously good consequences for individual sales performances and your company’s bottom line.

For more tips and advice on motivating your sales team or helping them to discover their edge, have a look at our various solutions, or fill out an enquiry form and we’ll get back to you.