Target Practice: Fun, monthly company-wide sales orienteering

Meet the annual sales target with the monthly gamification of internal lead generation.

Last updated 27/09/24

It works like this. To save a mad-mass-rush of employee advocacy in the final few months leading to the annual sales target, you start early, at the first month of the financial year.

This creates a fun league table of staff achievement and runs parallel to traditional commissionable sales, to encourage more casual weekly and monthly engagement. Remuneration in is the form of a gift. The gift is personalised for the annual winner (a football shirt, a cupcake maker) or generic for the monthly winners (vouchers, hampers).

The psychology of the terminology

Alongside company quizzes and employee of the month, ‘Target Practice’ is a term that should slot nicely into routines and everyday conversation:

Dave: “Hey, have you done your Target Practice this month?”

Katie: “Yes, i’ve got 43 points. 1 self-sale, 1 lead and 3 mentions”

Whilst you may be tempted to take the model and rename it to something clever related to your business, don’t do that. Don’t. It’s called Target Practice for a reason and it works. It’s stronger than the rationale below.

Service ranking options

This is the aspect that lends itself most to orienteering. The sales-equivalent to galloping around a country estate and gathering collectables and therefore, the bragging rights.

Aim to keep the point scoring simple. I’ve tried below

Step 1a - Create a tidy list your offering

Important to note that some businesses could have only a few offerings. Some may have many, when you count services, sub-packages and products.

Collate the number of services, products or their sub-packages.

For simplicity and to save the scoring work, I believe services will need to have the same value. However, you could potentially list the services/products/packages in order of which is most profitable. That’s up to you. Please see below.

Step 1b - Apply a value to your offering

Example service list, ordered by profit and suggested points thresholds:

1. Deployed staff: 20

2. Remote managed service: 17

3. Consultancy days: 15

4. Project: 13

5. Annual product license: 11

6. Helpdesk support: 9

7. Audit: 7

8. Training: 5

You would then find a way to apply these values to the scoring. I will find a way and update this blog later.

Step 2 - Apply a value to the staff action

Which brings us onto the points - feel free to correct my theory here or just apply your own values for your company and don’t tell me. That’s fine as well.

My theory is 10 points for lead, then double it if it leads to sale (20). Triple it for a self-managed sale (30).

If useful you could formalise the terminology and add an abbreviation, so:

• Mentions (M) = 1 point

• Lead (L) = 10 points

• Sale-assist (SA) = 20 points

• Self-sale (SS) = 30 points

  
  

Step 3 - Evidencing actions

So. 1 point for simply mentioning the service. It will soon add up. Staff can mention your services in customer service emails, on phonecalls and meetings. Verbal ‘mentions’ in phone calls and meetings are harder to authenticate, but honestly, even if an employee goes to the lengths of submitting a fake claim, at least in the process they’re reminding themselves they should probably actually be mentioning these solutions. And anyway, if they mention the services the more likely they are to generate leads and sale-assists and self-sales.

Have a monthly prize for the most points gained within a calendar month - vouchers and hampers. This is the most important bit for it to gain regular uptake and reminders.

The person with the most points at the end of the year wins a prize. A really good one.

Example 1a staff sales league table

Example staff sales league table. Poor Charles.

Part Two to follow soon with how to implement, measure and manage in a business.