Can Gamification Increase ROI of Sales CRM?

Poor user adoption of sales CRM is often a major barrier to ROI. Gamification can help change that!

Customer relationship management (CRM) is a technology for managing your company’s relationships and interactions with customers and potential customers. There is no doubt that investing in a CRM system for sales teams can be highly effective, but it also requires significant time and resources to implement and maintain. Return on investment (ROI) for sales CRMs often comes down to how well and how consistently they are used.

According to research from Forrester, 38% of surveyed CRM users reported problems resulting from people issues such as slow user adoption, inadequate management and training, and difficulties aligning organizational culture with new processes. In many cases, ROI can be improved significantly by identifying and tackling the issues blocking CRM user engagement and adoption.

Gamification tools for sales teams can have an important impact on CRM user adoption and overall engagement with data. But first, let’s talk about some of the major challenges to increase ROI for sales CRMs and how gamification can help overcome them.

Three Major Challenges to CRM ROI

Lack of accurate and updated data

A CRM system is only as good as the data that is fed into it. Keeping information up-to-date ensures that sales teams can engage with customers in the most effective and profitable way. However, if CRM data isn’t updated consistently and accurately, it becomes a much less valuable tool for sales teams.

Lack of engagement

Sales CRM systems are powerful tools that hold large amounts of data in an often not so user-friendly interfaces. CRM ROI is highly dependent on the quality and consistency of the data getting put in by sales teams. Sales people deal with busy schedules, and unless they have an ongoing interest in updating CRM data, it is likely to fall to the bottom of their to-do lists. Getting sales teams engaged with their data is one of the biggest challenges to getting a great ROI. CRM systems are expensive and time-consuming to implement, so it is especially discouraging to see low engagement numbers after such investment.

Lack of context

Context is an absolute requirement for businesses to know what information to pay attention to and make actionable decisions based on data living in their CRM. Giving context to data means identifying what metrics are important and why. Without this understanding CRM data can become overwhelming. According to Forbes, sales reps spend almost as much time in spreadsheets trying to more effectively manage CRM related tasks as they do in the actual CRM. Many sales reps have called out CRM systems as the biggest frustration in their jobs.

Defining key metrics according to business goals can give data much-needed context, help cut down on unnecessary work processing less relevant data, and alleviate sales people’s frustration with their CRM.

Five Ways Gamification Can Increase CRM ROI

Gamification for sales CRM is the method of applying game-like elements to CRM related activities. It can be an effective way to increase CRM user adoption by helping engage users and putting important information in context through data visualization, leaderboards, rankings, and progress tracking.

Engage with live data tracking

Tools like live sales leaderboards can help increase engagement with data that was once hard to access and understand by tracking and broadcasting individual and team metrics. Live broadcasting of key performance indicators (KPI) incentivizes sales teams to keep CRM updated to accurately reflect their work.

Establishing a data-driven culture

Performance broadcasting tools give CRM data center stage, which ensures that sales teams are paying attention to the most important pieces of information. Gamification in data visualization helps create collective awareness of sales team performance, and build positive team culture around CRM data.

Improve CRM data quality and transparency

Data visualization tools help increase data transparency by making data readily available, interactive, and easy-to-understand. Increased data transparency helps sales managers spot errors in CRM data and encourages sales people to keep the data living in the CRM accurate and up-to-date.

Give context with clearly defined KPIs

Lack of clear understanding as to what metrics matter and why detracts from how much value sales reps see in using a CRM. Well-defined KPI should be made consistently visible to all sales reps to give context to CRM data and promote goal-oriented work. Manually posting metrics, however, is time-consuming. Real-time performance broadcasting platforms offer an easy way to take data visualization to a new level.

Motivate CRM engagement with real-time recognition

A major benefit of coupling your CRM with a gamification tool is real-time employee recognition. Automatic recognition features instantaneously react to individual or team achievements and publicly celebrate their success. This boosts morale and incentivizes sales people to engage with CRM data with immediate feedback.

Hurrah Leaderboards for Gamification of CRM

Sales teams frequently struggle with CRM user adoption, which directly effects ROI. Sales gamification tools are a new layer that will get your teams involved, interested, and contributing to the data that is fueling your organization’s relationships with clients. As sales CRM data becomes more complex, new tools are necessary to maintain good understand and interactions with information. If your sales organization is struggling with CRM user adoption, you may consider how sales gamification software may help improve your CRM ROI.

Gamification tools foster increased engagement between sales teams and CRM data to enhance motivation and performance. Hurrah! Leaderboards is a performance broadcasting solution for sales CRMs that uses gamification to create an engaging, data-driven culture for sales teams.

Use Your Data Directly from its Source

Hurrah! complements a variety of sales CRMs. It connects directly to your CRM, which means no more handwritten or excel leaderboards that are a pain to update. Native integration with sales CRMs enables real-time performance broadcasting and employee recognition on TV screens across your office.

Real-Time Sales Leaderboards

With Hurrah! you get live leaderboards that update in real time, keeping everybody in the know. Leaderboards, rankings, and goal trackers are great tools to improve CRM user engagement and ROI. Hurrah’s automatic solution makes getting better user adoption a breeze and adds appeal with customization graphics and animations.

Foster a Culture of Real-Time Recognition

Hurrah! can instantly react to individual and team achievements and publicly recognize them for their great work. Immediate feedback and positive reinforcement makes employees much more likely to engage with the data being shared with their peers.

Set Custom KPIs.

Hurrah! runs based on custom-defined performance metrics, to display exactly the data that is most important to your business goals. Sales teams that are aware and up to date on their KPIs will exhibit greater goal-oriented engagement and more effectively interact with CRM data.

Learn more about how Hurrah! Leaderboards can improve ROI for your sales CRM. Sing up for a free-risk Demo.

Originally published on CRMGamified blog by CRMGamified