Leaderboards Do’s and Don’ts: The Best and Worst Practices For Sales Executives

Sales leaderboards are a tried and true way to bring out the competitive side of sales. That is to say, performance tracking on sales leaderboards introduces game-like elements in daily activities. This kind of gamification in the workplace can actually boost productivity and employee morale. Therefore, in the last decade, many big companies have implemented elements of gamification as a way to help shape behaviors, hone skills, and encourage innovation among sales teams.

Sales leaderboards, in particular, help employees get a better picture of the company’s goals and their own performance. This contributes to higher engagement and aligning personal and organizational goals. Having a sales leaderboard is an awesome idea, as long as you take some good advice on how to design and implement them to transform them into useful (and game-changing!) instruments.

To help you succeed in this path, here are some do’s and don’t s that every sales executive should take into account.

THE DON´Ts 

Measure Everything in Dollars

Firstly, focusing solely on the dollars, or end results, can distract from other important factors. There are many factors that influence overall results. So, it’s important to consider a variety of employee behaviors and activities when creating your leaderboards.

Think about activities and indicators that are important to team performance. How is calling more leads? Producing high-quality content? Answering client inquiries efficiently?

Never forget that productivity, and most importantly, employee engagement has many sides, increasing revenue is only one of them.

Choose The Wrong Metrics

Certainly, the aim of gamification is to improve performance by changing behaviors and fostering employee engagement.  Poorly constructed leaderboards tend to do the opposite. How does that happen? Simple: it all depends on the metrics.

Badly designed leaderboards only spotlight those with the top ten selling numbers, leaving the under-performers behind. Instead of motivating an agent who is struggling, this can cause them to become even more disengaged. 

The solution: Create multiple leaderboards that recognize top performers. As well as that, enable middle performers to shine on other areas. At Hurrah! Leaderboards we recommend deploying gamification that allows everyone to feel like a valuable member of the team.

Encourage The Wrong Behavior

As mentioned, a sales leaderboard that just highlights the achievements of top-ranking players can negatively affect individual performance as well as overall team dynamics.

The best Leaderboards encourage collaboration and teamwork, as opposed to individual success. Team-based leaderboards are a great way to focus on teamwork. Match up your best sellers with less experienced sales reps to encourage mentorship. 

THE DO´S

Encourage Friendly Competition

Gamification should make the workplace more fun for everyone. Leaderboards can be a great tool to achieve this. However, execs should not forget the human aspect in this equation. Always encourage friendly competition. For instance, have everyone celebrate when a team member reaches a goal to boost a collaborative spirit.

Communicate Goals

Similarly, communicating clearly how the system works, what the goals are, and how progress is measured is essential to getting everyone on board.  Making your leaderboards visually clear and dynamic makes it easier to track individual and team progress.

Update Frequently

Keep engagement with leaderboards high by making sure they are always up to date. The more immediately employees can see their progress visually marked on sales leaderboards, the more engaged they will be.

Hurrah! Leaderboards makes building leaderboards a breeze. Our platform lets you customize your sales leaderboards and broadcast performance metrics in real-time.