The digitization of sales challenges

SPIFF sales reps are an essential part of boosting business performance, motivating teams, and consolidating skills. However, the traditional management of these challenges can be laborious, requiring considerable effort. Fortunately, a revolution is taking place thanks to digitalization and gamification!

The transition to digital sales reps challenges opens the door to a host of benefits. From improved collaboration and autonomous animation to greater adaptability and data reliability, this evolution is radically transforming how teams approach sales challenges.

The digitalization and gamification of SPIFF sales reps are not just passing trends, but a tangible revolution in the way teams are motivated and driven to achieve exceptional results.

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1. 7 benefits of digitizing and gamifying SPIFF sales reps

SPIFF sales reps offer a whole host of benefits for the company: increased motivation, stronger team cohesion, improved sales performance, continuous learning and skills development, attracting and retaining talent, etc.

However, to reap the benefits mentioned above, you need to follow and respect all the steps outlined in this white paper. A series of long, complex, and time-consuming tasks and missions.

Fortunately, it is now possible to digitize and gamify sales reps challenges, making them easier to manage and more successful!

The benefits of digitizing and gamifying SPIFF sales reps include:

• Improved collaboration: Digitalisation facilitates communication within the team. A collaborative platform and a real-time monitoring tool enable successes to be shared instantly and encourage cooperation. Gone are the silos of information, and collective synergy is back in the spotlight.
• Autonomous sales reps: The digitization of SPIFF sales reps makes it possible to automate several sales promotion tasks, such as updating results, indicating which milestones have been reached or are about to be reached, and making changes to the rankings.
• Greater adaptability: SPIFF sales reps are constantly evolving, and so should the sales approach. Digitalization makes it possible to introduce agile changes, and to adapt quickly to the target audience and trends.
• Data reliability: Manual handling of data involves the participation of different stakeholders and tools, and therefore, ultimately, a high potential for error. By digitizing SPIFF sales reps, all these manual actions are automated, so as long as the data sources are reliable, all the data will be available.
• Refined performance monitoring and analysis: Data is a goldmine, and the digitization of SPIFF sales reps makes it easy to explore. It's possible to track every move made by the sales reps, analyze major trends, and adjust the sales strategy in real-time to improve performance.
• Boosting motivation and sales performance: The gamification of SPIFF challenges adds an extra dose of commitment by transforming objectives into real quests, thereby boosting sales reps' motivation. Ultimately, better motivation leads to better sales rep performance.
• Significant time savings: Digitalisation makes it easy to organize sales reps' challenges, eliminating time-consuming steps such as implementing the rules of the sales reps’ challenges or communicating results in real-time.

The digitalization and gamification of sales reps challenges is much more than just a passing trend. It's a revolution in the way you motivate and motivate your sales teams to achieve exceptional results!

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2. 7 steps to digitalize and gamify your SPIFF sales reps

The digitalization and gamification of SPIFF sales reps is an essential step in turning them into a genuine lever for sales performance. And with good reason, given the many benefits of this operation, there's no doubting its interest and effectiveness!

However, before embarking on the digitalization and gamification of your SPIFF sales reps, it is customary to follow a certain number of steps to maximize their impact.

Owning or implementing a CRM

CRM is the first essential building block for digitizing and gamifying your SPIFF sales reps. The CRM will make it possible to centralize all customer data, track interactions with the sales reps, and provide a 360-degree view.

A solid CRM ensures that you have a reliable database to address your sales reps challenges. Data quality is the first key to a successful SPIFF sales reps.

Defining your objectives and expectations

Before digitizing and gamifying your SPIFF sales reps, it is essential to understand the specific needs of your company and your sales team on this topic, and to identify the areas where digitization will add real value.

What do I want to achieve through digitalization and gamification? More sales? Better customer retention? More motivated employees?

By asking these questions, the objectives and expectations become more precise and realistic, thereby increasing the chances of success for future sales reps challenges.

Creating specifications

Just as an architect defines his list of requirements to build his real estate project, the aim here is to create detailed specifications for his digitization and gamification project. 

This document acts as a compass, defining the functionalities required and the key elements necessary for its smooth operation. It is important to provide as much detail as possible in these specifications, as each line on the paper will help to solidify the digitization and gamification structure of future SPIFF sales reps. 

At this stage, it is advisable to involve all the stakeholders, from the sales reps to the gamification experts, to ensure that the specifications are as complete as possible.

Benchmark solutions and select the best one

Once the previous stages have been completed, it's time to explore all the digitalization and gamification solutions on the market!

During the in-depth benchmarking of these solutions, they need to be evaluated according to the criteria set out in the specifications, which may include flexibility, communication, UX, or the ability to integrate with the CRM. 

You need to ensure that you choose a solution that is adapted to your context and needs, but also that the solution is scalable to support the company's future growth. The key is to choose a tool that will become the ideal partner for your sales teams as they embark on the fun adventure of sales reps challenges.

Next, it's a good idea to consult user reviews and customer testimonials to decide whether to opt for certain solutions.

Implement the chosen solution

Implementing the chosen tool is a crucial stage. Following the guidelines provided by the supplier, making sure that all the integrations with the CRM work properly, testing each feature to ensure that they meet expectations, etc., are all essential steps.

To ensure a smooth implementation, internal experts on the topic need to be mobilized. A smooth implementation is essential to maintain the enthusiasm of the teams.

Present the tool to the sales reps

To ensure that the sales reps use the solution, it is essential to give them a presentation and training. If they don't, they won't buy in, which will reduce the chances of improving the performance of your SPIFF sales reps.

In terms of form, it's best to opt for interactive training sessions and practical demonstrations, which highlight the tangible benefits of the solution. 

In addition, to create an atmosphere of excitement, it's important to highlight the fun aspects of the solution and emphasize how the tool will make their daily lives easier and help them achieve their sales rep objectives.

Set up and launch the first sales reps challenge

To digitize and gamify your first SPIFF sales reps using this solution, all you need to do is follow the steps outlined in the second part of this white paper.

Then, depending on the features and possibilities offered by the tool, you need to share and enter as much information as possible: list of participants, teams, operating rules, objectives to be achieved, levels, rewards, etc.

The launch must be a memorable event, and the company must generate enthusiasm by showing how digitalization and gamification will transform every SPIFF sales rep challenge.

You also need to keep your ears open for feedback from the sales reps so that you can adjust and improve the experience as you go along.

By carefully following the 7 steps above, companies can successfully digitalize and gamify their sales reps. The company is laying the foundations for a gamified experience that not only boosts sales performance but also adds a touch of fun and motivation to sales reps' challenges.

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3. SPIFF sales reps with Qobra

Qobra offers an all-in-one commission management platform for those responsible for the topic within their company: Head of Sales, Sales Manager, Sales Operations, Revenue Operations, CFO, etc.

After several discussions with certain customers, the Qobra teams identified that one of their main problems after commissions was the organization and running of SPIFF sales reps!

And for good reason: this task, often carried out by Heads of Sales, Sales Managers and Sales Operations, is a long and time-consuming one. And as we know, time is a scarce resource for these employees.

To meet their needs, the Qobra teams have developed a complete module within their commission management platform, enabling them to organize, run, and analyze SPIFF sales reps easily. 

This is a logical consequence, since managing SPIFF sales reps separately from your variable pay software, on spreadsheets or otherwise, poses problems of visibility and reporting, whereas commission management platforms were designed precisely to avoid these problems. 

"It's very complicated to keep track of sales reps challenges apart from commissions because you have to think about isolating the contracts signed. It's bearable when you're at the end of the month and the closing date is approaching, but otherwise, it's very complicated."

Romain Darbon, Business Manager at Figaro Classifieds

"It made sense for the SeLoger group to have challenges and commissions on the same software. Easier and more practical for the sales rep organization and management."

Théo Manachem, Sales Ops at SeLoger

With Qobra, companies simply need to define the rules of the SPIFF, the participants, the objectives to be achieved, and the rewards. Then, each participant is alerted (by email, notifications, Slack) in real time about the achievement of the objectives assigned to them, the objectives of the different teams, as well as the evolution of the overall ranking. They also have access to all this data in real-time, at any time, and with complete autonomy via interactive dashboards in their personal space.

"Each sales rep can see their performance, where they rank with their colleagues or even the sales they've made that count towards the challenge." 

Théo Manachem, Sales Ops at SeLoger

These are just some of the features that address the usual frictions of a sales rep challenge. After all, it's hard to motivate sales reps if they can't see their performance in real-time and the impact this has on the rewards they can earn.

"Before, our sales reps would spend all day working on the SPIFF file instead of going out to find appointments, and they'd spend more time there than doing business. An Excel file isn't necessarily up to date, so most of the time it generates frustration. But if you have a nice tool dedicated to this, there's no reason why it shouldn't be up-to-date."

Jean De Keerle, Sales Ops Manager at Doctolib

In this way, the company keeps its employees motivated throughout the challenge, since Qobra automatically takes charge of the sales reps challenge from start to finish.

In other words, Qobra provides a real framework for sales reps challenges!

"There's a whole system of notifications that are sent to the sales reps when they gain or lose a place in the ranking when they make a new sale, etc. And this will help to animate the challenge throughout its duration! And that's going to help keep the challenge alive throughout its duration!"

Antoine Fort, CEO at Qobra

How does setting up a sales reps SPIFF with Qobra work?

1. Create and name the sales reps challenge on the platform.
2. Add the teams and/or individual contributors involved in the sales rep challenge.
3. Define the launch and end dates of the sales reps challenge.
4. Define the period (end of month, end of quarter, end of half-year, end of year) at which teams and/or individual contributors will receive their reward in the event of victory.
5. Write a short description of the SPIFF sales rep challenge to help participants understand how it works.
6. Define a scope and calculation rules. Select the type of information source and the source of the scope: Data table (Opportunities, etc.) or Quota (Personal objective, etc.).
7. Select the filters to apply to the object to obtain the desired data (User and date).
8. Create variables to define the objectives to be achieved, which may or may not be visible to participants, depending on the company's choice.
9. Define the list of rewards (financial and/or non-financial) based on the sales reps challenge ranking.
10. Design the dashboard as seen by the sales reps using a set of visuals pre-created by Qobra: graphs, overall ranking, percentage of objectives achieved, rewards, etc.
11. Everything's ready to go! All that's left is to launch the sales reps challenge!