Driving revenue growth with leaderboards

You might hear the word competition and feel a sense of dread or anxiety. Or you might feel inspired and motivated. Indeed, competition can invoke very different feelings depending on the stakes. A study conducted by Harvard Business Review determined that competition can have both positive and adverse effects on a company, from spurring creativity among employees to prompting unethical behavior. What differentiates competition with positive end results from competition that results in felonies?

Sales is often inherently competitive. Even if top sellers aren’t directly rewarded, their success is generally well documented and on display for everyone to see. This is a positive way to nurture success. That is of course until employees start to feel threatened by one another’s wins. Competing for promotions, yearly bonuses, or your actual job ups both the ante and the stress level.

So how can you promote healthy sales competition that increases sales performance, leads to creative solutions, and drives revenue growth? One tried and tested approach is with leaderboards.

Friendly competition can quickly turn into rivalry when employees feel threatened.

How Duolingo Increased User Retention with Its Social Leaderboard

For anyone who has tried to learn a new skill, you know how difficult it can be to stay motivated. This challenge is further amplified if you’re a self-learner and have little chance to practice. This is very much the case for people learning foreign languages. Unless you live in the country where your new language is being spoken, it’s hard to measure the return on investment. This also makes it hard to stay on target.

Leaderboards can help keep participants motivated while also improving company metrics.

Duolingo quickly realized this in 2018 when its user retention rates started declining. Language learners weren’t sticking with their goals, and the company needed a way to keep users engaged and excited. They decided on a social leaderboard, which allowed users to track their progress against other language learners. The result: a 34 percent increase in user retention.

How to Choose the Right Sales Tracking Approach

A big part of designing an effective leaderboard is deciding what metrics to track and how to track them. This will depend on a few factors, most importantly the length of your sales cycle.

So here are some things to consider when choosing how to execute sales performance tracking most effectively:

Key Metrics to Track with Your Sales Leaderboard

Your metrics will depend on your business and the speed of sales. For example, if you own a real-estate company, it won’t make sense to track call volume. Instead, you might want to focus on the number of houses sold. Here are some common metrics to consider:

• Revenue generated
• Deals closed
• Call volume/outreach effort
• Conversion rates (how many leads became customers)
• Pipeline value (how much potential revenue is in the pipeline)

Real-time vs. Weekly/Monthly Tracking

Similarly, how frequently you update your leaderboard will depend on the type of business you operate. If you run a call center, you might want to track the number of calls made on a daily basis. Here’s a quick rule of thumb:

Real-time sales tracking

1. is ideal for short and fast-paced sales cycles
2. provides instant feedback
3. is less effective for longer sales cycles where progress is slower

Weekly/monthly sales tracking:

1. is ideal for industries with longer decision-making processes (e.g., real-estate, B2B sales)
2. focuses on long-term performance
3. encourages strategic sales approaches
4. helps analyze long-term trends and detect successful patterns

If you’re still not sure what kind of leaderboard is right for you, check out this table:

To really dive into this topic, read our dedicated post on competition formats: Weekly, Monthly, and quarterly strategies.

When to Use Individual vs. Team-Based Sales Leaderboards

Do you want to boost sales team motivation, or increase personal accountability, or maybe improve teamwork? How you design your sales competition leaderboard should reflect your specific goals. For example:

• Individual performance tracking will help encourage self-improvement and the achievement of personal goals.
• Team-based tracking will foster collaboration and could even increase company-wide motivation.
• A hybrid tracking approach will strike a balance between personal accountability and responsibility to the team.

So decide exactly what you want to achieve before setting up your leaderboard.

Sometimes teamwork is strongly affected by individual performance. In this case, a hybrid leaderboard is a good choice.

How to Create Effective Sales Goals with Visual Progress Indicators

A picture says a thousand words. Or in this case, the messaging is in the visuals. Features like progress bars, rankings, and other sales metrics visualizations can turn black and white statistics into tangible progress. Here are some ways you can integrate these features into your leaderboard:

• Progress bars can highlight where you are compared to where you want to be.
• Rankings indicate which team or individual is at the top of their game.
• Milestone markers give you a chance to celebrate little wins along the way to a larger goal.

Remember, your aim is to keep everyone motivated and checking in on their leaderboard status. So keep it up-to-date, informative, and easy to understand.

Why Use Mobile-Friendly Leaderboards

Many sales teams operate remotely. Specifically, field sales teams are regularly on the go. Having a mobile leaderboard that is accessible from everywhere will make it easier for employees in the field to be a part of the action. This is key because:

• Field reps generally have to self-motivate since they are not in the office with their managers or co-workers. Seeing their progress will propel them to stay on target.
• Immediate feedback allows for a quick dose of motivation and potential course correction if necessary.
• Sales teams are more likely to strive towards achieving their targets if they can check their leaderboard rankings anytime.

Help your field sales employees still feel like part of the team with a mobile leaderboard.

Use KeepTheScore to Create your Sales Leaderboard

Now that you have an idea of what metrics you can track and how best to track them to achieve your goals, it’s time to design a leaderboard that will inspire your team to perform its best and drive revenue growth. KeepTheScore has a number of options for you. For example, you can:

• Create a standard leaderboard.
• Write the name of each participant and choose a(n optional) title.
• Under Settings, choose your theme and layout.
• Under score suffix choose what units you want to measure, e.g., calls made, units sold, dollars earned.
• Make your board as personalized as possible by adding a company logo and participant profile pictures.
• Now it’s time to track team progress!

Track each individual employee one success at a time with a standard leaderboard.

However, if you’d prefer to track team sales, you can create a team leaderboard:

1. Enter the number of participants.
2. Choose the names and team names of all your participants.
3. Click on Settings to add a board name, choose a new theme or layout, or add your own logo. You can also change the default colors and background image.
4. Start selling!

Place the focus on teamwork by tracking team sales as well as individual sales.

Conclusion

Have you had measurable success by integrating leaderboards into your sales process? Let us know! And if you have any questions or insights, share them with us in the comments section! For regular inspiration on how to use KeepTheScore delivered right to your inbox, sign up for our newsletter.