AG Olympics: Using Team Building to Motivate Inside Sales Reps
Today is an exciting day in our office. As I write this blog, there are people walking by wearing Uncle Sam costumes and American flag tattoos, donning enormous gold chains and carrying bedazzled chalices, and sporting red lucha libre masks.
My eccentric coworkers are dressed this way for two reasons: first, they are awesome, and second, we are having the second annual AG Olympics this afternoon! The office has been split into four teams, and in just a few hours we will compete in a variety of games to compete for… something. I’m not really sure what we are competing for, but it doesn’t matter. No one knows what we will win, but people have still been planning and exchanging competitive banter before the date for the games was even set. To the right is a picture of the winning team from last year, the Rainbow Team.
We like to have fun at AG, but these games can be more than just fun; they’re also great for the company culture. Almost every week we have a work-related competition amongst the BDRs. It‘s a great way to boost company moral, but we also use it as a way to motivate employees. When the employees with the most leads for the week get to compete in a game of Plinko for a cash prize, they are now more motivated to hit the phones and get more leads than they had the day before. It is good to create healthy competition amongst your sales team so people feel more involved in the office.
We switched up the teams for the Olympic games this afternoon. Instead of competing with our sales team, we drafted four brand new teams. This way, we all get a chance to mingle with those coworkers we don’t typically have a chance to interact with at work.
One of our BDRs, Marc Spinella, is responsible for “Sales Enablement”. As he describes it, the point of sales enablement is to motivate employees while making the sales process a fun and competitive one. He put together these Olympic games to get people excited and interacting with one another in a fun way outside of the walls of the office. Events like these, especially in the summer time when everyone gravitates to the window to forlornly gaze at the sunshine, are great for building comraderie within the office and making newer employees feel included. It’s also a great way to motivate people, as it brings out their competitive spirit (even if it’s for a potato sack race), which then spills over into the office. If people are happier, they will enjoy working, and both your company and your employees will benefit. And in the case of the Olympics, it’s something that people will talk about for weeks to come, encouraging socializing in the office.
For now, I need to go put together my Team America costume, but look forward to more content about building company culture! What are some fun way your office motivates the staff? I’d love to hear what fun summer activities everyone else has planned!
