By Chris Sullivan, Regional Vice President, Sales, Bunchball
Chris Sullivan, @Sully63
I imagine it must be nearly impossible to manage a sizeable sales force, call center, or customer support group these days. In a struggling economy new clients are tough to come by and even tougher to hold on to and employees are constantly demanding new tools that will allow them to be more effective and efficient. C-Level executives are signing off on platforms like Salesforce.com with hopes these challenges will magically disappear.
If you are on the front lines as a SVP/VP Sales or Director of Sales Operations you understand first hand that this new tool is useless unless employees really buy into it. Anyone having issues with user adoption and sustained usage? Of course, as there is an adoption lifecycle for any new product.
At a recent Cloudforce event, I marveled at how many companies, including Bunchball, have developed applications that increase the business value of Salesforce.com. How can one possibly analyze all of these products and where would I start if it was me? I narrowed my list down to a few critical areas that I would investigate to gain more value from my Salesforce.com implementation:
Data - How can I get accurate tracking of actions in Salesforce.com which are critical to understand how the tool is being used by employees today AND as a way to direct activity in the future?
Contests - How can I effectively manage and deploy contests to replace my current system of spreadsheets and to keep track of competitions?
Recognition- How can I recognize and reward positive behaviors amongst employees?
Reward- How can I reward users with items of value to them and share the leaderboards on the floor or throughout the building?
One way to accomplish the above goals is to visit the AppExchange and begin using the many solutions available in these categories OR you can take a look at the Swiss Army Knife for Salesforce.com called Nitro for Salesforce.
In 2011, Bunchball aggressively entered the employee/partner-focused market space and decided to build applications that would easily work within popular enterprise software platforms such as Salesforce.com. For clients struggling with user adoption and continued usage we created Nitro for Salesforce. This is a native Aloha app, built on Salesforce.com, and was voted the Best New App at Dreamforce 2011.
Once Nitro for Salesforce is installed, the Administrator can configure a program that will reward users with points for their completed activities in Salesforce.com. These points mean leaderboards can be created, missions/challenges can be set to reward badges or trophies in a user’s trophy case, and teams can be created within a business unit. Users can also compete for themselves and on behalf of a team. Ultimately, points can be redeemed in our storefront for virtual or real world items. If the client does not wish to utilize points, then we can set missions/challenges to reward with badges and the experience will be completion/status based.
Along with a world class technology platform, Bunchball provides the motivation program strategy to insure clients understand best practices as to how to drive user adoption and sustainable engagement with these programs. Bunchball also trains the clients’ team to use the Administration Console so they can feel free to modify the program as often as needed. The goal is to develop an ongoing motivation program which also:
1) Includes campaign elements such as contests (ex. Sales Contest Builder)
2) Allows for manual, individual recognition where a user can receive a badge when a manager decides it is appropriate (ex. Work.com)
3) Broadcasts leaderboards on big screens for inside sales teams, call centers and customer service teams (ex. Hoopla)
While a great solutions for sales, Nitro for Salesforce can also apply to the service cloud or any department using Salesforce.com at the center of their job.
If you have already implemented Salesforce.com internally, save yourself the time of calling multiple vendors and give Bunchball a call today.
In the meantime, check out what the AppExchange blog has to say about us and watch this video demo.
