10 Worst Loyalty Program Ideas
Over the years, I had my hand in designing probably 50 or more retail or consumer brand loyalty programs. Some of these efforts proved transformational, some complete busts. I got lots of arrows in...
Getting to Business Value Through Gamification
Everyone wants in. Organizations want to do something with it and they think it can change the world; if you go by their word every organization in the planet is doing something with it. I am...
The Power and Potential of Praise
You know what doesn’t get enough praise? Praise itself. We can say all kinds of things about how to retain workers and train workers and grow workers. Training, as a profession, is about lifting...
The Gamification Designer – Lynchpin to Business Value
In my previous post where in introduced this series I said I needed to explore the business purposes and uses for gamification deployments that it was being done for all the wrong reasons. Sure,...
The Holistic Solution to the Sales Performance
According to research by SalesForce Search, only 10% of sales people provide ROI, 40% will miss quota, 22% are un-trainable, and sales team turnover is 40% per yegoar. Just the percentages are alarming, but...
Gamification: Taking the leap
You are a forward thinking company and have heard about gamification. You have done your research and feel that you are confident enough to push forward and start looking at applying gamification to your organisation. Now what?
First, decide what you are going to gamify. It sounds simple, but it is very easy to just decide to use gamification and then not have any idea what you will use it on.
Next, decide why you are going to gamify it. This is a bit harder. A lot of people have it in their minds that gamifying a system will make it better - simple as that. Sadly, it is not a magic bullet. There is a term that floats around those in gamification, Pointsification. This is what we call a system that has been gamified by purely adding a layer of points, badges and ladders without any thought as to WHY the system is being gamified and HOW to make best use of it. More often than not this is done to try and improve a system that is badly made in...
A New Definition of Loyalty
In my last post, I mentioned that defining loyalty was still a hot topic with big brands in corporate America. Two roundtable discussions that I participated in produced distinctly different definitions of loyalty and the results made sense based on their respective business objectives.
The undeniable definition of loyalty that I’ve used for a while has to do with creating profitable behavior change. While some companies speak in esoteric terms about loyalty, they usually revert to mercenary evaluation methods when it comes time to justify annual budgets.
My quantitative approach was challenged recently by a client who served up its own definition of loyalty based on study, debate, research, and their public brand promises. The definition went like this:
“Create a repeat customer who is an advocate of our brands or products and who will actively recruit new customers through positive word-of-mouth
This...
The Holistic Solution to the Sales Performance Crisis
According to research by SalesForce Search, only 10% of sales people provide ROI, 40% will miss quota, 22% are un-trainable, and sales team turnover is 40% per yegoar. Just the percentages are alarming, but consider the economic impact of 90% of more than 22 million sales professionals not hitting quota in North America.
Fortunately the alarm is being sounded to address the sales performance crisis from academia and a growing body of thought leaders in sales training, consulting, and recruiting. There is a significant movement towards integrating the science of technology and analytics with the art of selling from a holistic mindset. Seems like gamifiation across multiple channels is the ideal solution.
In an article from the Harvard Business Review Blog Network entitled, “CEOs Need to Get Serious About Sales,” the message focuses on the importance of analytics and...
