What are Sales Team Building Activities
Sales team building activities are a series of exercises that help salespeople work together more effectively.
They can be fun and engaging, while simultaneously boosting morale and helping your company grow.
Sales team building activities can feel counter-productive.
That’s the first thought that can come to both leaders and employees when you mention a scheduled activity to do “team building”.
Even people who love their job will shiver at change. It’s to be expected, especially when you’ve never done anything like it.
If you start doing these things in a culture-building way, the team will catch up. Those who don’t, may not be the type to help you build your company—but that’s not our topic.
Our post today is to help founders and leaders go from doing no activities that build team morale to having a crew that gets as excited as children going on a field trip.
You remember those days, right?
Everyday school was good. But when it was different, you were actually excited.
It didn’t matter if you were going somewhere more “educational”, or just to the zoo. You wanted to be there.
Yes, we want people who love to come to work.
But that doesn’t mean you want an office full of people who wouldn’t enjoy a break from their day-to-day responsibilities.
(courtesy of Meme Guy)
Why Sales Team Building Activities Are Important
Sales team building activities are important because they will:
- Increase employee engagement so workers want to perform their best on the job
- Boost morale so your team is happy to be working with each other
- Provide a way for employees to get to know one another’s strengths and weaknesses
- Help your company grow by making it better able to adapt to different situations.
12 Sales Team Building Activities that Improve Morale
Let’s take a look at the things you and your team can do to grow closer, appreciate work more, make the world a better place, and lead to a healthier sales team.
Here we go.
Easy sales team building activities
You don’t have to try on zip line gear to have a morale boosting sales team building activity in the office.
There are all kinds of things to try that serve as an introduction into the world of team building.
It’s surprisingly easy to set up an environment that will help moods and encourage the crew to interact with one another in a real-life way. In between sales calls or meetings, you can do something that builds others up.
Here are four ideas.
1 Encourage a water-cooler
80’s business culture both created and shunned the water-cooler phenomena.
A place where the latest gossip, television, and (eek!) politics were quietly discussed while getting a quick sip of water.
While this can be done in excess, a place for everyone to communicate about things other than projects should be encouraged—even digitally.
This really isn’t difficult. Provide a snack area, a place for conversation and BAM! It’ll happen naturally.
Here at LeadFuze, we use Slack (we know, who doesn’t). Even though most of us are in the office, we added a channel called “#water-cooler” (see screenshot). It’s a place where you can mention things about sports, recent funny news, and just about anything else.
2 Eat food
Think about all of the bonding that happens through eating a meal. No, you don’t have to cater lunch in every day.
- Have you hit a goal, met a deadline? Get some grub delivered.
- Working late? Order take out.
- Introducing a new initiative/policy? Make it a nice meal.
- Haven’t eaten lunch as an office in a while? Do it today.
Pizza, sandwiches, catered meals. It can be as quick or as thoughtful as you’d like. The benefits of eating with associates speak for themselves.
3 Play games
There may be no greater “ugh” than the one that comes from co-workers who hear they’ll have to do “ice breakers” or play in an office game. If you even mention that something is “supposed to be fun”, everyone will think the worst.
How do you avoid this? It depends on the attitude (of you and the team) and introduction.
There are many ways to have fun while playing games in the office. Share on XIn fact, here’s an epic post from SnackNation full of 87 games from businesses around the globe. But the biggest way to ensure success is the way you introduce the games.
There is a big difference between “hey guys we’re going to do some team building” as opposed to one morning everyone walking into an office set up for a ping pong tournament.
4 Contests (not sales related)
Sale quotas and even friendly competition is great, but not necessarily good for boosting morale and creating culture. However, there are contests that could generate camaraderie.
- Fantasy football/baseball/etc. for the sports fans.
- Tasteful costume contests (i.e. star wars, 80’s, monster).
- Healthy eating encourage good habits.
Moderate sales team building activities
Ok. If you’re feeling a bit more adventurous, or have seen the success of the intro sales team building activities, you may be ready to venture into deeper waters.
While these sales team building activities still aren’t “hardcore” in nature, they may require outside-of-the-office interaction among your team.
Here’re a few ideas.
5 Learn new things
Education is a great way to grow as a team. Share on XThere are two primary venues to take when going about it—work-related or interest-based learning.
If you run a sales team, it could be morale-boosting to watch a cutting-edge webinar in the field and then have an idea generation and discussion period to implement and plan strategies to increase qualified appointments and customer acquisition.
Or, you could do something unrelated to work, like buy everyone a Bonsai tree and have a class on how to take care of it.
6 Get physical
Promoting health and wellness in the office is fast becoming a recruiting technique. Millennials want an employer that genuinely cares for them and organizations that need talent are scrambling to figure out how to prove their level of care.
Actively promoting health, and even paying/reimbursing for gym memberships could give you an edge on drawing the best help your way.
7 Eat food (again)
Ok, so you eat lunch in the office occasionally. That’s great!
However, taking it up a notch and going out to lunch/dinner with your staff is a bigger venture with a (potentially) bigger payout.
Rent out a room, acknowledge accomplishments, or have a brief recap of the previous quarter. But make sure you have fun.
Price doesn’t matter here (typically).
If you’re having an award ceremony something nicer may do, but why not reserve a BBQ joint and get messy? Or go to the park and grill some burgers (bring a Frisby)?
Just leave the office and eat somewhere.
8 Give stuff out
We talked about an award ceremony, but you don’t need a reason to shower your team with gifts. Swag is something that tech and software companies love.
How many Volkswagens have you spotted with an Apple sticker?
Hoodies, headphones, or the traditional pens and stickers—give it away to your people.
Aggressive sales team building activities
Sometimes, you just gotta go for it.
In this case, you’re doing sales team building activities that will not only build morale but could create memories and friendships between staffers.
While these will dip into the pocketbook, they will also help solidify and grow your culture to a level that few other organizations ever find.
Let’s go to the deep.
“Life is fragile. We’re not guaranteed a tomorrow so give it everything you’ve got.” — Tim Cook, Apple CEO
9 Do an actual activity
Interactive entertainment will likely grow into a frenzy over the next decade.
You know, those places that lock you in a room with a bunch of props until you figure out how to leave? It may or may not be your cup of tea, but it will make your introverted, yet intelligent people shine like the stars.
This example isn’t the only way to go and do team building.
There’s volunteering.
You could clean up a road, serve food to the hungry, or visit a nursing home.
10 Take a retreat
Ok, now you can try on the zip line gear. Work retreats can be close to the office, or even involve traveling to a different country. They can be a single day or even an entire week. Traveling for team building provides an opportunity for coworkers to bond and build relationships outside of the office environment.
The flexibility makes them a great option for small teams with low budgets all the way to execs who need to do some serious vision casting.
There are activities that make it memorable and the benefits will far outlast the stay and the financial commitment (with proper planning).
11 Go learn stuff (conferences)
Instead of the staff sitting in uncomfortable chairs around a computer screen in the office for a webinar, you could take them all to a conference!
There really isn’t anything that can induce that “field trip” feeling than announcing that your organization is going to give everyone an adrenaline-pumping few days—airfare and accommodations included.
Go ahead, it’ll make them feel like kids on Christmas morning.
12 Bring in the family
If you’re in the tech and software space, many of your employees may have young families.
This means that work, even though they may love it, isn’t their main priority.
Bringing together the career they have with the family that keeps them in that career can be powerful in creating the type of work environment that has little turnover and very high morale.
Having parties or days that family members are welcomed and celebrated on will go a long way. Share on XYou don’t have to be fancy. You just have to make room.
7 Benefits of High Morale
Those same millennials that are filling in more and more of your workforce are notoriously known for switching jobs a little faster than previous generations.
They keep looking for “work/life balance” like the wanderers in storybooks looking for the fountain of youth.
While you can’t provide that, you can prove that you genuinely want to keep those who add value to your organization. Not only because they do good work, but because you care.
Here are some benefits of having high morale:
1. Stronger work ethic
Employees will take on more responsibility and be less likely to quit in the middle of a project.
2. Loyalty
They’re not just going to leave your company for some other opportunity that might come their way, they’ll make an effort to stick it out until you find them a replacement or new position within your organization.
3. Increased productivity
Employees will be more energized and motivated to get things done, which can lead to less time spent on tasks that don’t bring value to the company.
Do you want to increase sales team productivity?
LeadFuze is a lead generation platform that automates the process of generating leads for your sales team. Our system will automatically find and generate qualified leads for your business, so all you have to do is follow up with them! No more wasting time on manual tasks like finding new prospects or sending out emails. You can focus on what matters most – closing deals.
4. More innovative ideas
When employees have a sense of self-worth they’ll feel confident in their abilities and able to come up with great new ways for your company to grow.
5. Positive team environment
When your employees enjoy their time at work and feel valued, they’ll be happy to take on new challenges that might come up without hesitation.
6. Faster decision making
Employees will be more confident in themselves and have a higher sense of ownership over the decisions made for the company which can result in better, faster decisions.
7. Higher quality of work
When employees have a sense of pride in their company they’ll be more dedicated and will give 100% to every task taken on as well as improving the quality of their work.
We are confident that there is no better way to improve morale than by implementing team building activities into your weekly meetings!
5 Things to Avoid on Your Sales Team Building Activities
Now that you know some tips on improving your sales team building activities, I think you should also learn about the things you need to avoid.
1. Rushing team onboarding
You should ensure cohesion among your team members before you start implementing team building activities.
The more time you spend onboarding your new hires, the better they will be able to integrate with the rest of the team and know what is expected of them in a given situation.
2. Not assessing performance
You should look for company-wide sales goals and assess individual performance to ensure that you are rewarding the right people.
If a team member is struggling, then he or she might not be able to fully enjoy your next team building activity.
3. Lacking employee engagement
Your goal as a manager is always going to be maximizing employee engagement because it leads to higher productivity.
Team building activities can help you with this by giving employees a break from their routine, thus increasing the likelihood of them being more engaged when they return.
4. Not following up
You should always follow up on your team building activity so that everyone knows how it went and what was learned. Not doing this will make it much more difficult for you to implement the lessons learned into your normal day-to-day operations.
You should follow up with a short feedback survey so that you can get input from everyone who participated in order to create future team building activities.
5. Setting the same goals for everyone
Each of your team members should have varying goals so that they are not competing with each other. This will help to ensure that everyone feels the need to participate in team building activities and work together as a more cohesive unit.
Conclusion
Sales team building activities are an excellent way to help your sales team grow and become more unified.
The sample activities above can provide you with some excellent ideas on how to do this.