Competition drives creativity and innovation

Norwegian sales performance management tool to see a 400% increase in inbound leads in March, despite the Covid-19 outbreak.

A key theme for NBAS going forward is innovation and technology, especially leading up to the Singapore Norway Innovation Conference (SNIC) on September 29. In the next upcoming months, we will publish a series of inspirational and educational articles profiling NBAS-members across all sectors in Singapore.

Last year, Vidar Haaland packed his bags and said goodbye to Norway to open an office on the other side of the world. We sat down with Vidar, Regional Director of SalesScreen in Singapore, to learn a bit more about how enterprise sales engagement platforms like SalesScreen can help organisations build happier and more productive workplaces, their journey into the Singaporean market, and how the Covid-19 outbreak has affected SalesScreen’s business.

SalesScreen is a sales performance management tool that aims to empower teams to perform at their best. This is done by turning the process of selling, into a team effort, though combining individual motivational tools with cultural aspects and a winning mentality. Vidar Haaland says: “Even the leading products and services fall short if the people behind it can’t perform at their very best. SalesScreen makes the daily 8-hour job more engaging and fun for everyone. In short, we have transformed the challenging work of sales into a professional, motivating and exciting game.”

Companies’ sales data can be entered into SalesScreen through manual reporting or integrated with commonly-used software such as Salesforce, HubSpot and Pipedrive to streamline the feeding of data into its product.

“Do you care if your boss or colleague tells you “great job” after hitting your monthly sales target? Employee recognition is important, especially in sales jobs. With SalesScreen, you can get instant recognition for the activities you do by defining your own milestones and celebrating them in style by using different types of games visualised on TV screens. Sometimes, a simple activity can represent a tremendous achievement in your team”, Vidar states.

He adds, “Many organisations believe that SalesScreen is a new CRM system in the market, but that’s wrong. We are an add-on to all of those CRM systems. SalesScreen makes it more fun by offering competitions, battles and rewards when you reach your monthly target or break the sales record of the year.”

Competition in the workplace
SalesScreen’s philosophy builds on that people are competitive by nature. Competition is a part of our culture, either through playing football, tennis, handball, chess board games and so on. Sometimes, the word “competition” can easily be associated with a lot of pressure and stress. However, there’s a ton of different ways to run a competition, whether it’s individually or team versus team. In the end, it’s all about making it even more fun.

Vidar elaborates on his philosophy on why competitions are successful in the workplace:

“Running standard sales competitions is fine, but your organisation and your employees are unique, so why shouldn’t your contest reflect that as well? By customising competitions to your organisation’s specific needs, it’s much more likely to have a positive effect and drive the right behaviour. The fact that an organisation can cater to its exact needs is what makes competitions more valuable and effective.

Moreover, top-level athletes, successful businesspeople and achievers in all fields have goals. When you have tangible goals to work towards, it motivates you to perform better, it gives you a direction in life and allows you to measure progress better. In addition, goals inspire creativity and innovation because people tend to explore a variety of solutions that will lead to performing well in a competition or towards a specific goal.

Additionally, the great thing about workplace competitions is that they can involve both extrinsic and intrinsic motivation. Extrinsic, because it generally involves some type of external rewards such as money, fame and praise. Intrinsic, because people are also motivated to perform well in their work because it’s naturally satisfying for them. Sales competitions are effective because they cater to both motivation types, and they can challenge your employees to work harder, whether they are extrinsically or intrinsically motivated.

Lastly, it may seem overly simple, but one of the reasons why competitions are important and effective in the workplace is because they are fun. Especially when the daily grind of boring data reporting and repetitive tasks starts to wear down your employees. Competitions are an excellent way to introduce a sense of fun and excitement back into the office!”, Vidar says.

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Entering the Singapore market
Founded in 2011 in Norway, SalesScreen decided to enter the Asian market and opened an office in Singapore in June 2019. “Ever since SalesScreen began as a small tech start-up in Trondheim, we’ve had ambitions to expand worldwide. With offices in the Nordics, Europe and the US, and a growing customer base across the globe, we wanted to expand our business and be present in more markets and continents. The Asian market offers an abundance of opportunities, and we decided to open an office in the city-state because we believe this is a perfect fit for what we do”, Vidar says.

To get a head start in Singapore, SalesScreen got in touch with Nordic Innovation House, to point them in the right direction. “Nordic Innovation House helped SalesScreen a lot to get our office up and running. They have helped us to build a broader network, put us in contact with the right people, helped us to open bank accounts, and assisting with the Ministry of Manpower process”, he said.

The effect of the Covid-19 outbreak
As much of the world shifts towards a remote working environment due to the Covid-19 outbreak, a few key issues are on top of most people’s minds: “How can I keep track of everyone’s contributions without micromanaging? How can I motivate and inspire my remote workers?”

Working remotely can be a challenge for any company. We asked Vidar how this situation has affected SalesScreen and their business. “SalesScreen has seen a 400% increase in inbound leads in March. We are assisting with keeping engagement and productivity levels sky-high through this period. Distance doesn’t have to be a barrier to teamwork and success. In fact, you can keep your employees working as a cohesive unit and avoid the “us versus them” mentality by integrating sales motivation software to your CRM system. Use the competitive instincts of your employees to build rather than to drive your teams apart.

Desperate times call for desperate measures, however, SalesScreen enables companies to establish clear goals, practice teamwork, improve communication, give feedback, recognize achievements and celebrate success with our cloud-based gamification software.”