Sports pools have long been a company-wide camaraderie-builder. Whether it’s squares, brackets, or simple head-to-head match-ups, your staff loves a low-stakes distraction. What if you could turn that interdepartmental activity into a client-facing engagement tool? Chris Briggs, founder and CEO of Touchpoint Games (TPG), helps distributors and manufacturers do just that. Jason caught up with Chris to learn how companies can use gamification to run sports pools that boost brand awareness, strengthen customer relationships, and drive sales.
“[Sports is] something that brings us together,” says Chris. What better way to entertain and engage customers than by tapping into our cultural desire to share joy? Sports also provide a safe shorthand for creating connections. “Sales reps like to have something fun to talk about with their customers.” Focusing on sports keeps the conversation light but energized, observes Chris. “Ultimately, it comes down to the relationship with your customer. When you’re a salesperson, especially for a distributor, you don’t want to be talking about pricing all the time because you’re selling the same products as your competitors.”
Chris began TPG almost by accident. “It all started from a random conversation I had with a gentleman who owned a company,” he laughs. “He had a football squares pool. His clients loved that they could win a prize just for being a customer.” Chris took the idea to his roommate, and the two built out the pool for him. “We realized it could capture people’s attention really well,” he says. “So we started adding gamification.” 12 years later, TPG manages pools for top brands around the country, helping them stay top-of-mind in an increasingly noisy marketing environment.
Gamification is the application of typical elements of game playing (e.g., point scoring, competition with others, rules of play) to activities such as online marketing, product training, etc. “It’s just a really good way to get people to see and engage with the content that these companies already have or their manufacturers have,” says Chris.
Everybody likes getting a free t-shirt or fancy pen. Truth is, printed logos rarely drive sales. Sports pools can.
Game on!
QUOTES
“I think the biggest thing that we found was that sales reps, they like to have something fun to talk about with their customers.”
“So gamification is essentially making something fun in order to drive more engagement with something.”
“One of the biggest pitches we make to these distributors is, Hey, let’s use that co-op money better and use it as a way to drive more sales.”
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Distribution Talk is produced by The Distribution Team, a consulting services firm dedicated to helping wholesale distribution clients remove barriers to profitability, generate wealth, and achieve personal goals.
This episode was edited by The Creative Impostor Studios
Special thanks to our sponsors for this episode: Moblico, helping businesses do more business on mobile devices; and INxSQL Distribution Software, an integrated distribution ERP software designed for the wholesale and distribution industry.
