60 Team Building Ideas For Key B2B Corporate Events, Meetings and Conferences

For many B2B corporate events, team building is Job #1.

Your management wants their meeting attendees to transform from a group of strangers and acquaintances into a unified team aligned with your company culture and strategy.

Because after the meeting’s over, they’ll be much more willing to help their new friends than their unknown coworkers. Plus they’ll be less likely to leave, reducing turnover and increasing productivity, sales, and profits.

To help you achieve your team building event objective, we’ve assembled 60 team building activity ideas you can build into a digital game your attendees can play on their smartphones throughout your event.

Many of these ideas have been used by actual SocialPoint customers in the games we created for their corporate events, while others are further ideas tailored to key use case games we can design for your attendees with our game platform.

17 Team Building Ideas For Sales Kickoffs (SKOs)

1. Get the game going before your event even starts with pre-event quizzes about company history that boosts sales reps’ understanding of your company achievements and culture.
2. Offer photo challenges that reward salespeople for taking a selfie with their colleagues from marketing, IT, HR, and more, which creates a gallery of team photos you can share on the big screen at the event, or on webpages after the event.
3. Send your teams you want to bond (be it within or across sales teams, regions, or cross-functional departments) on a fun scavenger hunt where they work together to win prizes.
4. Display a leaderboard that shows the ranking and points of your teams (by region, industry segment, or other groupings) so the team members work harder and help their team members to score higher.
5. Give teams points towards rewards for when their team members complete tasks such as the IT security training, giving your sales team greater motivation to complete a necessary task they might otherwise avoid.
6. Provide points towards rewards for the teams that met quota the previous year or quarter, uploading the points via Excel spreadsheet during the event.
7. Reward the sales team that gets the highest collective score on trivia games about company history, given during a break between sessions or activities.
8. Using our “game within a game” capability, offer a separate team building challenge on day two and day three that offers a chance to win a prize, even to attendees who feel they are too far behind in points to win the big overall prizes, so more attendees stay engaged through the entire conference.
9. Reward the teams that get the best scores on quizzes given after breakout sessions on sales techniques or competitive overview or market dynamics, to motivate them to pay more attention to the content.
10. Reward the teams that get the best scores on quizzes about your new products introduced at the SKO, to motivate them to learn the new products better.
11. Using our staff-scored challenges, give points to the teams that successfully role play a sales pitch or customer service interaction.
12. Using our staff-scored challenges, give points to the teams whose people complete the early morning 5K run or yoga workout.
13. Prompt more of your salespeople to collectively visit the vendor show floor by giving the teams points for meeting your event sponsors there.
14. Your entire sales organization can still play together as individuals and teams in one overall game.
15. You can decide where game content applies to all sales teams versus a specific team (such as a new product introduction within a specific industry vertical only they sell to).
16. Use a game theme that is explicitly focused on team building, such as “Stronger Together” or “We Are One”. See other sales meeting themes here.
17. If your SKO includes an awards ceremony, include a photo challenge that will later provide a glamorous photo gallery of your sales leaders and company leadership, all dressed in their best outfits.

14 Team Building Ideas For All Employee / All Hands Meetings

1. Create teams across departments, so your employees develop new relationships with fellow employees they may not have met before.
2. Include in your game photo challenges that reward employees for taking a selfie with the newest employees or the most veteran employees, or other creative ways to get employees to talk to each other, such as all left-handed employees.
3. Reward the teams that score the highest on a quiz given at the end of the State of the Company presentation about the content shared.
4. Have a wall at your event covered with historical artifacts from your company history, with QR codes next to the artifacts. Employees scan the QR codes, then answer trivia questions about those historical items for points towards prizes, teaching them about your company history.
5. If your All-Employee meeting includes your employees’ families, get them involved in some of the challenges and rewards, so your employee’s families have more good feelings about your company. Or, while attending family members can play, only employees themselves can compete towards prizes. Your choice.
6. Using our staff-scored challenges, give points to the teams whose people complete the caused-based activity you host.
7. Offer points for employees taking a selfie with a 10 year or greater veteran, so newer employees can better visualize a long career with your company.
8. Offer points for employees taking selfies during the event with funny props, and then share those photos on the big screen when you bring everyone back together.
9. If your all-employee meeting is to celebrate a milestone anniversary (like 10 or 25 or 50 or 100 years), include game challenges such as trivia games about company history, or selfies with the longest-serving employees.
10. If your all-employee meeting is driven by a company merger, group employees from both companies into every team, to help them get to know each other.
11. If your all-employee meeting is driven by a company merger, create Trivia questions about the best of each companies’ history and products to help both companies’ employees to better value the merger.
12. If your all-employee meeting is driven by a company merger, include photo challenges that reward employees for taking a picture with someone from the other company, to help them get to know each other.
13. If your all-employee meeting is only for employees from one large department that has never met in person, fill the game with fun challenges, like unusual group selfies or trivia games with mostly funny questions, and a few company history questions thrown in.
14. If your all-employee meeting is a holiday party, give teams points for selfies wearing clothing or props about that holiday, and for answering trivia questions about that holiday.

12 Team Building Ideas For Regional Manager Meetings

1. Create teams that compete for prizes, where the team members are all from one region, which makes teams easy to group (the West, the South, the Northeast), or from across different regions so they get to know new colleagues they otherwise might not know yet.
2. Create teams where your regional managers are combined with employees from other departments that support them, so they can create better relationships that lead to greater collaboration and increased productivity.
3. Include a photo challenge that rewards your regional managers for taking a selfie with another regional manager who started working for your company in the same year.
4. Strengthen your regional managers’ attachment to your company with a trivia game played for points towards prizes with questions about your company’s history of achievement.
5. Give teams points towards rewards for when their team members complete the DEI or other training, giving your regional manager teams greater motivation to complete a necessary task they might otherwise avoid.
6. Group your regional managers into teams, and give the team a prize that scores the highest score on a quiz given directly after the keynote presentation about the content shared.
7. Using our staff-scored challenges, give points to the teams that successfully role play a negotiation, a manager/employee interaction, or the team that has the most members who complete a role play exercise.
8. Give your regional managers or franchisees a fun experience with entertaining and low-stress challenges that reward them with points towards prizes for taking funny group photos or playing an easy, trivia game with only funny questions about the event location (such as Disney trivia if in Orlando). They will associate the fun with your company, making them care more for your company.
9. If your regional managers meeting attendees are franchisees, create a photo challenge that offers points for attendees who take a selfie with the newest franchisees, so your new franchisees feel welcome and they get to know their peers who can help onboard them faster.
10. Using our “game within a game” capability, offer a team building scavenger hunt to find objects or complete an Amazing Race-style journey to create friendship and fun. 
11. Create sub games around the content, learning objectives and preferred behaviors for each regional manager team. Use leaderboards and rewards to celebrate and bond the best players and teams.
12. You can decide where game content applies to all regional managers teams versus a specific team (such as product-related info for products only offered in the south versus the north)

7 Team Building Ideas For Customer + User Conferences

1. Group your customers into teams to help instill community, and so your customers gain a network that can help them use your product better to solve their business problems.
2. Combine your customers and employees into teams to create stronger bonds between customers and your employees, so your customers are more emotionally attached to your company, and your employees feel more satisfied because they can see the difference they are making in your customers’ lives.
3. Include a photo challenge where your customers win points towards prizes by taking selfies wearing company-branded clothing (shirts, jackets, vests, hats, sun glasses), bonding them with each other and your company.
4. Reward teams of customers who complete a staff-scored challenge about how to best use your product to solve a problem in a certain situation.
5. Reward teams of customers who scan QR codes placed next to your new products that trigger videos about your new product.
6. Give your customers a survey about new product ideas or customer satisfaction to make them more appreciative towards your company.
7. Offer really cool company swag at the conference as prizes so they will be reminded of your company’s awesomeness all year long.

5 Team Building Ideas For Training

1. Create games that blend in challenges around the training content you want them to learn, with challenges that create greater interaction between your employees, plus teach them about your company history, achievements, mission, values, and culture.
2. If you set up a game for training for key employees that you give regionally around the country, include challenges like fun photo challenges that reward employee interactions between training sessions to promote greater team building.
3. If you host your training at your headquarters, include in your game a selfie photo of your training group or teams wearing branded gear in front of the big company sign or a statue of the company founder. Give the photo to each new employee after the event, and use the photo for internal newsletters or websites.
4. Set up your training attendees into teams, and have these teams compete for the highest quiz scores given after training breakouts, to motivate them to retain your content more and to help each other learn better.
5. Include in your training event game points towards prizes for attending team-building activities and social events.

5 Team Building Ideas For Any B2B Corporate Event

1. Include and display team leaderboards in your game, to create competitive rivalries with other teams, motivating them to work together to beat their colleagues, win prizes, and rank well on the team leaderboard.
2. Include and display “My Team” leaderboard in your game, to cause attendees to find colleagues at the bottom of the team leaderboard and encourage them to play, or help them complete their activities to improve the team score.
3. Offer instant winner prizes to every team that completes certain tasks, to motivate and reward teams for completing challenges or earning a threshold of points. 
4. Create incentive for your teams to work together in the game by offering a “first to finish” prize for the first one or more teams that finish a series of challenges.
5. Give points towards prizes when attendees attend social events within your conference or meeting, motivating them to get to know these people in a less official capacity.

Use These 60 Ideas To Strengthen Team Building At Your B2B Corporate Events

Some B2B corporate events, like Sales Kickoffs and All Employee Meetings, often want team building to be their top objective. But not all event types do. 

Other event types, such as Customer + User Conferences and Training, may put learning or sales growth as their top objectives – but still include team building as a secondary, yet important objective. 

We hope you found these ideas insightful and useful. If you want our help implementing these ideas using our APG event gamification platform at your events, click here to download our APG brochure and video.