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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.

Sales reps love to compete and win. Savvy Sales Leaders reinforce the event’s objectives by aligning game activities to the event content.

Each year sales leaders pull their sales organization together for a national sales meeting or a sales kickoff.  

The goal of these meetings is one part inspiration, one part education, and one part team-building. Leaders want to put their teams through the paces and get them invigorated and ready for an exciting and challenging year ahead. 

The agenda could look something like this:

(1) Review of last year

(2) Plans for the upcoming year

(3) Selling skills improvement & role play

(4) Market dynamics

(5) Understanding competition

(6) Meet your internal business partners (IT, HR, Marketing, etc.)

One of the challenges most sales leaders face is how can they deliver the content in a fun, engaging way that is not 17,286 PowerPoint slides. ADHD people will go off the rails sitting and listening to all those slides!

Three Different Ways to Gamify Your Annual Sales Kickoff

Many sales kickoffs turn to competitive activities and event gamification to appeal to the competitive instincts of sales representatives.  

In a recent CEIR (Center for Exhibition Industry Research) report, 67% of attendees said they preferred to learn through games rather than lectures. This data mirrors the scientific research that suggests lectures are not as effective learning tools as compared to learning through role-play and exercises or other participatory techniques.

If you are new to gamification, you might be wondering what type of games work well in sales kickoffs? I could quickly tell you that it depends on your goals and objectives. However, there are three typical national sales meeting event gamification approaches that we see from sales leaders:

• Team-Based Interactive Trivia Game. These games usually take place in the general session. It could be played with a small audience on stage or with the entire audience. Attendees form into teams. They participate in the event app on their phones. Scores tabulate in real-time. Then they compete against the other teams in the room. Leaderboards help keep score and show the winners. More adventurous games could kick players out for missing the answers to questions. Learn more about team event trivia games here.
• Scavenger Hunt. These are typically aligned with an evening activity where attendees work in teams to complete a series of challenges that are generally photo-based and tour around a city. After nearly 2 hours, they arrive at a final event destination. Photos captured from the scavenger hunt are projected on a big screen to recap the event and celebrate success.
• Multi-Day Event Gamification. These games rely on a series of activity-based challenges that attendees must complete to earn points. While earning points, the attendees get a chance to win other prizes and rewards. Usually, on the last night during the awards ceremony (assuming yours is on the final night) – the game will come to a conclusion with the winners announced and prizes awarded. Try a sample Sales Kick-0ff game.

Pros and Cons for Different Event Game Types

Pro for team-based Trivia: For example, the team-based interactive trivia can be set up to use 20 minutes in the general session and get everyone excited for the day. As one sales leader says to me, “The game gets attendees excited and brings up the energy in the room.” Sometimes it’s essential to get the energy up in the room.  

Cons for team-based Trivia: The game’s goal will be to create a high energy, fun experience. It won’t cover the 2-3 days of the event – unless the game is used again at multiple sessions.

Pro for Scavenger Hunt: I love this idea for team building and fun games. It’s a great way to bring together remote teams of field sales employees to get to know each other and work together. Also, the game can be used to help the team get to see the event location and then arrive at a final dinner destination.

Cons for Scavenger Hunt: The challenges and activities in these games are more team building oriented. Often, the quests don’t align to the content of the organization. 

Pros for Multi-Day Gamification: These games keep attendees engaged throughout the 2-3 days of the conference. Typically they are aligned to the national sales meeting theme. Organizers can coordinate the game’s conclusion with the final night celebration. These games are designed to encourage certain behaviors of attendees – such as visiting the trade show floor, participating in buyer-seller role-play exercises, etc. Several event stakeholders can contribute to providing content for these games that can return data and analytics for post-event usage. 

Cons for Multi-Day Gamification: Creating a multi-day game requires effort to set up and plan the game. For some clients, aligning challenges with the event’s objectives can be a challenge.

23 Content-Based Activities For Your Game

Below is a long list of challenges and activities organized around nine different sales meeting objectives. These ideas have been used in real events by real clients. Think about this list as a way to jump-start your brainstorming around the idea of a bunch of challenges. 

These challenges will help you do the following:

• Align your game to your sales kickoff objectives.
• Align your game to event content, such as role-playing exercises with your sales skills (it helps them take it seriously).
• Help you capture ideas and opinions for employee engagement, future product ideas, or the voice of the customer.
• Encourage participation in leadership, group work, role-play or team building activity.

Use these challenges as inspiration to get your team energized and thinking about similar possibilities for your upcoming national sales meeting.  

Introducing And Promoting Your Game

There will be a lot going on in your event. Not everyone is paying attention to the one announcement or even ten announcements. So, it’s essential to get the message out in different ways. Here are some strategies that have worked in the past:

The Best Idea: In my experience, the best game results came when sales leaders announced the game, explained the WIIFM (What’s In It For Me), and announced the prizes right from the first session. 

However, your sales leadership may not agree with this approach. Here are some other strategies that clients have used — and you can use more than one:

• Signage around the venue
• Table tents on tables
• Add an Icon in the Event App
• Show the Leaderboards during walk-in and walkout
• Show the Leaderboards on monitors
• Use InApp Notifications
• General Announcement from the stage

Concluding Your Game: Celebrating the Victors

When the game is over, celebrate the victors and bring your game to a dramatic finish. You might be wondering – how can I do that?  

Here are some ideas that others have used to choose their event game winners:

• Announce the Winners: If you are short on time, you can do the following to wrap up your game on the final day. Show the leaderboard and announce the winners on stage. Doing it from the stage gives players extra recognition for their effort. 
• Recap the Game: Recap the game’s goals, objectives, and share statistics from the game such as the number of players, challenges completed, etc. 
• Grand Prize Drawing with a Name Wheel: Load the list of players who qualify for the grand prize drawing into your prize wheel. Then spin to pick a winner for each of your grand prizes. The use of the prize wheel in the final event creates drama and excitement for the attendees – especially when they see their name on the prize wheel. 
• Grand Prize Drawing with Awesome Prizes: Put your top prizes on the wheel and bring up your top 5 game players. Spin the wheel to see what prize each will win. Be sure to have 1 or 2 silly prizes, such as a fanny pack, to give the crowd a good laugh. Be sure to put a small surprise gift inside the fanny pack, so your winner doesn’t feel cheated.
• Final Event Challenge (Most Advanced): Bring the top players up on stage to compete in a final round for the grand prize. Many will do a quick on-stage quiz where players answer a few trivia questions and grab the ultimate prize.  

Conclusion

Your national sales meeting doesn’t have to be done the same way as before.  You can still communicate what you want your sales team to learn, but use gamification to motivate greater participation. 

Because there are many games, challenges, and activities to choose from, you can adapt them to best fit your audience and messages. When you choose fun, engaging activities, actively promote them to your sales team, and then dramatically award the winners, your event will be a greater success than ever before. 

If you need help creating a fun interactive game for your national sales meeting or customer event, check out SocialPoint’s Audience Participation Game. The Audience Participation Game is an easy way to create games that engage attendees throughout your event.   The software integrates into your Event App and uses progress bars, leaderboards and raffle wheels to keep players engaged. 

Need the best national sales meeting themes? Of course, you do, because the stakes are so high.

At your annual sales meeting you’ll have your entire high-powered sales force and senior management team all in one place. Likely making it the most visible event you’ll plan all year. But hey, no pressure!

We’re here to help you with proven sales meeting themes for today’s business reality. We’ve gathered 52 national sales meeting themes that were actually chosen by your peers in 2019. Themes that multi-billion dollar corporations have recently invested big money in.

3 Most-Searched Sales Meeting Theme Categories: Motivational, Funny, For Growth

When sales leaders go looking for sales meeting theme ideas, they usually turn to the internet (like you probably did). These sales leaders don’t just search for random theme ideas; they search for themes that are motivational, funny, or about growth.  Here’s the number of monthly searches for each:

Motivational themes are by far the most sought after (with 210 searches a month), with a tie between funny themes or themes for growth (with 110 searches each per month). However, these 3 theme categories were close, but not exactly what actually was implemented in 2019. Based on our new research, somewhere along the road to meeting implementation, “funny” got lost in sales meeting themes, replaced by … well, you’ll see in a little.

3 Most-Used Categories of Theme Ideas in 2019: Motivational, For Growth, And Team-Building

Unlike others, we decided not to simply provide you with a long list of rehashed sales meeting themes written by others from years gone by. That’s because we didn’t want to share with you a list of potentially outdated themes corporations no longer use.

Instead, we researched to see what corporations are using NOW to rally their sales teams: The themes they picked in 2019.

Why does that matter? Because today’s sales leaders are faced with different challenges than those 5 or 10 years ago:

• Economic cycle phase position
• Difficulty in hiring and retaining top talent
• Increasing influence of technology in buying, selling, and lead generation
• Customer expectation changes
• Shifting competitive landscape amidst digital disruption

Therefore, the themes corporations chose in 2019 reflect this new reality.

So, to find actual 2019 sales meeting themes, we scoured the web.  We searched for pictures, videos, apps, tweets, shares, posts, press releases – whatever we could find.  National sales meetings are simply not as well-promoted as corporations’ other events, yet there was proof out there.

In the end, we found 52 sales meeting themes that corporations, many publicly listed, used at their 2019 events.  You can see some of the pictures of their ball room stages, graphics, and theme identities in this blog post.

We also grouped their themes into 3 categories. However, these 3 theme categories had one big change: while funny themes were popular in internet searches, team-building themes were popular in the actual themes used.

And why team building? Likely because many corporations want to instill in their sales force how their success depends on how well sales works together and with others in their company.

Here’s how we categorized the 52 companies’ sales meeting themes actually used in 2019:

• Motivational sales meeting themes: 19
• Sales meeting themes for growth: 18
• Team building sales meeting themes: 15

Let’s take a look at the actual themes and which corporations used them, grouping them among our three categories.

19 Motivational Sales Meeting Themes Used In 2019

Motivational sales meeting themes are chosen to get the sales force fired up! Inspire them to burst out of the of the meeting rooms and storm the castle.

1. Activate — Samsung
2. All In — DJO Global and The Home Depot
3. Game On — BriovaRx
4. Grit & Passion — Intersect ENT
5. If you build it, Sales will come — ITW Global Brands
6. Ignite — Synnex
7. In It To Win It — Quincy Compressor
8. Maximum Velocity — Sherwin Williams – Performance Coatings Group
9. Momentum In The Mountains (in Park City, Utah) — AIA Corporation
10. No Limits — Occidental Petroleum
11. On Fire — Crane Worldwide Logistics
12. Play To Win — Smith and Nephew
13. Playing To Win — Behr Paint
14. Re!magine — Pearson
15. Rise Up — Sterling Computers
16. Run The Hunt — Tech Data
17. The Extra Mile — Henry Schein Medical
18. The Future Is Now — Employers Insurance
19. Where The Stars Align (event in Hollywood) — CDI

If you are looking to motivate your sales force attending your national sales meeting, you need to look at event gamification. Event gamification motivates your sales team to be more engaged and involved with your meeting content, so they better absorb and retain your key messages. Learn more about event gamification here.

18 Sales Meeting Themes For Growth Used In 2019

Sales meeting themes for growth focus on two kinds of growth: sales growth and personal growth.  This is where there is a strong overlap with motivational themes, as personal growth and motivation can be so similar.

20. #Smarter — Jack Henry & Associates
21. Be A Star — Lexis Nexis Risk Sales Meeting
22. be the SOLUTION — Spectrum
23. Building Your Business — DeRoyal
24. Commitment To Excellence — MicroCare
25. Digification — Pinnacle
26. Elevate Your Game — Allied Solutions
27. Empower Your Possibilities — Technologent
28. Expanding Success — Mitsubishi Electric
29. Expanding The Possibilities — School Health
30. Innovate — Infinex
31. Live On Purpose — TIDI
32. Make Your Mark — FootJoy
33. Next Level — Acelity
34. Perform Like A Champion — Vector Solutions
35. Stand Out — Essilor
36. Stronger — Phillips IGTD
37. Trained to Reign — Daltile

Want your sales meeting to instill within your team the skills to grow their sales? Our Attendee Participation Game will engage more of your sales force meeting attendees, and keep them engaged longer, with your growth-oriented meeting content. Learn more about our Attendee Participation Game here.

15 Team-Building Sales Meeting Themes Used In 2019

Team-building sales meeting themes are all about the collective power of the company.  Some companies even build their company name into the theme.  But most of all, the word “together” is the clue that this sales meeting theme is all about the team.

To be fair, there is a lot of overlap between motivational themes and growth themes – companies want to motivate their teams to grow sales, after all.  And, for many of the themes that included team building, there was a secondary aspect of motivation or growth as well.

38. From Many, Wex — WEX
39. It Starts With Us — National Safety Apparel
40. Leading The Way — Source Atlantic
41. On The Move Together — Hanover Insurance
42. One Nationwide, Today, Tomorrow, and Beyond — Nationwide
43. Pulling Together — EFCO
44. Reaching New Heights … Together — Tessco
45. Real Teams Win Together — Campbells Soups
46. TEAM — Merit Medical
47. The Power Of Us — Pierre Fabre Group
48. Transforming Care Together — Press Ganey
49. We Are One — Henry Schein
50. We Own It. — Quotient
51. Win As One — RF Technologies
52. Winning Together — Computacenter

A great annual sales meeting theme helps your sales team go home with an indelible memory of the single message you want them to retain. Yet, like a great Haiku poem, a great theme is open to multiple interpretations, so that you can attach many overlapping messages to it. We hope you found ideas and inspirations to help you choose the theme that best fits your company and meeting goals

If you’d like to learn how you can keep more of your attendees engaged in your event content throughout your entire sales or customer meeting, try our Sales Kickoff Sample Game.  We’ll help you more deeply engage and educate your attendees about your event content, and provide metrics to demonstrate how much learning they retained.

I don’t know about you, but personally, I have a hard time sitting in a general session listening to speakers go on and on and on. If I am not sitting near the front the whole thing turns into blah, blah, blah. And, my mind starts to wander.  In virtual meetings, it’s even worse. 

However, if there is a way for me to participate in the session, I am much more likely to stay connected to the content and the message.  

That’s where event gamification can help tremendously. Event gamification creates a fun way to gamify virtual meetings and let attendees participate in the session.

We have created thousands of games for different event audiences. Here are five different event gamification tactics that improve attendee engagement.  Consider one for your next virtual meeting or in-person event. The tactics will work both online and in-person. 

Tactic #1: Organize A Group Trivia Game

During COVID, Group trivia games were the most popular way to gamify a virtual meeting. Group trivia worked because it created a shared, memorable experience among the virtual attendees. If you are looking for high-impact-minimal-effort game then a group trivia game is the way to go.

There are many ways to implement a group trivia game:

• Team gameplay vs Individual gameplay
• Single trivia game vs Multiple quizzes with cumulative leaderboard
• Emcee driven game vs Play at your own pace

Everyone cheered – on the inside – when Sally surged past Joe on the final answer to claim the victory.  Players laughed together when Ben from Accounting left his speaker on and his son yelled “It’s B dad! it’s B! Press the answer!” We all learned together when Steve in IT (again forgetting to mute himself) said “Hey Google – where is Machu Picchu?”

At in-person meetings –  all you need to do is put a big leaderboard up on the big screen of your general session during the walk out and give attendees a link to the game. You will be shocked at the high number of people who play and play. You will get tens of thousands of questions answered. No joke!

Knowing that people will play, the key to your success will be aligning your trivia questions with the meeting content. If you use a product like SocialPoint you will be able to do two things: (1) create a set of trivia questions around your event’s learning objectives and report on it. In addition, (2) you will be able to measure an individual’s performance and do an analysis of the individual questions they answered correctly and incorrectly.

Plus, this type of game does not require staff onsite, it’s easy to set up, you can brand the game, the player instructions are simple, it integrates into your event app AND it doesn’t require general session time.  If you are just looking for a fun afternoon of trivia or a game to play during a break – We have lots and lots of ready-to-play trivia themes and trivia question sets. 

This is very simple event gamification. You can easily do this in your event.

Learn about SocialPoint’s interactive trivia solution

Tactic #2:  Use Spin to Win for Prize Drawings

How do you pick winners for your drawings? Is there any drama and excitement?

Don’t overlook the power of a spin to win virtual prize wheel to attract lots of attention in a ballroom or on the trade show floor. Our trade show clients sometimes get long lines in their booth with visitors waiting for their chance to spin to win.   And, our event clients wake up sleepy audiences on day 3 with spin to win prize drawings.

Spin to win works as you might imagine. Using SocialPoint, you have ½ of a wheel visible so you can have an unlimited number of prizes. The wheel will randomly pick a winner based on the inventory available. If you are doing a drawing and the people’s names are your prizes — your inventory quantity will be 1. The wheel can be triggered with a button, through web forms or from one of your event production crew. Then, the prize wheel will spin, prizes will go by and one will eventually emerge as the winner. 

Here are two effective ways to use a spin to win prize wheel:

Name Wheel:  Using Names instead of Prizes

One client told us recently that the Spin to Win created a lot of excitement when picking winners from a drawing. She said that the virtual prize wheel woke up the whole ballroom at 9:30 in the morning after a long night of socializing. People kept looking for their name to see if it would pop up as the winner.

Golden Ticket:  Names Under Seat. Limited Prizes.

Stick a handful of golden tickets under seats in the ballroom. Let attendees discover them and come up to the front. Then, bring out a ginormous spin to win wheel (or display it on the big screen if you are going digital). Let the attendees spin to win a prize. Once they have won, then you can allow them to take the prize or spin again to see if they can get something better. Of course….the second prize could be worse too.  This format adds a little excitement to your morning.  

Learn about even more uses of the Virtual Prize Wheel in events by clicking here. 

Tactic #3: Launch a Digital Trade Show Passport Game for Exhibitor Engagement

The digital trade show passport game is a simple way to drive attendees to your trade show floor and into exhibitor booths. Using SocialPoint you can reward points for participation, enter players into prize drawings or give them spins on the virtual prize wheel.  

For example, players could spin the virtual prize wheel after visiting 10 booths and then earn a second spin after visiting another 20 booths. 

 Another advantage of using a digital trade show passport game is that you will get good data to share with your sponsors (and exhibitors) about the people who visited their booth and the game’s performance.

Click here if you need help giving your Trade Show Passport Game an Extreme Makeover with Event Gamification Software.

Tactic #4: Use a Trivia Bar to Drive Attendees to the Show Floor

If option 3 didn’t sound good to you, then you will want to read about the trivia bar!

One afternoon we received a call from an insurance industry executive. She wanted to know how to get her sales people (independent reps) to go to the trade show area at her national sales meeting.  She had used trade show passports in the past, but she wanted something more interactive and content-oriented than just stamping passports and entering people’s names into a drawing.

We set up a trivia bar with a large leaderboard on the show floor.  There was a prize for the top score. The leaderboard was very public. The exhibitors (or sponsors) provided the content for the game. Attendees who visit sponsor booths have a leg up on attendees who don’t visit the booths.

Since that first event – sales leaders from tech, healthcare and other industries have used this tactic in their national sales meetings and customer events. It’s a simple, yet effective solution. 

Using this game, you can expect the following:

(1) More attendees will hang around on your show floor to play the game.

(2) Connect attendees to sponsor/exhibitor content and marketing messages.

(3) Encourage booth traffic visits.

(4) Summary reports that provide high level participation metrics and detailed by sponsor reporting on sponsor questions.

Tactic #5: Gamify Your Entire Virtual Meeting or In-Person Conference

Perhaps you want to weave gamification throughout your entire event. In that case, you probably want to do three things:

• Reinforce learning objectives
• Change Behavior
• Make your virtual meeting or in-person event fun

Players earn points for completing challenges to encourage participants. Then, they can gain instant rewards, drawing entries, and spins on the virtual prize wheel. For competitive groups, the leaderboards and team leaderboards drive participation. 

If the challenges are designed around the learning objectives and the behaviors you want to create, then the game will be fun and help you achieve your business objectives simultaneously. 

Using an Attendee Participation game, you can expect the following: 

1. Engagement across all 2-3 days of your event. 
2. Massive amount of data on attendee understanding of learning objectives.
3. Data on booth visits and sponsor engagement.
4. Integration with your event app and virtual event platform.  

If you need challenge ideas for your next sales kick-off or national sales meeting, click here. 

Final Event Gamification Thoughts

If you are looking for a way to gamify virtual meetings or create fun in-person meetings, any of the ideas above will improve your event. For between $100 – $2,000, you can have a game up and running quickly.

Also, beware of the pitfalls that have trapped some of your colleagues in the past.  Please avoid these event gamification mistakes!

If you need help picking a game for you event – then try our new Game Selector tool.

Many meeting planners have the trade show passport game in their toolbox of tricks to drive attendees to their trade show floor.  While some criticize the game as boring or out-of-date, the truth is that it seems to work.  

Perhaps it’s time to give the trade show passport game an extreme makeover?

What is the Trade Show Passport Game?

For those reading that don’t know this trade show game, the trade show passport game is a simple game designed to get attendees to visit multiple exhibitor booths in exchange for a chance to win a prize. Attendees are given paper passports that they can get stamped at exhibitor booths. Once your card has been filled up, you can go enter the drawing.

The goal is to get traffic onto the trade show floor and visitors into booths. Meeting planners want exhibitors to feel like the trade show was well attended.

What’s wrong with the trade show passport game today?

In today’s world of mobile devices, event apps and social media, there are several issues to consider.  First, the game only appeals to a type of attendee called “collectors” – these are attendees that need to get a collection…or, in the case of this game, collect all of the stamps. However, since collectors only make up about 30% of your attendees, what are you going to do about the other 70%?  Second, the paper version of the game doesn’t provide any data on how many people visited an exhibitor’s booth. Or, if those visitors engaged with content or had a meaningful conversation. Finally, the prize drawing is about as boring as it gets. You draw a name out of a bowl at a specific time that was well advertised (and well attended) if you are lucky! That’s it.  No drama. No lights. No excitement.

How to give your Trade Show Passport Game an Extreme Makeover

Now that we know what a trade show passport game is and what’s wrong with it. Let’s take a look at 5 ways we can makeover the trade show passport game with event gamification.

1. Integrate the game into your Event App instead of passing out paper cards

By putting the game inside the event app, your attendees will only have one place to go to engage with your event.  Now your game will be digital and something attendees can interact with along with the rest of their event activities.

2. Have Digital Check-ins at the booth, instead of getting stamped from an exhibitor

It looks like there are three ways that vendors allow attendees to do digital check-ins. Option 1 is to scan a QR code. This is easy to set up, but doesn’t require any conversations between the exhibitor and the attendee. Also, it requires the attendees to know how to use a QR code. For some that’s easier said than done.  Option 2 is to use a kiosk where attendees can engage in a self-service way. Perhaps there is a survey or a “question of the day” or short quiz that is completed along with the check-in. This option is great for sales meetings or customer events…however, it might not be practical for trade shows with over 100 exhibitors. Option 3 is to give each exhibitor a code. This is an easy way to scale up to 100’s of exhibitors. It’s pretty easy for exhibitors to follow and easy to execute.

[We like Option 2 the best, because we think it’s the best way to connect attendees to content.]

3. Use a Name Wheel to add Drama to the Grand Prize Drawing

As I mentioned above, one of the problems with the paper-based passport game is that the drawing can feel anticlimactic.  However, if you use a virtual prize wheel, you get the excitement of a spinning wheel and seeing people’s names on the wheel. Finally you get the drama of the prize wheel stopping on the winner’s name…and just missing someone else’s name.

Our clients have told us that it’s super cool to see the names spinning across the virtual prize wheel then stopping on the winner.  They say it especially works in the morning during the general session. People enjoy the excitement.

4. Use a Tiered Reward System

The Tiered Reward system gives you more ways to reward attendees and keep them engaged in the game.  We would recommend that you offer several smaller prizes that people can win for going to just ½ of the booths.  In my experience building games, we find that the tiered approach helps engage attendees who want to win a prize, but are unwilling or unable to invest in going around to all of the booths.

Unlike the paper trade show passport which would be hard to track and manage this type of reward system – with event gamification software it’s much easier. You have a digital record of the booths attendees visited, the rewards they have earned and the prizes they have redeemed. So it will be super easy to implement something like this in your event.

5. Collect Measurable Data from the Game

The analytics of an event gamification system help you measure overall participation, prizes awarded and booth traffic at individual booths (including who visited which booths).  This data can be invaluable to sponsors to let them know the role the game played in driving attendees into their booths.

Final Thoughts

We are well into the new millennium. It’s time for your trade show passport game to join the 21st century, too.  Give your trade show passport game an extreme makeover with event gamification software. You will be glad that you did.

If you’d like to learn how you can keep more of your attendees engaged in your event content throughout your entire sales or customer meeting, click here to read more about our Audience Participation Game, or click here to ask for a product demo. We’ll help you more deeply engage and educate your attendees about your event content, and provide metrics to demonstrate how much learning they retained.