SACRAMENTO KINGSHoopla Helps Pro Basketball Team Motivate Sales Team Performance

Case Study

When the Sacramento Kings changed ownership in May 2013, there was a renewed sense of excitement among fans. This ownership change meant that the NBA team would remain in Sacramento instead of moving to Seattle, which provided a unique opportunity.

“We were experiencing a rebirth of our organization and our franchise,” says Sacramento Kings Vice President of Ticket Sales Stephen Leopold. “There was a lot of excitement in the market, and we wanted to capitalize on that and seize this opportunity to deliver record-breaking sales numbers, and bring that excitement that was happening in the market into the sales organization.”

Before implementing Hoopla, the Sacramento Kings sales team already had a culture of friendly competition and reward. “We believe heavily

in incenting and rewarding for high achievement,” says

Leopold. The team, which includes

a very high call volume inside sales group and full-time reps in other categories, is highly motivated and incented. According

to Leopold, “people know they have to

work hard, but they’re also rewarded for those efforts.”

The competition between the sales reps is more than just a game. “There’s a strong desire to be at the top of the leaderboard, especially in our inside sales department,” Leopold says. “It’s a

10-month program and it’s up or out, so they’re looking to be number one on the sales board.” Once the Sacramento Kings decided to use Hoopla to motivate, recognize and reward

its sales team, things moved very quickly. “We signed the deal and had some Hoopla training at 5:00 p.m. on a Monday, and we were up and running with our full-season campaign at 8:30 the next morning,” says Sacramento Kings Senior Manager of CRM and Analytics Todd Randolph.

According to Randolph, Hoopla provided the organization’s key stakeholders with insight into the hard work that the salespeople do every day. “It’s a conduit and an amplifier for that excitement, and was a really important piece of the puzzle as we relaunched into the Sacramento market.”

The Sacramento Kings use Hoopla as a mirror

"Hoopla was a really

important piece of

the puzzle as we

relaunched into the

market."

to reflect what the sales team is already doing. Each rep already had specific goals, which were loaded into Hoopla and made visible on Hoopla TV. Leopold enjoys the accountability and motivation

Hoopla provides. “There is a general feeling of excitement when a team member updates a field in Salesforce to close an opportunity and the gong goes off,” he says. “The rep’s picture comes up, the entire office sees it and people clap and cheer. Hoopla has fit in very well and helps to reinforce our reward-on-success culture.”

The new system generated palpable excitement among the Sacramento Kings sales team. “There was a buzz in the office when we rolled this out” says Leopold. “We’ve even done sales contests where some of the prize awards, included the ability to change your Hoopla action event music as many times as you want.”

The Hoopla implementation at the Sacramento Kings goes beyond the sales floor. Because the sales team works on the opposite end of the building from the rest of the Kings employees, everyone with a TV in their office can now tune in to Hoopla TV and get instant updates on sales results. This means the executive team is more tuned in to the day-to-day activities and accomplishments of the sales team. “Everybody from the president on down has Hoopla on their TVs and will watch sales updates as they come in,” says Leopold. “They love to be able to see, in real time, how our sales department is doing on a cool platform like Hoopla.”

Using Hoopla, the Sacramento Kings can easily create different contests and leaderboards to track the number of meetings set and calls made, and drill down to underlying metrics, such as the number of live conversations and voice mails left, giving context to sales activities.

“We have a lot of stats and leaderboards,” says

Randolph. “With Hoopla, we can tailor what we’re showing on the screen to what is most important to us at that particular time. I love the ability to customize it and let it ebb and flow with what’s most important to us in our business cycle.”

Randolph also uses Hoopla to recognize employees who work in the company’s CRM and analytics roles. Although they are not responsible for selling, these employees do support the sales process, and Randolph feels it’s important to recognize them throughout the organization.

Additionally, Hoopla has helped the Sacramento Kings improve its data quality and accuracy within Salesforce. “The reps know that only if they do things the right way—by entering the data into Salesforce—they will be rewarded through Hoopla,” says Randolph.

Although the company has not yet measured Hoopla’s influence on sales, the Sacramento Kings acknowledge Hoopla’s effect on its sales team’s culture. “It’s the excitement in the air,” says Randolph. “It’s the visibility into each rep’s day that gives Hoopla value.”

About Hoopla

Hoopla provides employee engagement solutions that help

businesses achieve dramatic gains in sales productivity

and customer success. Hoopla leverages data analytics,

game mechanics and the latest research in motivational

psychology to help managers foster a high performance

culture. Learn more at www.hoopla.net.

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“Everybody loves to

be able to see in real

time how our sales

department is doing

in a cool platform

like this.”