6 Market Development and Sales Management Lessons from Clash of Clans

While working on my village late one night, trying to assemble a clan, and trying to gain a better league status, I realized how similar the tactics in Clash of Clans are to developing a market and managing a sales team. In fact, the tactics are also similar to playing such strategy games as Risk, Axis and Allies, and Battleship that so many of us grew up playing.  When starting out, you have infinite possibilities but limited resources and competitive forces that sometimes have more experience and are better established.

So where do you start and how do you compete successfully in both the game and in market development and sales management?

Have enough of the right resources

In the game, it takes gold and elixir and you need to mine for both of them.  In market development and sales management, it takes money, time, and the right activities.  All three must to be used efficiently to build your market and using your resources efficiently will lead to more resource being available to continue your growth.

Defend your ground

In the game, you start by building a village that you will quickly need to defend because you are the weakest village on the planet.  In market development and sales management, it starts with identifying a market, entering the market with an initial offering, and then protecting your market share from competition by servicing your customers with great customer service and delivering value.

Have the right team

In the game, you have a choice of warriors with various skills sets that serve different purposes depending on what you need to accomplish successfully in a battle.  In market development and sales management, you need to have the right people in the right positions doing the right things for lead generation, customer conversion, relationship management, sales support, and customer support.

Choose your battles

In the game, you are given the ability to choose your battles which is helpful since you get to survey the competition and do a quick analysis of your resources compared to your enemy’s defenses to decide if you want to take the risk of competing.  You will not be able to compete against some opportunities so it is helpful to have some foresight.  In market development and sales management, we try to know the competitive landscape as best we can and use our differentiators to sell against our competition.  Knowing how the competition might respond and knowing from experience which opportunities to walk away from are helpful skills in the long term.

Review your failures

In the game, you can watch a replay of your battle to determine where you need to make changes for next time.  There is no better learning opportunity like having your village leveled 100%, your resource pilfered, and you are given a shield for 12 hours out of pity from the game creators to protect yourself since you lost so badly.  In market development and sales management, you can’t replay your activities but you can perform a post mortem analysis and learn what behaviors, language, activities, questions, solutions, and competitive activities you need to be aware of or perform better for the next opportunity. You can actually learn more in sales from your losses than you can from your wins.

Plan ahead

In the game, you are can see how much upgrades and additions cost and understand where you are weak so you begin to plan what changes you need to make based on how successful your offensive campaigns are and how successfully you defend your village from raiders. In market development and sales management, you are able to use business intelligence reports from the CRM and accounting system to identify what product lines are most profitable, which customers are most profitable, and what activities are the most productive so you can make adjustments to your selling plan and how you are using your team.

If you are not a fan of Clash of Clans or you did not grow up playing strategy based games, then this might not make as much sense to you. However, the same lessons can also be learned from competing in sports, competing in the talent shows, and from your current market development and sales management success.  If you would like some pointers on Clash of Clans or in your market development and sales management, feel free to email me.  Nothing like having a coach and a mentor to help you navigate through some difficult times.