How to Choose a Team Building Activity for Your Sales Team

We get plenty of enquiries from people organising team building for sales teams, and there isn't one brief that comes up every time.

Some clients ask us for something competitive and active. Others want something collaborative, something with a sales angle, or simply an activity people will enjoy after a meeting or sales kick-off.

That matters when you're deciding what to book. You don't necessarily need an activity built around selling, and you don't need to assume that competition is what everyone wants.

A better place to start is with what you want people to spend the session doing.

Start with the session, not the job title

Think about the day you're planning.

If the activity follows a morning of presentations or meetings, getting outside and moving might be welcome. If you want some connection to work, pitching or negotiation can provide it without turning the session into more sales training. If you want people to switch off from work, there is nothing wrong with choosing something purely because it will be fun.

Then there are the practical questions. How many people are taking part? How much time do you have? What space is available at the venue? Do you want to be indoors or outside?

Those answers are usually more useful than the fact that the group works in sales.

If you want some connection to sales

There are team building activities where the link to sales and commercial work happens naturally.

The Pitch

The Pitch is a Dragons' Den-style challenge where teams take an initial idea and turn it into a product they can take to market.

They need to identify their target customer, set their pricing and work out what makes their product different. They also create the brand around it, develop advertising, build a prototype and bring everything together for the final pitch.

There are roles across finance, marketing, creative design and project management too, so it isn't simply a presentation exercise.

We wouldn't describe The Pitch as sales training. It's a team building activity, but the decisions around customers, positioning, pricing and presenting an idea give it a natural connection to the kind of commercial thinking a sales team will recognise.

Trading Table

Trading Table has a commercial element too, but negotiation is much more central to the game.

Each team takes control of a smoothie business. After building up some cash, they can start buying fruit. The catch is that each team can only buy two types of fruit, and those fruits can't make any of the smoothies on their own recipe card.

To start making money, they need to find the teams holding the ingredients they need and negotiate a deal.

As the game continues, world events send fruit prices up and down. Teams have to decide when to buy, trade and sell as the value of different deals changes.

If you're deciding between the two, the difference is fairly straightforward. The Pitch is about developing an idea, taking it to market and presenting it. Trading Table puts more emphasis on negotiation and making deals while conditions are changing around you.

If you want to get people out of the meeting room

Sometimes the brief is much simpler. People have spent much of the day sitting down and you want to get them outside.

A Digital Treasure Hunt gives teams a reason to get moving. They race between locations, solving clues and completing challenges along the way, with a live leaderboard showing how they're getting on against the other teams.

It makes sense when you're looking for something active, high-energy and competitive, particularly if it follows a morning of meetings or presentations.

If you want people solving problems together

Puzzle-based activities create a different kind of session.

The Escape

The Escape puts small teams against the clock to work through a series of puzzles.

One of the things we like about this type of activity is that it doesn't necessarily reward the person who talks the loudest.

Someone might notice a detail everybody else has missed. Someone else might suddenly make sense of a clue the rest of the group has been staring at for five minutes.

That can change the dynamic, particularly in a group where the same people usually take charge.

Manor House Murder

Manor House Murder gives teams a larger case to unravel.

Lawyer Laura Norder has been murdered, and teams have to work out what happened. They examine evidence, work through witness statements, question suspects and solve puzzles before making their final accusation.

The teams compete against each other, but within each team people need to share what they've spotted and piece the evidence together.

If you just want people to have fun

Not every team building activity needs a business objective attached to it.

Back to School Sports Day is deliberately straightforward. The games are easy to understand, the competition is light-hearted and people don't need any particular sporting ability to get involved.

When we put a Sports Day together, we prefer games where enthusiasm matters more than skill. Otherwise, you can end up with the same three people winning everything.

The venue matters for this one. You'll need a pitch or a suitable flat grass area, so it won't work everywhere.

How do you choose between them?

You can narrow the options down quite quickly once you know what you want from the session.

If you'd like some connection to sales or commercial thinking, look at activities involving pitching or negotiation.

If people have spent the morning in meetings and you want them moving, an outdoor activity may make more sense.

If you want people working through something together, puzzles and mysteries offer a different challenge.

And if you want everyone to switch off from work for a while, let them. A team building activity doesn't need a sales lesson attached to it to justify its place in the day.

Your group size, venue, available time and preference for indoor or outdoor activities will narrow things down further.

The fact that they're a sales team is useful context. It just isn't the whole brief.

If you're still exploring ideas, browse our team building activities in Ireland to see the different types of activities available.