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News
Game on, ISOs can then be easily circulated via dashboards to the entire
office.
he challenging business of motivating sales Hollander said FantasySalesTeam is inspired by fantasy
teams to reach and surpass targeted goals is sports leagues, where participants choose professional
going digital through gamification strategies. athletes in, say, football or baseball leagues, and use those
T With Gartner Inc. just releasing a book on the players' current statistics to gain points. For example,
subject and more companies emerging to offer the service in a fantasy football league, a participant with a certain
to sales offices, gamification is starting to show signs of quarterback on his or her team will gain points based on
going mainstream. For ISOs, gamification may prove to the number of passes the quarterback completes and the
be the leaderboard replacement that motivates not just the number of touchdowns the quarterback makes.
top performers, but also entire sales teams to meet and
exceed expectations. FantasySalesTeam uses the same approach; however,
members of sales teams are both players and managers of
Gamification is defined as the process of using online their own teams. The teams, made up of reps in the same
game mechanics to encourage and reward competition. office, earn points based on the sales performances of their
News coming from this software-as-a-service (SaaS) sector players. Every week, sales reps evaluate the sales results
has been growing. In October 2013, gamification provider of the players on their teams and add or remove players
Badgeville said its third quarter 2013 revenue had doubled accordingly.
from the same time the previous year, with partnerships
with IBM and Oracle adding to the bounty. "What this does is it creates a brand new type of culture
within your sales environment, because now the reps
Another provider, BunchBall, said on May 21, 2014, that it aren't just focused on their own behavior and their own
is in the process of patenting its SaaS offering. Bunchball points and their own deals," Hollander said. "What it does
founder and Chief Executive Officer Rajat Paharia is is it makes them focus on everyone else."
said to have founded the industry when he filed a patent
application for the Nitro gamification platform in 2007. FantasySalesTeam offers game templates that mimic
different types of games and team configurations, such
And at the Gartner Enterprise Architecture Summit held in as football, baseball, basketball, soccer, and even Formula
London on May 21 and 22, 2014, Gartner spotlighted Gamify One racing. For example, in a baseball scenario, since there
– How Gamification Motivates People to do Extraordinary are nine players playing different positions on a diamond,
Things, authored by Gartner Research Vice President Brian each team within the sales environment has nine players
Burke. In the book, Burke wrote, "Gamification is about at any given time, and those players play certain positions
rethinking motivation in a world where we are more often based on their skill sets.
connected digitally than physically. It is about building
motivation into a digitally connected world. And we are "It allows you to use the different tiers of your sales
just getting started on this journey." organization or the different types of reps you might
have and their different roles and you can spread them
Leveling the playing field out on the field, and that creates a level playing field for
everybody," Hollander said, since everyone is earning
According to Adam Hollander, founder and CEO of points both individually and within a team environment.
gamification firm FantasySalesTeam, its platform succeeds
where traditional sales contests fail. He said dangling A sales team's dream
prizes for sales goals and fomenting competition by
posting results on chalkboards fail for three main reasons. Because of the complexity of sales, managers boil down
traditional contests to one simple metric, such as number
First, such contests are always won by the few sales of deals closed. But Hollander said such contests favor
superstars in the office, who always outperform their top performers, to the detriment of the entire office.
competitors. Second, when the average sellers realize With gamification, points can be earned from a variety
half way through the contest that they have no chance of metrics, such as calls made, opportunities created and
of winning prizes, they lose their motivation to compete. product upgrades sold, which rewards reps even if they
Third, traditional sales contests are operational nightmares, don't excel in every category.
with managers having to track and communicate sales
data to keep the contests going. An additional advantage of gamification is in operational
efficiency. "You get a game that is more fun, more
Hollander stated that FantasySalesTeam overcomes these motivational, that is going to keep more people engaged
hurdles by encouraging entire sales teams to achieve and for longer," Hollander said. "And it is going to get you
offering the service in the cloud, where big data analytics a better sales result, and it's going to be a heck of a lot
are generated automatically, and managers can gauge sales easier for you to manage on the back end, which frees up
performances using a variety of customizable metrics that operational time for you to do other things."
Hollander noted that the offices using FantasySalesTeam
14
Game on, ISOs can then be easily circulated via dashboards to the entire
office.
he challenging business of motivating sales Hollander said FantasySalesTeam is inspired by fantasy
teams to reach and surpass targeted goals is sports leagues, where participants choose professional
going digital through gamification strategies. athletes in, say, football or baseball leagues, and use those
T With Gartner Inc. just releasing a book on the players' current statistics to gain points. For example,
subject and more companies emerging to offer the service in a fantasy football league, a participant with a certain
to sales offices, gamification is starting to show signs of quarterback on his or her team will gain points based on
going mainstream. For ISOs, gamification may prove to the number of passes the quarterback completes and the
be the leaderboard replacement that motivates not just the number of touchdowns the quarterback makes.
top performers, but also entire sales teams to meet and
exceed expectations. FantasySalesTeam uses the same approach; however,
members of sales teams are both players and managers of
Gamification is defined as the process of using online their own teams. The teams, made up of reps in the same
game mechanics to encourage and reward competition. office, earn points based on the sales performances of their
News coming from this software-as-a-service (SaaS) sector players. Every week, sales reps evaluate the sales results
has been growing. In October 2013, gamification provider of the players on their teams and add or remove players
Badgeville said its third quarter 2013 revenue had doubled accordingly.
from the same time the previous year, with partnerships
with IBM and Oracle adding to the bounty. "What this does is it creates a brand new type of culture
within your sales environment, because now the reps
Another provider, BunchBall, said on May 21, 2014, that it aren't just focused on their own behavior and their own
is in the process of patenting its SaaS offering. Bunchball points and their own deals," Hollander said. "What it does
founder and Chief Executive Officer Rajat Paharia is is it makes them focus on everyone else."
said to have founded the industry when he filed a patent
application for the Nitro gamification platform in 2007. FantasySalesTeam offers game templates that mimic
different types of games and team configurations, such
And at the Gartner Enterprise Architecture Summit held in as football, baseball, basketball, soccer, and even Formula
London on May 21 and 22, 2014, Gartner spotlighted Gamify One racing. For example, in a baseball scenario, since there
– How Gamification Motivates People to do Extraordinary are nine players playing different positions on a diamond,
Things, authored by Gartner Research Vice President Brian each team within the sales environment has nine players
Burke. In the book, Burke wrote, "Gamification is about at any given time, and those players play certain positions
rethinking motivation in a world where we are more often based on their skill sets.
connected digitally than physically. It is about building
motivation into a digitally connected world. And we are "It allows you to use the different tiers of your sales
just getting started on this journey." organization or the different types of reps you might
have and their different roles and you can spread them
Leveling the playing field out on the field, and that creates a level playing field for
everybody," Hollander said, since everyone is earning
According to Adam Hollander, founder and CEO of points both individually and within a team environment.
gamification firm FantasySalesTeam, its platform succeeds
where traditional sales contests fail. He said dangling A sales team's dream
prizes for sales goals and fomenting competition by
posting results on chalkboards fail for three main reasons. Because of the complexity of sales, managers boil down
traditional contests to one simple metric, such as number
First, such contests are always won by the few sales of deals closed. But Hollander said such contests favor
superstars in the office, who always outperform their top performers, to the detriment of the entire office.
competitors. Second, when the average sellers realize With gamification, points can be earned from a variety
half way through the contest that they have no chance of metrics, such as calls made, opportunities created and
of winning prizes, they lose their motivation to compete. product upgrades sold, which rewards reps even if they
Third, traditional sales contests are operational nightmares, don't excel in every category.
with managers having to track and communicate sales
data to keep the contests going. An additional advantage of gamification is in operational
efficiency. "You get a game that is more fun, more
Hollander stated that FantasySalesTeam overcomes these motivational, that is going to keep more people engaged
hurdles by encouraging entire sales teams to achieve and for longer," Hollander said. "And it is going to get you
offering the service in the cloud, where big data analytics a better sales result, and it's going to be a heck of a lot
are generated automatically, and managers can gauge sales easier for you to manage on the back end, which frees up
performances using a variety of customizable metrics that operational time for you to do other things."
Hollander noted that the offices using FantasySalesTeam
14
