Sales Gamification & Contests that Work

September Richy - Can a Sales Gamification Tool Drive Sales Team Engagement and Better Sales Results from Sales Contests?

It’s the start of a new football season and for millions of people there is a huge focus on Fantasy Football. For Adam Hollander, CEO of a new company, FantasySalesTeam, he is not only managing his Fantasy Football team, but helping clients manage their Fantasy Sales Team through his new sales gamification and sales enablement tool, FantasySalesTeam (FST), the winner of my September Richy.

FST is a software platform and sales gamification tool that allows you to run incentive contests based on the principles of fantasy sports games. Developed by Adam and his team of experienced sales professionals, FST mimics that of your very own Fantasy Football Leagues, but instead of tracking touchdowns, you can track performance, productivity, and sales team engagement.

As a sales manager, with an SPIFF program, FST enables you to track sales metrics like calls, revenue booked, number of opportunities, and percentage of quota achieved. Additionally, FST gives you the ability to focus on the behaviors and results most important to the success of your sales force. Currently, FST has full integration with Salesforce.com, and is working on integrations into other CRM platforms.  Though integrating FST with a CRM is completely optional; FST now allows Excel uploads for scoring data, giving any customer, on any CRM, measuring any metric imaginable, the ability to easily run games. Two newly- added features are interactive discussion boards, where the incentivizing and motivating exchanges occur (or more plainly, where the beloved smack talk happens) and new game formats.

The fact that FST is flexible and customizable to fit any sales environment, can monitor dozens of performance metrics without operational hassle, and rewards competitive as well as team based selling appears to be a game changer.

To learn more about this sales incentive game, we had the chance to sit down with FST’s Founder & CEO, Adam Hollander:

Where did the FST concept come from?

“When we were developing FST, we interviewed dozens of sales managers and reps.  Most shared with us that their sales contests weren’t performing up to expectations.   We identified that in most cases this was because (a) they were rewarding the same top performers every time, (b) most of their reps were losing interest once they fell too far behind the leaders/goal and (c) they were basing prizes solely on results, ignoring sales behaviors and activity.  We didn’t create FST to jump on the sales gamification bandwagon.  We developed it because we’ve designed a more engaging and higher- performing model for sales contests.  With overwhelmingly positive feedback from our customers, I feel highly confident in making that statement.”

What success have you had to date with FST?

“Since our official launch in June 2013, we’ve brought on dozens of customers including Cisco, LinkedIn, Harte-Hanks, TechTarget and others. We have customers of all company sizes; ranging from as few as 4 sales reps in a single location to as many as 400+ across 5 countries. Our clients are also from all types of industries: software sales, marketing services sales, medical device sales, transportation sales, financial sales, home improvement sales and more.”

What’s up next for FST?

“As mentioned, we have full integration with Salesforce.com and are working on integrations into other CRM platforms.  We are also in the process of adding new sport templates to our existing options of Football, Baseball and Soccer, such as Basketball, Hockey, and F1 Racing.  Beyond this, there are a number of other really fun things in the works; but I don’t want to spoil the surprise!  You’ll hear about them very soon.”

Take a look for yourself at this month Richy winner and learn more about how this sales gamification tool leverages sales contests to drive sales team engagement.