Most VPs of Sales get excited when they think about the idea of gamification within their organization. Salespeople are a highly competitive bunch, and the ability to tap into that competitive element is very natural. Plus, when you can use these new software tools to make an existing investment in a CRM system more engaging for sales reps, it’s a pretty compelling story. 

But are you ready to spend money on this novel concept? That’s where some folks hesitate a bit. So instead of us trying to explain the rationale, we reached out and surveyed a sampling of about 100 companies using gamification today, made up of directors and VPs of sales, as well as sales operations people ranging from small businesses to large enterprises, to get some insight. 

Here’s what we found. 

Sales Performance is Increasing

In general, companies are seeing nice results: 90.4% report that their gamification initiatives are successful. Of course we wanted to dig in on this a bit more to get some results metrics. An astounding 71% said that they are seeing anywhere from 11% to 50% increases in measured sales performance. And since 90% regularly run their gamification initiatives around the “Opportunities” object in Salesforce, that’s pretty powerful. 

Salesforce Adoption Is Up

 Cost and adoption are often pressing issues for companies that use a CRM system. Companies spend massive amounts of money on their CRMs, but research shows that 50% of implementations fail. With a gamification initiative, managers are forced to identify those top behaviors they want their teams to focus on, which streamlines metrics so that a CRM system can track them. Once your salespeople know these key behaviors, and see that they are being recognized for them in front of their peers, adoption spikes – a lot, according to our data. The goal of CRM implementation is to be able to measure performance. A well-crafted gamification strategy turns that vision into reality.

Additionally, 84% reported an increase in adoption after implementing the ability to deploy competitions and games around the data tracked in Salesforce. This hike in adoption allows managers to leverage that big CRM investment.

Using Competition to Motivate More Often

According to CSO Insights, 50% of sales organizations run sales contests multiple times throughout the year. This actually astounds me, as sales contests are often a royal pain in the butt to manage. They are generally run manually, using spreadsheets, whiteboards, and email. So why do managers put up with this hassle? Because it works. In fact, when companies use enterprise software tools for contests and gamification, their use of contests spikes. In fact, 73% report that they are running more sales contests than before, and 51% are running 2 or more every month.

Indeed, the concept of using software to manage gamification within a sales organization is catching on fast. Looking across all the players in the market, there are hundreds of organizations grabbing hold of this, with no signs of slowing down.

Bob Marsh is CEO of LevelEleven, a sales gamification and CRM solutions company with the #1 most popular gamification app on Salesforce AppExhange: Compete. Bob has almost 20 years of experience in sales management. Follow Bob on Twitter at @BobMarsh5.