Microsoft has acquired the startup behind sales gamifaction platform FantasySalesTeam as it looks to bring fantasy sports-like competition to its Dynamics CRM products. Incent Games’ products are used by companies to help incentivize their sales teams, modeled after the world of fantasy sports.
Advertisement
“While incentive programs and contests are leveraged in nearly all sales organizations, most suffer from common shortcomings: the same top performers nearly always win and the rest of the team tends to disengage fairly quickly once they realize they’ve fallen behind or out of contention”, Stutz said, noting FantasySalesTeam addresses these issues with a tailored approach.
Another Microsoft tie-in included the ability to use the platform independently of a CRM system and instead record scores directly in Excel worksheets. “Through team-based competition and involvement of non-sales employees (such as managers, service, operations, marketing and finance) employees “draft” teams and become truly invested in each other’s success”. There are case studies to back up his claims. For instance, Service Corporation worldwide piloted the software with 130 reps and compared their performance to 700 others. Wireless Zone, a chain of cellular and mobile stores, has increased total sales by 176 percent and increased profit by 9 percent during the first month of running the software, according to the Stutz.
Advertisement
“With Microsoft’s focus on productivity and our obsession with customer success, this acquisition is a great fit”. The potential of applying this feature beyond the sales scenario to other fields and areas within a business is exciting as well. “To help drive adoption of our CRM solutions in fun and creative ways, we are integrating FantasySalesTeam into our offering”, Bob Stutz, Corporate Vice President at Microsoft Dynamics CRM said in a blog post. Stutz revealed the Microsoft will be adding the technology to the company’s customer relationship management (CRM) platform. Terms of the deal to Microsoft were not detailed.
