“Gamification” has become a buzzword.
The idea of applying game mechanics to incentivize behavior has taken hold. News articles and statistics are published almost every day, and we’re seeing huge numbers of companies, dealers and manufacturers integrate gamification into their processes.
Researcher Gartner predicts that by the end of 2014, more than 70% of the Global 2000 will have at least one “gamified” application in place.
However, the more well-known stat from Gartner is that 80% of those same gamification implementations will fail to meet business objectives. I’ve heard many dealers and companies talk about using gamification solutions because they look fun. But this is the wrong reason to use the technique.
Gamification in the dealer environment is not about fun or even engagement. It’s about driving business results through changes in employee behavior.
Gartner says the reason most implementations will fail is poor structure. In my experience, poor gamification design is a direct result of not identifying (and being able to measure against) key business problems a company is looking to solve.
Let me share an example using something every company cares about: sales.
A few years ago I was managing a team of salespeople. Like most sales managers, I always was looking for ways to motivate my reps to close more business. I routinely ran sales contests and offer spiffs to my reps.
However, I started to notice a few problems: The same reps won every time; I had a few top performers who always took home the prizes. More importantly, these were not the reps I wanted to motivate. Ideally, I wanted to incentivize everyone else, not the reps who would perform anyway.
Reps stopped caring once they fell behind. The day I would roll out a new contest, everyone would get excited about it. But inevitably, reps would fall out of contention, at which point they would disengage and stop caring about the contest.
One could argue that if you were going to implement gamification for a sales team, you should address these problems: How do you find a way to motivate everyone, not just your typical top performers? How do you keep reps engaged even if they’ve fallen behind?
There are a number of sales-gamification solutions on the market today. The large majority essentially are leaderboards that allow reps to earn points and individually compete against each other.
But what most of them have done is simply create a more fun and dynamic way to showcase the same results sales managers have put into reports and spreadsheets for a decade. If you post an online leaderboard of sales results, won’t the same top performers keep winning? Won’t the other reps become disengaged (and demotivated) if they fall too far behind? This is an example of implementing poorly designed gamification for the wrong reasons.
Let me be clear: Gamification can have tremendous impact in an enterprise environment. I’ve seen that first hand on dozens of occasions.
But you shouldn’t implement gamification for gamification’s sake. First, identify exactly what business problem you’re looking to solve. Then ensure whatever gamification solution you’re evaluating will have a direct and measurable impact against that problem.
Don’t fall into the trap of implementing solutions simply because they look fun or engaging. Remember that you’re making an investment of time, employee attention and budget. For all of those items there’s an opportunity cost. You need to be able to measure a return on a gamification investment just like any other.
So think twice, and make sure you’re doing it for the right reasons.
Adam Hollander is the creator of FantasySalesTeam, a software platform that acts as a “fantasy sports league” customizable to sales environments.
