Badgeville gamifies Salesforce.com to make salespeople more productive

In time for a big industry conference, analytics firm Badgeville is launching a “gamification” app on Salesforce.com’s App Exchange that can help salespeople become more motivated and productive.

Badgeville is a big proponent of gamification, or the use of game-like mechanics to motivate people to do things that wouldn’t ordinarily excite them. The company plans to set up competitions that let sales forces compete against each other for recognition and prizes. Badgeville is releasing the app today at the Salesforce.com Dreamforce 2012 event in San Francisco.

Salesforce.com has more than 150,000 customers who have built 2.3 million custom apps. The new Badgeville app is one of 1,600 built by third-party vendors for the Salesforce.com App Exchange platform, with the goal to improve sales performance, productivity, and utilization of customer relationship management (CRM) software.  The gamification app motivates sales people to convert their leads into actual sales at a faster pace.

The Badgeville’s new software runs in a native format and is configurable for both administrators and end users within the Sales Cloud app. Salesforce administrators can use a wizard-based approach to configure the game mechanics for particular sales forces. Rewards can be set on monthly, quarterly, or annual cycles. The system rewards individuals for participating in the app and recognizes them for their sales contributions. As those users become more engaged, they will theoretically update their records more diligently and provide managers with better insight of the sales pipeline. Users can also employ the tool to improve collaboration and behavior.

“Our strategy is to embed our platform for gamification everywhere,” said Kris Duggan, chief executive of Badgeville, in an interview with GamesBeat. “Internally, we call this Big Game Hunter. You start as a squirrel hunter in sales and work your way up to whale hunter. It is using a virtual carrot, not a stick, to drive user behavior.”

He added, “If you are a salesperson, you face rejection many times a day. It is painful. But salespeople need positive reinforcement. If you reinforce good habits, it drives results.”

“Companies around the globe are transforming the way they connect with customers, partners, and employees through social and mobile cloud solutions,” said Mike Rosenbaum, senior vice president of App Exchange and Force.com Operations at Salesforce.com. “Partners such as Badgeville are leveraging the power of the Salesforce platform to provide customers with the right tools to accelerate their successes in the cloud.”

Duggan said that Badgeville has more than 180 customers including Deloitte, EMC, Oracle, Autodesk, Bell Media, NBC, Universal Music, Recylebank, VMware, and others. It was founded in 2010 and it has 80 employees. He further stated that the company is ahead of its plan to generate $10 million to $20 million in revenues in 2012. The company is based in Menlo Park, Calif. and is moving to Redwood City, Calif. next week. Badgeville has raised more than $40 million to date.

Badgeville is targeting Fortune 1000 enterprises with the app. Rivals include Bunchball, which launched a Salesforce.com app last year, and Big Door.