Fantasy football may cost employers more than $13 billion inlost productivity, according to the Chicago-based consultancy groupChallenger, Gray & Christmas, as millions of Americans usecompany time to review player stats and manage rosters. But what ifthere was a way to harness fantasy football enthusiasm and know-howinto more insurance sales?

Enter Adam Hollander, founder and CEO of FantasySalesTeam, an Austin, Texas-based softwarestartup. A couple of years ago, when working in sales management inthe marketing and advertising industry, Hollander noticed thattypical sales contests were failing to motivate his reps. “I wasstarting to question the validity of these contests,” he says.

And he is right to do so. Technology research firm Gartner predicts that 70% of the world's largest 2000companies will have gamified applications in place by the endof this year—however, 80% of those games will fail to meet businessobjectives.

Hollander uncovered two flaws in his analysis. First, hissuperstar performers generally won most of the contests, “but Iwasn't looking to motivate those folks,” he says. Second, theenthusiasm faded quickly. “When I rolled out a contest, everyonewould cheer and talk about the prizes. But after a couple of days,some reps would fall behind a leader or a goal, and then they fellout of contention [for prizes] and would disengage,” he says.

To make a sales contest successful, Hollander would have tochange the model. “I have to motivate a larger portion of the teamfor as long as possible,” he says.

Noticing that many of his reps play fantasy football, Hollanderwondered if he could bring that type of culture into the workenvironment. For instance, create a game that rewards employees forevery phone call, every closed deal and every policy add-on.

After spending nights and weekends creating theFantasySalesTeam software in 2013, Hollander launched the betaversion with three medium-sized companies. And now, more than 75companies play this game, including Allstate, Esurance andbrokerages GuideOne Insurance and Primera Insurance, andFantasySalesTeam has grown to 20 employees.

The game exists in five formats, for baseball, basketball,football, racing and soccer. It is offered as an individual-basedgame, a fixed-team mode where sales managers build teams, and anoption where sales reps can draft themselves.

This works because peer pressure is a powerful motivator. “Thiscreates an environment where reps will push on the people theydrafted and pay attention to how everyone else is doing,” Hollanderstresses.

The tech company closed on $640,000 in seed financing earlierthis year to upgrade its game and expand offerings. Agencies andbrokerages can customize the game to work toward certain goals, forinstance, if the company wants to build auto premium numbers in aspecific month.