The March Madness Effect

In the United States, few sporting events are timed so closely together that the collection of the events is given a name. It happens in professional tennis (the US Open), in professional baseball (the World Series) and in men’s college basketball (March Madness). March Madness has escalated to world-class-event status with ESPN, CBS, TruTV and TNT providing live television coverage to millions of viewers. Many factors contribute to making March Madness a great event but at the heart of it, March Madness focuses on a small number of competitors, a size that the fans can sink their teeth into and that the teams can really focus on. The small number of competitors really whips March Madness into the frenzied event that it is.

Narrowing the field of focus is critical. This year, there are 351 schools playing basketball in 32 Division I conferences. However, March Madness will feature only 64 of them, an elite 18.2% of all the teams. A targeted group of teams allows the fans to focus their irrational exuberance and reminds the teams playing in March Madness that, more than any other game, this is it.

In a paper by Stephen Garcia, PhD and Avishalom Tor called “The N-Effect,” the researchers reveal that one thing that heats up competition are head-to-head matches. When you emphasize the competition between just two people, it feels very immediate, very emotional and hyper-motivational. Sales people who are normally competing to meet or exceed sales quotas or get into the top 20% (our research indicates that few beyond the top 35% even attempt to be in the top 10%) get super-charged by competing with their peers in head-to-head competitions.

That’s why BI WORLDWIDE created a sales incentive tool called Throwdown to bring one-to-one competitions to your sales force. It pairs up the sales team to compete against one another in short-term matches. Our clients win because the fierce competition drives tremendous results… and the smack talk is always entertaining.