What is the significance of competition in professional selling?

What is the significance of competition in professional selling?
The whole notion of competition is to do better than the other person or team. Competition is seen as a motivator, as something that spurs us on to do better, bigger and more. There is competition between teams and not just sport teams. Some companies will break their employees up into teams that compete against each other for the number of widgets they produce or sales the make. (Don't let the other team do better than you.) They do the same with individuals competing against their coworkers (Be more like your coworker, he's outselling you every time)and even try to set the stage so someone is competing against themselves (you did this well last month, let see if you can do even better this month).