How Our Sales and Marketing Teams Compete on KPIs

How do we use Ambition to align sales and marketing KPIs on our own business team? Glad you asked. The Ambition Business Team has been using Ambition since the latter part of 2014.

We use the platform to track each and every member of our front office teams. Here's how we use Ambition to drive KPIs within our own team. We track a variety of metrics, with each role having a unique set of KPIs factoring into their Ambition Score.

How We Score KPIs on Ambition

Sales Development: The KPIs we track for our SDRs are as follows:

1. Outbound calls
2. Emails sent
3. Demos scheduled

Our SDRs are charges with cold calling and emailing prospects, then setting up a demo with one of our Account Executives.  The main two activities that generate our apex objective (demo scheduled) are emails and calls. Logging a call or email in Salesforce triggers a small boost to an SDR's daily Ambition Score.  Logging a new demo scheduled triggers a much bigger Ambition Score boost, as it is the prime objective for an SDR.

Account Executive: The sales KPIs we track for our Account Executives are as follows:

1. Outbound calls
2. Web Demos completed
3. Deals closed

As you can see, they included our top revenue-generating activity (outbound calls), a mid-funnel objective (demos completed) and apex objective (deals closed).

Those KPIs are weighted in ascending order. Logging a new closed deal triggers the most dramatic boost to Ambition Score, while logging an outbound call triggers the smallest boost.

Marketing: The marketing KPIs we track are as follows:

1. Content Downloads
2. Webinar and Pricing Sign-Ups
3. Inbound Demo Requests

As Director of Marketing, lead generation and nurturing is my total focus.  For that reason, my three KPIs that go into my Ambition Score are all objective-based, with Inbound Demo requested weighted highest, since that's the most preferred action a new inbound could take.

We sync our marketing automation platform, Pardot, with Salesforce, so a new inbound lead automatically triggers an update to my Ambition Score.

How We Recognize Top Performers on Ambition

Every user on Ambition has an Ambition Anthem. Users select their personal Ambition Anthems from YouTube, which will then play whenever they hit a major milestone (ex. a 100 Ambition Score for the day) on our TV in the Ambition Sales Lab. 

We've also used the Ambition Scores to determine which sales reps got to attend major conferences such as Dreamforce and the AA-ISP Leadership Summit. Beyond that, we also get notifications when we're reaching personal bests and overtaking a peer in a given metric. 

We've gotten a ton of mileage out of Ambition. As a marketing team member, I love being able to go toe-to-toe with sales and see how I'm stacking up against them, in terms of hitting my benchmarks. Countless times, members of our sales team have lingered at the office late. When asked why, the answer typically went something like, "I'm just a few calls away from hitting a 100 on my daily Ambition Score."

With sales and marketing, it can be hard to get excited about the little things: making a cold call, updating prospect info into Salesforce and so forth. Ambition has changed that within our team, and it's doing so in many others around the world.

Ambition: The 360° Sales Management Platform

Ambition is a sales management platform that syncs every sales organization department, data source, and performance metric on one easy system.

Ambition clarifies and publicizes real-time performance analytics for your entire sales organization. Using a drag-and-drop interface, non-technical sales leaders can build custom scorecards, contests, reports, and TVs.

Ambition is endorsed by Harvard Business Review, AA-ISP (the Global Inside Sales Organization), and USA Today as a proven solution for managing millennial sales teams. Hear from our customers below.

Watch Testimonials:

1. FiveStars: Adam Wall. Sr. Manager of Sales Operations . 
2. Filemaker: Brad Freitag. Vice-President of Worldwide Sales.
3. Outreach: Mark Kosoglow. Vice-President of Sales.
4. Cell Marque: Lauren Hopson. Director of Sales & Marketing.
5. Access America Transport: Ted Alling. Chief Executive Officer.

Watch Product Walkthroughs:

• ChowNow. Led by Vice-President of Sales, Drew Woodcock.
• Outreach. Led by Sales Development Manager, Alex Lynn.
• AMX Logistics. Led by Executive Vice-President ,Jared Moore.

Read Case Studies:

1. Clayton Homes: HBR finds triple-digit growth in 3 sales efficiency metrics. 
2. Coyote Logistics: Monthly revenue per broker grew $525 in 6 months.
3. Peek: Monthly sales activity volume grew 142% in 6 months.
4. Vorsight: Monthly sales conversations grew 300% in 6 months.

Contact us to learn how Ambition can impact your sales organization today.