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This week, a group of enterprise tech companies banded together to launch a new movement in enterprise technology. The mission: #SaveTheMillennials.
Earlier this year, we reached a tipping point in the American workplace: Millennials became the largest demographic in the U.S. workforce.
It was hard not to notice, given the digital reams of press space committed to the topic Millennial Management in the workforce. How-To's, Dissertation-level breakdowns of challenges and opportunities, cheap shots, impassioned defenses, the list goes on. You know the subject of Millennial management is a veritable clusterf*** when prominent journalists are crafting response pieces that utterly disembowel a thinkpiece from the Wall St. Journal, of all places.
Across industries, there are very real issues with Millennial engagement, recruitment, training, onboarding, retention, coaching, self-accountability and professional development.
It's tempting to assign blame to one demographic or another, but the reality is, overextended managers, tightened company budgets, an ever-increasing array of digital distractions, record student loan debt and sheer volume of raw, un-molded talent flooding the workforce have created the perfect storm for a Millennial management crisis.
And despite all the hand-wringing, a clear direction for how to fix Millennial management still continues to elude us.
The Mission of Save The Millennials
Here at Ambition, we're firm believers in the power of enterprise technology to act as the great equalizer. Used strategically, software tools can have massive impacts on individual productivity, executing objectives and workplace culture.
Just asked David Schwall, who managed a Millennial-driven team of 60 inside sales reps for Clayon Homes and used our platform to create a "Fantasy Sales League" that proved so successful, it became the subject of a feature article in the Harvard Business Review.
If that kind of technology can activate the hidden potential of a Millennial workforce, imagine what else can.
It's time to spread the word and get people thinking more seriously about technology as source of Millennial workforce empowerment. So we enlisted 20 leading organizations whose technology products and services hold particular resonance with Millennials to help launch the movement and commit to saving the Millennials.
20 Millennial-Approved Enterprise Tech Vendors
We wanted to take this opportunity to feature our 20 Co-Founders of the #SaveTheMillennials movement. To do so, we're giving you a quick profile of each one, as well as their most compelling value-add for Millennials.
Why Millennials Love BlueBoard: BlueBoard Co-Founder and CEO Taylor Smith said it himself. His company was created specifically to help companies better incent their Millennial employees. BlueBoard is used by companies to provide unique reward systems and foster healthier organizational change. Manager-tested, Millennial-approved.
Why Millennials Love Cirrus Insight: Cirrus Insight knows a thing or two about innovation: back in December of 2011, they were the first company to integrate SalesForce and Gmail, launching on the Salesforce App Exchange that very month. This is your email, calendar, contacts — everything, actually — fully synced with your CRM. It’s an Inside Sales manager’s dream — highly functional, process-focused, and ready to unlock your Millennials' productivity.
Why Millennials Love ClearSlide: ClearSlide is most definitely part of a new vanguard in enterprise solutions: a business intelligence software focused on prospect/client interaction. Whether it be an email, phone call or meeting, successful sales and marketing is all about effective communication: ClearSlide lets you know when that is occurring. It’s not just email tracking. It’s not just advanced analytics. ClearSlide is one of the few products out there able to offer sustained, actionable insights into prospect behavior. It’s half-spy, half-coach. The benefits that the product offers extend far beyond sales: marketing and IT teams are just as likely to gain valuable insights as sales reps. ClearSlide is perfect for the type of workforce Millennial we all know -- who wants to have as much information as possible before he or she makes their next move.
Why Millennials Love Close.io: Close.io is one of the top up-and-coming platforms in the CRM world, offering everything a startup or small company could need to get its sales team off the ground. A CRM that comes fully-integrated with your VOIP and synced with your email? We’ll take it. Regardless of whether you purchase the product, check out Chief Hustler Steli Efti on social media — the man is a warped genius.
Why Millennials Love CloserIQ: CloserIQ has access to the most coveted startup gigs around the country. That makes them recruiting and job placement specialists for -- you guessed it -- Millennials. If you're a Millennial -- especially one who works in sales and marketing -- and you're looking for a new position, CloserIQ is your go-to resource.
Why Millennials Love Datanyze: The ultimate in competitor analysis and lead generation. See who has added or dropped one of your competitors. Learn when a competitor has adopted a new technology within their organization. And add targeted leads from LinkedIn straight to Salesforce. This is Black Ops and Ghost Recon for your Millennials. High utility and just an authentically cool product to have.
Why Millennials Love Docurated: Your Millennial sales team needs quick access to Case Studies, Infographics, and other Marketing materials tailored to their prospects. Docurated transforms hierarchical and disparate content systems into powerful, simple knowledge store, where content can be instantly surfaced by your Marketing and Sales teams at the appropriate time and without having to remember where it lives. We’re in the Golden Age of content marketing -- much of it driven by Millennials -- and Docurated is here to make sure you optimize the content you produce.
Why Millennials Love Insight Signals: Territory and prospect battles creating friction in your sales force? What a great way to increase Millennial turnover rate. Get with Insight Signals, whose email tracking and analytics platform lets you see who's contacting who, when and how often. As Kevin O'Leary would say, "Stop the madness!" #SaveTheMillennials
Why Millennials Love Kitedesk: Your sales and marketing teams' time is valuable and Kitedesk is here to ensure that it's not wasted. Never again toggle between unconnected systems like Email, CRM and Social Media. Fully align sales and marketing in one interface. Keep your ADD-addled Millennials focused by streamlining the most onerous aspects of their job.
Why Millennials Love Outreach: Outreach.io relieves scaling bottlenecks and increases the capacity of a sales rep to deal with more leads and concentrate on more profitable tasks. Its key is automating email follow-up and detecting response emails not just from the prospects themselves, but from others sent on their behalf (exec assistants, forwarded colleagues, out of office, etc). Analytics junkies and those with fresh-faced Millennial sales forces will be in heaven.
Why Millennials Love PersistIQ: Up-and-comers in this space, PersistIQ is a product we use regularly here at Ambition. Great for A/B testing and acquiring actionable insights from sales and marketing email campaigns. You can track user response rate and
do a host of other functions, all on the same platform. Persist IQ is a great, no-frills option that is high in utility and frequently getting bolstered with valuable new features.
Why Millennials Love Outro: You want to make your sales force a more attractive place to work for elite Millennial talent? Tell them they'll never have to make another cold call. Outro makes personalized introductions to prospects so that your first conversation is always with a warm lead, not someone who's going to hang up on you, but only after they've unleashed a 30 second, R-Rated diatribe into your earpiece. Truly a #SaveTheMillennials company.
Why Millennials Love RingLead: RingLead makes life easier for everyone in sales and marketing who uses a CRM and keeps track of their sales and marketing data. If you value analytics (and if you're reading this, I'm guessing you do), then RingLead is going to make your life a whole lot easier. Better data for managers and a less frustrating CRM experience for your Millennial business team.
Why Millennials Love SalesFolk: SalesFolk is consultative sales messaging that speaks the language of the Millennial workforce. Brief, informal, personalized and focused around adding value, SalesFolk-generated outreach speaks to the most compelling voice that both Millennials and their managers are looking for in business -- they don't want to hear a pitch, they don't want to talk to a robot and they want to help.
Why Millennials Love Sales Hacker: Sales Hacker encompasses two beautiful, underrated aspects of #SaveTheMillennials. One is a comprehensive understanding of new business technology that's unmatched anywhere else. The other is access to information, empowering self-learning and professional development for those in sales, marketing and customer service. Sales Hacker brings both to the table, making it a quintessential partner for #SaveTheMillennials.
Why Millennials Love SalesLoft: Tech heavy-hitters IBM and Oracle use SalesLoft, an exceptional tool for capturing contact data of potential prospects. SalesLoft brings additional value by incorporating elements of lead scoring into its insights as well, identifying the best potential prospects for your particular organization based on each prospect’s social data. Basically, it automates and codifies your sales process -- so that your new hires and direction-seeking Millennials always know the right step to take next.
Why Millennials Love Vorsight: Vorsight provides the absolute best in virtual sales training. Co-Founder Steve Richard is a veritable maven of maximizing Millennial sales reps and getting them onboarded, trained and coached up as efficiently as possible. The definition of a company that offers "win-win" value to Millennials and managers alike.
Why Millennials Love Weave: The bad news: The proliferation of dating Apps like Tinder (which let you see pictures of other singles, "swipe right" and match with those who do likewise) has created a silent productivity killer for workforce members still searching for "the one." The good news: Weave is a smartphone app that lets you “Match” with other professionals in your area and foster on-the-go networking. As a professional networking “matching” tool, Weave has tremendous utility in everyday usage. The first smartphone app where it's encouraged to swipe right at the office.
Why Millennials Love Wrike: The number one project management platform for Millennials, Wrike has it all. Excellent, simplified data visualization for managers and an interface that makes workplace collaboration fun, easy and effective. Do Millennials love collaboration? You're damn right we do.
Why Millennials Love Yesware: Yesware is a must-have for anyone interested in tracking email correspondence. Simply install in your E-Mail provider (which takes all of 30 seconds) and you’ll be opened to the world of real time Open and Click-tracking. The first time you begin getting a flurry of notifications that someone keeps opening one of your cold emails, you’ll see what I mean. This stuff is like crack for your Millennials. For sales teams, Yesware also plugs into Salesforce.com and stores templates for quick replies.
Why Millennials Love SLMA: Knowledge is power for your sales and marketing teams. And SLMA has cultivated 8 years of outstanding content that will arm your young, training-starved Millennials with the insights they need to go out and crush it.
How to Join #SaveTheMillennials
We're building an army, and we want companies not just from the tech industry, but from Staffing, Consulting, HR and Professional Services to become part of Save The Millennials.
Want your company to join? Just go to savethemillennials.com, scroll down to the "We Believe in Millennials" section and submit your company name, contact information and logo to get featured.
For those in need of help, you can peruse our website, check out featured companies and spread the word about #SaveTheMillennials by tweeting your favorite Millennial moment, direct from the site. (You can also follow @savemillennials on Twitter). There are no sides in this crisis: we're all in this together. So let's provide and receive the help we sorely need, and band together to #SaveTheMillennials.
Ambition Drives Millennial Sales Professionals
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:
- FiveStars: Adam Wall. Sr. Manager of Sales Operations .
- Filemaker: Brad Freitag. Vice-President of Worldwide Sales.
- Outreach: Mark Kosoglow. Vice-President of Sales.
- Cell Marque: Lauren Hopson. Director of Sales & Marketing.
- 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:
- Clayton Homes: HBR finds triple-digit growth in 3 sales efficiency metrics.
- Coyote Logistics: Monthly revenue per broker grew $525 in 6 months.
- Peek: Monthly sales activity volume grew 142% in 6 months.
- Vorsight: Monthly sales conversations grew 300% in 6 months.
Contact us to learn how Ambition can impact your sales organization today.
