[New Releases] 7 Must-See Product Releases

Because Ambition focuses on sales teams, we work on a fast-paced product-release cycle to keep up with the ever-evolving sales world. Here are some of the most impactful releases we’ve had over the last quarter, a little bit of the backstory around what's driven the change — and how to make the most of it for your sales teams. 
 

1. Threshold Prizes 

A common challenge sales managers share: sometimes, sales competitions don’t motivate their teams because the same one or two reps win every time. Creating threshold prizes in lieu of (or in addition to) first-place finisher prizes is a great solution. 

Managers asked that we create a way of awarding winners via a benchmark, or threshold. It doesn't matter if you cross it first or last, or what your total outcome is; as long as you cross the threshold that the manager set for the competition, you win.  

This is a direct play for motivating the middle and ensuring that your team has a reason to continue to compete towards the goal, even if they may not come in first. And of course, the tracking is automated for you. Pick the metric, pick the threshold, pick the time period, and see who wins! 

2. Custom TV Branding

Every chance to highlight your unique sales culture strengthens buy-in from your team. To enhance the tangible presence of your culture, you can now custom-brand your sales TVs. Add your company logos, colors, or something silly, like competing sales teams. 

3. Managed Coaching

Sales coaching is an initiative that most sales organizations have taken on in the last couple of years, but coaching can sit within several different departments depending on how your org is structured. Deploying centralized coaching programs was a request we heard from several customers who were looking to increase the ease-of-use and scalability of sales coaching for their teams.

For example, if senior leadership likes to structure the format of quarterly reviews, a managed program can be deployed for managers to use. There can still be unmanged programs that live alongside these. Managers might create their own weekly 1:1 coaching programs, but use the managed program for the review. 

Managed Coaching Programs are great for:

• Sales enablement

• Sales leadership

• Human resources

• Promoting top-down accountability, alignment, consistency

• Ensuring compliance and oversight

If you need inspiration for how to create a coaching program, check out these coaching templates — created and used by some of the most elite sales coaches around. 

4. Graph slide

Communication and visibility are essential when it comes to aligning and motivating teams and cross-functional departments. Scheduling out an email report that people may or may not open, or requiring people to login to a dashboard to find pertinent information, won’t happen when things are busy. 

To deliver insights to your team in the fastest, easiest way possible, we decided to bring your KPI graphs straight to the TV builder options as a new slide type. TVs are a powerful way to maximize your impact as a manager and drive quota attainment. Why not project your real-time KPIs alongside closed deal triggers and leaderboards? Keeping the big picture in context with the smaller wins and celebrations is what will ultimately showcase alignment and create a continuous cycle of pushing for the activities and objectives that are displayed in results on your graph slide. 

5. Quick Actions Button

This is another customer-driven product request dedicated to the sole purpose of saving managers time and clicks to get things done. Rather than clicking through the nav several times to get to the “creation” function of reports, coaching check-ins, competitions and other parts of the app, our new Quick Actions button takes you directly to the creation page so that you can move faster. 

When used in conjunction with our triggered alerts, the process may go something like this: 

1. Manager gets email alert that by Thursday, their team is less than 70% to quota for the week

2. Manager uses the Quick Actions button to award any rep who closes 2 deals over the next 2 days a full day off work next week. 

6. Scrolling leaderboard

With our new scrolling leaderboard style, managers can display as many individuals as they would like. The TV will rotate between multiples of 10. This allows you to recognize more team members, which gives the entire team more insight into where they fall — rather than only the top 10 having access to that visibility. 

The number one thing that motivates sales reps? Visibility, so the more that you can provide this to all reps, the better. And moving the middle players, not just your top performers, is a way to realize more total attainment. 

7. Import Scorecards 

When large teams are adjusting targets based on historical performance, or personalizing them per rep based on their strongest selling channel (rather than just by role), you may need to bulk upload your targets to save time. If you're curious about what a sales scorecard should look like, check out our latest batch of sales scorecards templates here.