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Yesterday we hosted a product roadmap with our CEO, Travis Truett and VP of Sales Mark McWatters to discuss how the rise of sales enablement has brought a demand for more efficient, more informed, more equipped sales teams; and how sales coaching is the exact discipline that is delivering that type of sales excellence. Here is a look at how the theme of sales coaching is shaping our development roadmap in 2020:
Sales Enablement is the heart of sales organizations
Through tactics like gamification and individual or team coaching sessions, the job of sales enablement is to
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Motivate Employees to Reach Their Potential
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Empower Managers to be Great Coaches
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Help Leaders to Hit Numbers and Build Culture
Our job at Ambition is to continue our mission of being at the heart of every elite sales organization and set enablement up to achieve their objectives by continuing to develop new product innovations, improve upon existing product functionality, maintain a commitment to a secure and stable platform, while saving time to deliver explicit customer requests.
The master plan
In 2020, our primary objective will be to support enablement leaders and managers in all coaching, gamification, and performance improvement initiatives. Some of the product updates will include:
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Coaching timeline, prep, integrations and trends
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☝️Surprise! This will go live in Q4!
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Workflows to be a more advanced triggers and alerts system
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Team meeting feature to help structure not just 1:1 coaching, but 1:many
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Coaching Playbooks and Coach IQ to deliver real time insights and suggested “plays” for managers to improve performance in real time
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Quick Asks feature to allow reps to request specific coaching tactics when and where they need it
Strategy from our VP of Sales to leverage coaching to improve performance
Customers and prospects have a lot of questions about how to actually execute coaching and some of the new updates we are releasing, so we brought on our own VP of sales to talk through some of the most asked questions.
In 1:1 style coaching, do you give directive feedback or coach developmentally or both?
Both. I’m a firm believer in self discovery, so I let the rep tell me what went well and where they need to improve first. If I agree, great! It was their idea and they will own it better. If I disagree or have things to add, I am directive. Don’t beat around the bush - just tell them. Make a commitment. Inspect.
How often do you meet? How long are the sessions?
We meet 1x week for 1 hour.
What are some of the things you ask/why?
Overall strategy is to keep it simple. I like to let the employee lead the conversation and dig into the responses in person.
>>> GET MARK’S FULL COACHING TEMPLATE HERE <<<
Which actual features in Ambition coaching platform are your favorite?
I’m excited about the inline calendar invites. It is such a natural fit and something small, but saves me even more time. I also love notes for quick touc h points. Really fast, simple. Have a log of them.
Running 1:1s where the admin work is on the employee = manager game changer.
Grab more product updates, strategy from Mark and quick tips in the full recording
