Creating systems of accountability and visibility for remote sales teams

I’ve been a startup founder for 10 years. There have been very few times when I’ve felt the indescribable wave of “change” that we’ve experienced in the past 2 weeks. 

Over dozens of conversations with our customers, partners, and our own leaders at Ambition this week - I have heard the same story: “things are changing fast, we’re trying to figure it out”. 

The response to a global pandemic and the pertinent reaction to limit the spread and societal consequences of Covid-19 have been remarkable. 

Overnight, Fortune 500 customers launched travel bans and full Work From Home requirements. Our customers in global leagues like the NBA, MLB, and others cancelled and suspended games. Our partners across the globe are grappling with a new reality, at least for right now. 

Ambition has always prided itself on being a powerful tool for remote sales teams. We use the product ourselves for recognition of our remote SDRs, AEs, and CS team, in addition to running all of our remote employee Check-Ins within the product. 

We are not experts on pandemics or response to them - but as your team adapts to remote work and remote sales management (at least in the near term), we feel strongly we can provide expertise, product best practices, and a powerful toolset to help you continue to coach your people. 

Here are a few ideas and strategies you can borrow from our customers and our own remote teams if you need a hand while you go remote: 

 

• A remote sales team checklist that covers some considerations for going from a centralized team to a dispersed team

• An infographic of 5 real triggered alerts that Ambition customers use for their remote sales teams 

• A case study on how Ambition uses our own product to manage our remote SDR team

• An Office Hours recording all about using triggered alerts and how they can assist remote teams

• Some ideas for using Slack to amp up your remote sales teams 

• Creating a modern sales manager framework with gamification, alerts, and triggers

• A fun set of Zoom backgrounds to spice up your remote meeting game

While a lot of Ambition customers are remote already and understand why our tool is a great fit for remote culture, here are a few notes for customers who are just now considering using Ambition for a remote team: 

1. Sales TVs and leaderboards can actually be broadcast on browsers. Every rep can still hear the “sales gong” going off when running the TV in their browser tab

2. Triggers bring buzz and energy of celebrations to TVs, Slack or email. They can also be used as private alerts to managers when the reps are falling behind on metrics for the day, week, or month. 

3. Scorecards keep reps focused and on task. Both activity and objective scorecards are great for remote teams and you can trigger alerts to checkup on activity and objective scores for your teams

4. Competitions help unite sales teams. Partnering up reps to take on other pairs head to head builds camaraderie and drives performance at the same time. 

Did you know that Ambition employees are dispersed across the country? Here are some of our favorite tools we use to unite our own team: 

1. Slack. We fire Ambition triggers here to celebrate. We crowd source information here, we update team mates and it is a great mix of work and chit chat that replicate the “water coolers” of days past.

2. Zoom. We video conference a ton! We turn on cameras to replicate a face to face feel. We even host all-hands company meetings there!

3. Chorus. We do call coaching and peer coaching remotely and review calls on chorus to improve. 

Have questions for how Ambition can help your remote sales team? Just ask!