the top 10 ambition blog posts of 2014
TRANSCRIPT
The Top 10 Ambition Blog Posts from 2014
Our Best Content on Sales, Leadership, Sports & Technology
Our Best Content from the Past Year
Most content that you'll read on a company website isn't worth the (digital) paper it's printed on.
Here at Ambition, we've strived for something different. And we consider the following 10 posts to be our best work from 2014.
To all of our readers: Thank you for visiting our site and taking the time to read our content.
Here are the 10 articles we were proudest to bring you on the Ambition Blog.
The Top 10
1. The State of the American Workplace: 2004-2014
The State of the American Workplace: 2004-2014
• Our most in-depth post from 2014.
• The State of the American Workplace hones in on four key trends: Technology, Demographics, Values and Data Analytics.
• These are the most pertinent forces fueling our changing professional world – here’s how to leverage them to your advantage.
2. The Sales Influencer Series Presents: Max Altschuler
The Sales Influencer Series Presents: Max Altschuler
• The Sales Influencer Series has been a very successful initiative on our Blog, and is spearheaded by Ambition CSO Jared Houghton.
• Each episode involves an interview with a leading Sales thought leader and provides audio and text transcript of key insights in their particular areas of expertise.
• Max Altschuler, Co-Founder and CEO of SalesHacker, offered some excellent insights into the most cutting edge sales tools on the market, as well as the origin story of SalesHacker itself.
3. The 3 Questions in Enterprise SaaS Sales
The 3 Questions in Enterprise SaaS Sales
• Ambition is a member of the SaaS industry, which can be a notoriously difficult field of sales for those selling high-end products into enterprises.
• Though this article specifically focuses on SaaSsales, many of the key insights transcend SaaSand are applicable to anyone trying to sell into an enterprise.
• For further reading, SaaS Industry expert Mark Cranney has covered this topic as well as anyone.
4. A Fantasy Football Lover’s Guide To Your Salesforce
A Fantasy Football Lover’s Guide To Your Salesforce
• So much of today’s Sales content takes itself way too seriously. Such is not the case here.
• Ambition software is often characterized as “Fantasy Football for the Workforce.”
• We took that premise and ran with it in our lengthiest, most satirical post.
• Every Sales Force has its wily veteran, its petulant superstar, and its office version of a gym rat. We picked 20 of those archetypes and did a full profile of each one.
• The result: A 4000-word manifesto and the only Ambition blog post inspired by Deadspin.
5. Promoting Salesforce Motivation & Accountability Through Technology
Promoting Salesforce Motivation & Accountability Through Technology
• An in-depth discussion of the good, bad and ugly associated with CRM usage.
• Is the Glenngarry Glen Ross-era of sales truly waning?
• Is the new boss (Gamification), same as the old boss (a visit from Downtown)?
• Most importantly, is it possible to watch the “Coffee is for Closers” speech without getting fired up? (It’s not).
6. The Sales Influencer Series Presents: John Barrows
The Sales Influencer Series Presents: John Barrows
• In the first episode of the Sales Influencer Series, Jared Houghton and Sales Guru John Barrows went deep on some major topics impacting modern sales teams.
• How best to bridge the generation gap between Gen-X employees and Millennials?
• How best to utilize technology without becoming reliant upon it?
• How best to transition an employee up or down the ladder from Business Development Representative to Account Executive, and vice versa?
• The answers are delivered by the indomitable, no-nonsense, and always entertaining John Barrows.
7. The Leadership Styles of 5 NBA Legends
The Leadership Styles of 5 NBA Legends
• Everyone and their mother is “thought leading” about leadership these days. This is not one of those posts.
• Michael Jordan. Magic Johnson. Larry Bird. Bill Russell. Lebron James. All champions. All leaders. And all wired completely differently, in terms of how they led.
• Immersive Youtube clips, links to ridiculous stat sheets, shouts out to Allen Iverson. We left everything on the court with this one.
8. Confessions of a Disgruntled Sales Rep
Confessions of a Disgruntled Sales Rep
• An anonymous colleague of Ambition unleashes his best War Stories about surviving in a dysfunctional, high-pressure Sales Org.
• There are no "unicorns and rainbows" and no pump-up speeches.
• This is Full Metal Jacket for the Boiler Room.
9. The 7-Step Guide to Surviving Y Combinator
The 7 Step Guide to Surviving Y Combinator
• Ambition started 2014 with a bang, as our Co-Founders spent the year’s early months in Silicon Valley at the prestigious Y Combinator tech accelerator.
• Several months later, our Co-Founder and COO Brian Trautschold took to the Blog to share his best practices for succeeding in the high-stress accelerator environment.
• The goal of the piece: Offer straightforward, actionable insights and help readers get the maximum value out of YC.
• The keystone piece of Entrepreneur-focused content we delivered in 2014.
10. 5 New Year’s Resolutions for Inside Sales Managers in 2015
5 New Year’s Resolutions for Inside Sales Managers in 2015
• Disregard the gimmicky topic (sorry) and just know one thing: This is the distillation of everything we wrote about Inside Sales in 2014.
• You want the Cliff's Notes of the 2014 Ambition Blog? This is it.
• The 5 resolutions listed go towards the most substantial topics of note in today's Inside Sales world.
• You can thank us later.
Honorable Mention: 6 Underrated Bloggers to Follow on LinkedIn
6 Underrated Bloggers to Follow On LinkedIn
• The Ambition Blog’s most trafficked post from 2014 had to make this list, so we’re giving it an Honorable Mention.
• We read hundreds of pieces of content each week, so few things warm our hearts more than finding great content in unexpected sources.
• Here are six (relatively) under-the-radar professionals who wrote content equaling or exceeding anything we did in 2014.
• We’ve tooted our own horn enough – here is Ambition’s pick for the best piece of Sales content from 2014. Well done, Chris Young.
The Ambition Academy
The best things in life are free -- and the best content we wrote this year is, too.
Free to download from our Academy page, the next three pieces of content were simply too epic to go on our Blog.
Do yourself a favor and check out at least one of them before you finish perusing our other content.
Guest Editorials
Before you go -- hey look, Ambition content appeared elsewhere, too!
Here are 7 Guest Editorials we contributed to well-known publications in 2014.
Guest Editorials
A Primer for Driving Employee Productivity. Hubspot. July 2014.
Using Data Analytics to Become a Killer Sales Coach. SalesHacker. Sep 2014.
What Millennials Really Need. The Daily Muse. Nov 2014.
Is That Whole Gamification Thing Really Over? Information Age. July 2014.
Is Advanced Metrics the Final Nail in Gamification's Coffin? Information Age. Aug 2014.
Content Marketers: Why Aren't You Citing? Social Media Today. Aug 2014.
3 Maxims of a Standout Company Blog. Social Media Today. Sep 2014.
Thanks for an Amazing Year
To learn more about how Ambition can impact your workforce, please contact us at this link or at [email protected].
Thanks for reading, and we'll see you in 2015!
Jeremy Boudinet is the voice of Ambition. He has written about the topics of Sales, Gamification, Millennials, Professional Development, SaaS and Leadership for Time, Information Age, the Daily Muse, and Social Media Today.