Alert Feeds are a key way to use Atrium's 100+ KPIs to better measure and improve rep, team, and company performance using metrics along with Dashboards, Opp Health Views, and Goals.
Here are some ways to be amazing at Alert Feeds.
Table of Contents:
- Core Alert Feed Concepts
- Alert Feed Construction Best Practices
- Alert Feed Consumption - Broadcasts
- Alert Feed Consumption - Links
Core Alert Feed Concepts
Want help creating or perfecting an Alert Feed? Contact your CSM here.
Did you know that Atrium can pay attention to your metrics for you?
That’s right! One of the most powerful things about Atrium is its alerting capabilities (more on Atrium Alert Types here).
Atrium statistically monitors every metric in Atrium for every team and every rep, all the time. So instead of having to use your eyeballs to detect what’s happening with a given metric based on some squiggles in a graph - Atrium can tell you, proactively. Kind of like if you had a personal data analyst who paid attention to the data for you…and then tapped you on the shoulder for the most pertinent things for you to care about.
Atrium’s “Alert Feeds” help you create and distribute purpose-made views composed of these alerts. And by configuring these Alert Feeds in smart ways, you can proactively monitor, manage, and improve all manner of metrics, and the underlying rep behavior, for any number of critical use cases - just like with Atrium dashboards.
Digested Dashboard: One way to think about an Alert Feed is almost like a digested dashboard. That is, with a dashboard, you have a set of metrics that are visualized in certain ways, and you use your eyes to see if something has changed in a way that would indicate you would want to take action - for good or for bad.
With an Alert Feed, you can monitor the statistical fluctuations for a set of metrics for a team, the people in that team, a set of teams, or even just a person…but that monitoring is done for you. Again, as if that personal analyst was studying that dashboard for you, and wanted to flag a handful of things for your attention.
This includes all of the Atrium alert types - Strategy Insights, Trend Alerts, Peer Alerts, Goals Alerts, Ramping Alerts and more.
Some examples of high impact alerts:
A very positive ramping alert indicating a newly ramping rep is building their opportunity pipeline much more quickly than their peers have, historically. Yes! What are they doing that we can standardize to the rest of the team?
A warning alert indicating that a rep has a substantial win rate issue as compared to other reps in their organization that sell into the same segment. Uh oh! We should dig in more here!
In this way, Atrium Alert Feeds pair wonderfully with Atrium Dashboards, ideally stored together, in a Saved View Folder.
In this article, we’re going show you how to be amazing at Atrium Alert Feeds to help you monitor, manage, and improve rep and team performance like a true sales scientist.
Alert Feed Construction Best Practices
Targeted Content: Like well created dashboards, a good Alert Feed is targeted at an important topic for an audience who cares about it. It’s not a kitchen sink. Even better, it likely should be paired with a dashboard on the same topics (from a Playbook). Examples of this might be:
-
An “
AE Pipeline Hygiene Alert Feed” featuring alerts on key pipeline hygiene metrics that indicate which reps are struggling with managing their pipeline. -
An “
AE Ramping Alert Feed” featuring ramping alerts on important leading and lagging indicator metrics for AE ramp - like new opportunity inflow, opportunity and pipeline ownership, key stage attainments (e.g., Proposals Sent), and of course Wins and Bookings. -
An “
Org Level Key KPI Alert Feed” featuring key alerts on critical metrics like Bookings, Wins, Win Rate, and Opportunity Inflow on an org level for executives to monitor.
As with dashboards, we don’t want the “kitchen sink”, and we don’t want to be overwhelmed with alerts in a feed - we want to be targeted on a topic that matters to us to manage well.
Bundled with Other Views: Just like with Dashboards, the best Alert Feeds are bundled together with other views (like Dashboards, Opportunity Health views, and more) for a similar topic in a Saved View Folder.
In Workflow: Alert Feeds are about awareness. Like dashboards, perhaps moreso, they should be broadcast via Email and / or Slack. A very common workflow would be an Alert Feed (e.g., “ Pipeline Hygiene Alert Feed”) being broadcast via email to a manager, flagging an area of interest. This drives the manager to the Alert Feed in question in the Atrium web app, where they then pivot to the associated Dashboard in the same topic folder (e.g., “
AE Team - Pipeline Hygiene Dash”) for deeper investigation. Or the manager can just forward the Alert Feed email to a rep or a team to start a discussion.
Metrics Selection
The metrics you select for an Alert Feed should tie to what you’re trying to monitor and manage.
To start, we recommend that Alert Feeds be paired with Dashboards on the same topic. In this case, you would select the same metrics for the Alert Feed that were featured on the Dashboard in question.
If you wanted to make an Alert Feed from scratch, however, a great place to select metrics would be in the Atrium Metrics by Use Case Guide or select an Atrium Playbook to use.
For example, for an Alert Feed focused on “
Hustle Metrics” for SDRs (or AEs) you might select leading indicator metrics like Emails Sent, Accounts Touched, New Contacts Touched (or, for AEs, Meetings and Opps Touched).
Or for something like an AE Ramping Alert Feed, you might focus on leading indicators on ramping success - like New Opportunity Ownership, Opportunity Ownership, Pipeline Ownership, Meetings, and Accounts Touched and then also lagging indicators like Wins, Win Rate, and Bookings.
Or for something like a Pipeline Hygiene Alert Feed, you might focus on measures of pipeline management - like Untouched Opportunities, Stuck Opps, and maybe Total Opportunity Ownership (in case a rep is overloaded).
The important thing is to narrow down the metrics selection to focus on the metrics that will help you monitor, manage, and improve the topic at hand - and no more, so you ensure a high signal-to-noise ratio.
The ideal Alert Feed only has a half dozen to a dozen alerts live at any time - again, not the kitchen sink.
Alert Category Selection
Atrium has a number of different Alert Types that can be used in Alert Feeds for maximal impact.
First, a quick review of these alert types, followed by how to best use them in Alert Feeds.
Trend Alerts (“Personal Alert”): These alerts look at the performance of a rep or team as compared to their historical averages. These are powerful for seeing “what changed”.
Peer Alerts: These alerts look at the performance of a rep or team as compared to others like them in the organization. They are calculated by comparing “apples to apples” for role and segment type - for individuals and for teams - using the org chart you have modeled in Atrium.
These are powerful for seeing if a rep or team is substantially different from others you expect their metrics to be like, so you can intervene appropriately.
Goal Alerts: These alerts compare rep or team performance to goals that have been set for them - both in progress, and during a completed time period. These are powerful for alerting you to progress (or not) towards an important goal.
Ramping Peer Alerts: These compare individuals to others in their same role and segment at the same time during their respective ramps. These are quite powerful in comparing new rampers to the historical averages of their peers at the same time in their ramp - allowing you to see if rampers are on track (or not).
Note: If a rep has been in the same segment/discipline combination in a previous role, their ramp start date will go back to their first role with that segment/discipline combination.
Ramping Goal Alerts: These compare rampers to prorated ramp versions of goals that have been set for them.
Summary Alerts: These are alerts that sum up the total number of active alerts for a rep (or team). They’re powerful for helping management or leadership to see when there are lots of concerning (or exciting) things happening with a rep or a team.
Strategy Insights: These are particularly powerful alerts that look at a combination of metrics that indicate a root cause for a problem (or, a success!). They help managers and leaders see what is causing an issue.
Alert Type Combinations: Now that we know the type of alerts we can select for a given Alert Feed, we can discuss how to combine them in effective ways, depending on topic and audience.
For an Alert Feed that is focused on individual reps - like for a manager to keep tabs on each of their reps’ Pipeline Hygiene, individual-centric alerts like Trend, Peer, and Goal Alerts (both regular and ramping) work best.
For 2nd level managers (and the operations staff that assist them), focusing on higher level alerting for individuals, like Summary Alerts and Strategy Insights can be helpful to keep a pulse on rep-centric issues for reps that they don’t directly manage.
Alternatively, for both 1st level and 2nd level managers (and ops staff), Trend, Peer, and Goal Alerts can be helpful at a team level. Where monitoring Goal Progress or Trend Movements.
By combining relevant metrics with relevant alert types, you can construct powerful Alert Feeds that illuminate exactly what managers, leaders, and operations staff should be aware of to help improve.
Subject Selection
As with dashboards, Alert Feeds can be focused on a rep-level or team-level. Rep-level alerts are most relevant for 1st level managers (and the reps themselves).
To select individual reps as your subjects, you can either select a Team, and Atrium will show you the active alerts of all the members of that team. This is the best way to do rep-level alerts for a team, as as you add people to that team in the Atrium org chart - they’ll automatically be included in that Alert Feed.
Or you can just select a single person (or set of people) whose active alerts you’d like to be notified of.
Alert Type Selection
Lastly, you can select the Type of alerts you’re like an Alert Feed to include. Depending on what you’re trying to achieve, you may want only Positive Alerts, only Warning Alerts, or both Warning and Positive alerts.
Positive: These are alerts indicating a metric is behaving in a way that indicates positive performance.
Warning: These are alerts that indicate a potential warning to be investigated as a metric is performing in a concerning way.
Combining Warning and Positive Alerts: This will be the default approach - where for a given topic (e.g., AE Pipeline Hygiene) you’d like to see which reps are having success and which are struggling. By mixing both as a manager, you can see areas for guidance and celebration together, as can reps (if they’re included in broadcasts of these).
Only Warning Alerts: Filtering down to only Warning Alerts can help you narrow down to only issues to potentially address. Be careful with this approach, as it can be harsh if focused on individuals - so this is typically best done if an Alert Feed is being shared with managers only.
Only Positive Alerts: One of my favorites is only positive alerts! This can be used for fun Alert Feeds like “
Kudos Feeds” demonstrating to the whole team where individuals are outperforming - sent out on a Friday morning as a celebratory way to enter the weekend.
Common Errors
Alert Feeds are powerful ways to monitor, manage, and improve teams, but have a few common ways
Too Many Metrics: Including too many metrics to pay attention to will generate an Alert Feed that is likely too noisy. Keep them targeted and concise, aligned with a management topic of interest.
Too Many Alert Categories: Including too many alert categories also can create too much noise. Focus in on the relevant categories needed for the feed.
No Broadcast: Like all Atrium views, broadcasting view email and / or Slack ensures you are aware of the insights from the alert feed, as it "comes to you." Make sure to broadcast.
Alert Feed Consumption - Broadcasts
Due to their “alerting” nature, Alert Feeds are especially important to broadcast - whether via email or Slack.
Generally, follow the same principles as with broadcasting dashboards for timing and audience.
This will ensure that Alert Feeds “come to you” and you don’t miss a thing.
Broadcast Timing
Rather than recount the timing recommendations from the dashboard broadcast best practices, we’ll call out relevant departures.
Pair with Dashboards: In general, timing should align with the broadcast timing of a partnered Dashboard - since they’re both on the same “topic” and the 1st level manager, 2nd level manager, or operations staffer will be thinking about that topic.
Topic Specific Timing: That said, based on the topic of an Alert Feed, there may be specific timing considerations.
For example, is it a “Kudos Feed '' that should be sent out Friday mid-day to close out the week on a high note?
Or is a leadership-specific Alert Feed that focuses on awareness of key potential issues that might be best broadcast at the beginning of the week - or Sunday afternoon - during a time that is suited for “setting up the week”?
Broadcast Audience
Because Alert Feeds focus in on the most relevant, and sometimes surprising, insights for a team or organization, audience consideration can be a little more important than with just dashboards.
Team: Alert Feed broadcasts for a whole team can be great for things like Alert Feeds on accountability topics - like Hustle Metrics, Pipeline Hygiene, Prospecting Metrics, and more.
Managers Only: For more sensitive views, it can be effective to only broadcast them to management. For example, an Alert Feed focused on warning alerts - an important thing to monitor - can negatively impact morale for the team members featured on the report.
By broadcasting it solely to to management, managers can be aware of potential issues to be able to coach to them, but without negatively impacting morale of the team.
Slack Broadcasts
Slack can be an effective way to broadcast Atrium views (more on how to do so). Pairing Slack distributions alongside email distributions of the same view can be effective to ensure that people consume the information where they mainly “live”.
Again, generally look to align Slack Alert Feed distributions with Dashboard Slack Broadcast best practices.
Individually: You can use Atrium to send Atrium views just to you, which will show up from the “Atrium” Slack app. Good for sensitive Alert Feeds.
Group DM:
Team: You can send broadcasts directly into team Slack channels. This can be powerful because they’re high attention venues. Just be mindful to not dominate the channel with view broadcasts. “Kudos” broadcasts to fire up the team can be a great thing here.
Alert Feed Consumption - Links
While dashboards can and should be heavily linked to, Alert Feeds are more of a broadcast and bookmark thing. That said, linking can be useful in places.
As with Atrium dashboards, each Alert Feed has a unique URL (in fact, you can link to any Atrium metric card configuration as well). So linking to them from documents, meeting invites, and bookmarks can be very effective.
Documents
Alert Feeds are less pertinent in meeting settings - but they can be helpful in preparation for them.
For example, linking to relevant Alert Feeds:
Meeting Invites
The same linking can be done from meeting invites - but with Alert Feeds, often less about them being a topic in the meeting - but instead using a meeting invite as a reminder for the manager or leader to review the Alert Feeds (like a broadcast, but on your calendar).
Bookmarks
And of course, Alert Feeds (and dashboards, configured metrics cards, and other views) can be bookmarked for easy access.