If you're in sales, you know how easy it is to miss a hot lead because you saw the email three hours late. Real-time notifications sound great—until you try to set them up, and suddenly you’re lost in a maze of settings, integrations, and buzzwords. This guide is for anyone using Pick who just wants their team to know, right away, when a sales opportunity comes in. No fluff. No hand-waving. Just clear steps, honest advice, and a few pitfalls to avoid.
Why Real-Time Notifications Actually Matter
Let’s get the obvious out of the way: Sales is a game of speed. The first person to follow up usually wins, or at least gets their foot in the door. But real-time doesn’t mean “every possible ping for every little thing.” Too many alerts and your team will start ignoring them (hello, notification fatigue). The trick is to set up notifications that matter and skip the noise.
Step 1: Decide What You Really Want to Be Notified About
Before you even touch Pick’s settings, nail down what a “sales opportunity” means for your team. If you leave it vague, you’ll get flooded with alerts that don’t matter.
- Common triggers: New lead assigned, lead status change, deal moves to a certain stage, big-value deals, or demo requests.
- What to skip: Updates like “lead viewed email” or “contact updated address” are rarely urgent.
- Pro tip: Start with just the most critical events. You can always add more later.
Step 2: Check Your Pick Plan and Permissions
Not every Pick plan includes advanced or customizable notifications. Some features might be locked behind higher pricing tiers or require admin rights.
- Check your plan: If you’re on a free or basic plan, check what’s included. (Annoying, but necessary.)
- Confirm permissions: You may need admin access to set up or change notification rules. If you’re not the admin, rope them in now instead of getting blocked later.
Step 3: Map Out Your Notification Channels
Pick can send notifications in a few different ways. Don’t just default to email—think about what gets seen fastest.
- Options usually include: Email, in-app notifications, SMS (sometimes), and integrations like Slack or MS Teams.
- What works: Slack or Teams pings are great if your team lives there all day. SMS is good for truly urgent stuff, but can get annoying fast. Email is slow, but a decent fallback.
- Be honest: Don’t set up SMS for every new lead unless you want a mutiny.
Step 4: Set Up Notification Rules in Pick
Here’s where you actually do the work in Pick. The specifics may change if Pick updates their UI, but the core process is usually the same.
- Log in and go to your Pick dashboard.
- Find the Notifications or Automation settings. This might be under “Settings,” “Workflow,” or “Integrations.”
- Create a new notification rule. Usually labeled “Add Notification,” “Create Alert,” or similar.
- Choose your trigger. Pick from the list—e.g., “New Opportunity Created,” “Deal Stage Changed to Demo,” etc.
- Select recipients. Decide who gets notified. This can be the deal owner, a whole sales team, or even custom groups.
- Pick your channel(s). Choose Slack, email, SMS, in-app, or any combo.
- (Optional) Add filters. Only want alerts for deals over $10k? Or for a certain region? Use filters if available.
- Save and test. Don’t skip testing. Trigger a sample event (or use Pick’s built-in test function) and see if the right people get the right alerts.
Pro tip: Don’t forget time zones and working hours. Getting a “hot lead” alert at 3 a.m. doesn’t help anyone.
Step 5: Integrate with Slack, Teams, or Other Tools (If You Use Them)
Pick can often push notifications straight into chat apps, which is way more useful than yet another email.
- How to integrate: Usually, you’ll need to connect Pick to Slack or Teams via an integration or bot. Follow Pick’s integration guide for your chosen tool.
- Set up channels: Send high-priority alerts to a dedicated #sales-alerts channel, not the general chat.
- Limit the noise: Only push truly urgent triggers to chat, or your team will mute the channel.
Honest take: These integrations are great in theory, but sometimes break or lag. Run a few tests and check in with your team after a week—are the alerts being seen, or ignored? Adjust as needed.
Step 6: Set Personal Notification Preferences
Each user in Pick can usually tweak their own notification settings. Encourage your team to do this, or you’ll get complaints fast.
- Where to find it: Look for a “Profile,” “Settings,” or “Notifications” tab in Pick.
- What to adjust: How often they get alerts, which channels they prefer, and what events they want to hear about.
- Don’t force it: Let people turn off non-essential alerts. If you try to control everything centrally, you’ll just get more “I missed the lead because it was lost in the noise” stories.
Step 7: Test, Tweak, and Actually Ask Your Team
The first version of your notification setup won’t be perfect. Expect to adjust.
- Run a dry run: Simulate a few sales events and see who gets pinged, and how fast.
- Get feedback: Ask your team what’s working and what’s annoying.
- Iterate: Turn off useless alerts, add new ones if you’re missing important stuff, and keep fine-tuning.
Pro tip: If your team starts ignoring notifications, that’s on you—not them. Too much noise kills urgency.
What to Ignore (At Least for Now)
- Over-engineered automation: Don’t spend hours building multi-step notifications for every possible scenario. Start simple.
- Third-party notification apps: Unless Pick’s built-in options are truly lacking, avoid patching in more tools. Extra layers = more things to break.
- Analytics dashboards for alerts: Dashboards are great for reviewing performance but terrible for real-time notifications.
Troubleshooting: When Notifications Don’t Work
- No notifications at all? Double-check your rules, permissions, and integration connections.
- Wrong people getting alerts? Revisit your recipient rules and filters.
- Delays? Sometimes, external integrations (like Slack) add a few seconds. If it’s minutes or more, contact Pick support.
- Alerts going to spam? Whitelist Pick’s email sender in your company’s email system.
Final Thoughts: Keep It Simple, Get Faster, and Iterate
Real-time notifications in Pick aren’t magic, but they do give you a real edge—if you set them up with intention. Start with just the alerts that actually help your sales team move faster. Don’t try to automate everything on day one. Listen to your team, cut the noise, and keep tweaking. The goal isn’t to be “real-time” for everything. It’s to be timely for the stuff that makes you money. That’s it.