How To Manage, Coach, And Lead A Sales Team Remotely

As we mentioned above, nowadays there are endless possibilities to communicate constantly. So there’s no excuse not to communicate clearly and continuously with your team. It’s just as important for the team to be available, as it is for the boss. In case an employee has a question or a problem, they need to be able to go to their superior to get feedback.

Make your remote sales team connected by creating time for meetings that have no agenda. You see, while sales quotas are vital, they represent just one piece of the puzzle. The most committed remote sales teams understand their customers’ business needs. They understand the unique value their company brings to the table, and they’re able to communicate that value proposition.

In this article, we put together some best practices for managing a remote sales team to help you and your team succeed. Jonathan Aufray of Growth Hackers Digital says, “Communication is essential for managing a remote sales team efficiently. You actually want to talk to your team and, most importantly, listen to them. Remote selling is the practice of identifying opportunities and closing sales without having to meet up in person.

The use of technology in every aspect of sales makes it more structured and trackable. Since the sales reps do not come in direct contact with a prospect and depend on telecommuting technology, we are bound to see more disruptions that will lead to advancement. Onsite training can be powerful as well—particularly right after the hiring process.

Create A Fun, Socially Engaged Sales Community

I suggest focusing on listening to team members as they express any issues or concerns as well as remaining proactive and anticipating team members’ needs. Managing a remote sales team is all about communicating your expectations to your team, continuously examining areas where your team can improve, and equipping them with remote sales enablement tools. Sales enablement tools help align your marketing and sales teams, enabling the sales team to have readily available content that can move the needle on deals. It also keeps the marketing team aware of what content to prepare to help sales teams close deals faster. So, it’s essential that everyone is working towards the same goals. But they might be so focused on the hunting aspect they don’t have enough time to close.

• Your remote sales team is like an army platoon bypassing enemy frontline strongpoints as they approach their target.
• You can show graphs, share recommendations, and include intros, outros to personalize it.
• Achievements should be recognized with public praise, as well as with rewards such as bonus payments, gifts, or even just an extra day off.
• In absence of an office tour, Sprout Social had to re-think the candidate experience.

As mentioned earlier, many sales reps learn valuable skills by simple observation. There’s nothing better than being around successful colleagues and learning new strategies. Even if they’re not directly coaching you, it’s fantastic for relationship building.

While working from home, the lines of logging in and out become blurred, and employees no longer adhere to the concept of work timings and consequently augment their workday. Such planned inter-team interactions can happen through online communication tools like Zoom, Slack, or Hangouts. Therefore, it is crucial to have clear and process-driven handoffs at each stage, especially in a remote environment. SDRs, for instance, need to regularly pass on leads to Account Executives after qualifying them and coordinate with them to move leads down the pipeline towards closure.

13 of the best sales tools we recommend for sales reps in 2022 These top sales tools will set your sales reps up for success in 2022. Find tips for choosing the ones that’ll boost productivity in your sales teams. One of the best ways to avoid the trap of micro-managing your remote sales team is to generate a spirit of accountability on your team.

Ready To Build Your Sales Engine?

Simply put, communication silos occur when teams work amongst themselves and don’t regularly share information with other groups within the business. In order to manage your remote team members, you have to start by understanding the core challenges you and your sales reps will face along the way. The more you know about these potential roadblocks, the better off you’ll be when it’s time to handle complex issues in real-time. Similar to how you would take an entry level new recruit or junior rep to a sales meeting with you for training purposes, you can include your sales reps in your own virtual client meetings.

If the process is clear and your team is aligned with what is expected of them, you’re all going to reach your goals. Knowing that you’re selling a product that delivers outstanding results is crucial. Our sales team is extremely proud of the product that our developers and engineers have built. When you lead a team with a successful and desirable product, you are already halfway to attaining your sales goals.

What Are The Benefits Of A Remote Sales Team?

Or if you do need to step away from work and use a tool such as Slack, set a status letting others know you are away from your desk so they know you won’t be providing an immediate response. Next, let’s talk about the importance of hosting optional team events. Remote teams can feel lonely and isolated compared to in-office ones. The lack of watercooler talk can lead to a decrease in productivity and happiness.

With fewer face-to-face interactions, like in-person meetings or watercooler check-ins, it’s vital to create a plan that keeps the sales department connected in an ultra-flexible working environment. Finally, to build a successful virtual sales team, you’ll want to invest in regular sales trainings with a specific focus on virtual selling. As you build a virtual sales team, you’ll want to determine an appropriate cadence of check-ins and reviews to accommodate the challenges of virtual selling. Be as consistent as possible to provide support to virtual reps when needed.

Webinars have been an effective way for people to train their employees. Managers gain the advantage of guiding multiple salespeople all at the same time. There are several tools you could use to perform this task, such as GoToMeeting. These tools are easy to set up and require little to no effort on your end. If you have ever taken a recruit or junior sales member to a sales meeting with you for training purposes, this is something you can do with your sales rep in a virtual client meeting. It’s quite easy to pull off merely having them join you in a call or by listening to the recording of the completed meetings.

Invest In Remote

Set up a lead scoring system based on specific attributes and actions that tells reps which leads they need to contact first in their list. Basically, this means assigning a point value to the qualities and activities of your prospects. Understand which landing pages are getting more activity, and pull topics and arguments from these pages to help your sales team sell more effectively with their sales scripts and email templates. Use that opportunity to share and update them on what’s going on in the company and your products, and what’s going on in the industry. Ask them for their input, get their thoughts to know what’s going on in their mind, and try to understand if there are any underlying concerns. Great leaders make a personal connection, and a video call is a better way to do that.

Targets are there to be hit, and just like you would in the office, you’ll need to set clear goals. When working remotely, it’s healthy if you keep everyone in the loop about what each individual is working on. Your team will be able to cold call and email prospects without losing any productivity, whether they’re on-site, or working from home. I’ll outline how you can improve your knowledge transfer in a remote company below.

Randy Riemersma, president of the sales training company Span the Chasm, agrees with Weinberg. By focusing a client’s sales team on the right metrics, Riemersma helped his client increase the average selling price by about 13%. Some useful tools for setting up remote sales meetings include Zoom, Google Meet and GoToMeeting. Most remote meeting apps also allow you to share your screen, so you can open a presentation or dashboard on your computer to use as a visual aid.

Try Slack With Your Team For Free

It has surprised us all how we have transitioned from a workplace environment to the home workplace. “In-office sales teams are known to be busy, bustling, and noisy,” says Brennan McEachran of Soapbox. “In fact, a lot Managing a Remote Team of the sales execs I meet want their sales floors to be noisy. This is no one-size-fits-approach to motivating your remote sales team. This means making sure your team has the right remote sales training and tools.

What Is 10dlc And How Can It Affect Your Business?

Have top reps share their call recordings for feedback sessions, or host virtual lunch-and-learns to exchange strategies. That’s the question Sprout Social VP of Sales Ryan Barretto and other sales leaders at the company have been grappling with as they think about the future of their sales team. You should often host informal peer meetings where the team can bond over a cup of coffee or tea remotely. It not only builds team spirit but gives employees the opportunity to talk about their stress.

Tracking the value of the deals your team is closing can provide insight into where you are falling short. If revenue is down, you should always look back on the metrics mentioned above to see if they are responsible for the decrease. Try to identify which is responsible for the decrease in revenue and role out a solution or put additional pressure on your team.

Clearly establish activity- and results-based sales goals so that your reps understand what is required of them at every stage in the sales process. This will make it easier for your remote sales representatives to stay on top of their daily or weekly activities and for you to track their progress. Virtual sales teams can use this time to qualify leads, reach out to more people and perfect your sales pitch. The more you pitch and refine your sales skills, the more likely you are to capture hot leads, nurture prospects through the buying journey and close more deals. A big part of motivating a remote sales team is providing easy access to peer-to-peer learning opportunities.

Establishing a Standard Operating Procedure can be a great way to establish uniformity in the way your business processes are carried out. Creating an SOP for any new process or department can be instrumental in the latter’s success. An SOP sets down the goals, the specific rules, and procedures applicable to the process, the expected results, as well as the KPIs and other metrics that will determine the success of the process.

They can continue running things during a time of crisis as the rest of the employees get shuffled around. While some people might consider remote working a trend, the reality is that remote working is an option that is going to remain around for a long while. Buffer’s most recent State of Remote Work annual report has shown a growing interest in remote working from many companies. While higher salaries and bonuses can sometimes attract better talent, they can also encourage applications from people who don’t have the skills or drive to fulfill the role that they are applying for. This makes it important for companies to offer a competitive salary while at the same time ensuring that they are not overpaying for subpar performance.

As sales teams transition between working in the office and working at home, companies must launch new initiatives to help sales reps be successful in this new permanent way of working. Sales productivity has dropped by 20% since the pandemic started as executives struggle to adapt to managing and measuring remote salespeople, call center representatives, and customer support agents. And most executives believe the changes brought on by the pandemic will transform the way they sell forever.

Do you have any questions about the remote sales team strategies discussed above? When all your sales representatives are on the same page, you can effortlessly meet your sales goals. And for this, you have to practice numerous things — from maintaining helping employees collaborate to assisting them in utilizing their time effectively. When your sales team knows what you expect from them, they will be able to match your goals better. Also, setting clear goals and expectations will help you measure the entire team’s performance based on the same standards. Download our eBook, Managing a Virtual Sales Team, to learn the processes and systems that will help keep your sales team on track to meet your revenue goals regardless of location.

Hence, tracking the inbound and outbound customer calls is important. This simple step can not measure the effectiveness of a call but also help https://globalcloudteam.com/ you gain market insights. This is time to connect with each other and our leadership team as well as to collaborate with Product and Marketing.