For those unfamiliar with B2B and B2C sales. A remote sales team is set up by corporations and other businesses to sell products and services to customers in other countries, states, cities, and towns that are physically apart from them.
An ever increasing number of organizations are adjusting to remote workplace, particularly from the beginning of COVID-19. This can be difficult for sales team who are all not utilized to distant selling, as it changes in-person sales from top to bottom.
If you are a sales lead trying to manage your sales team as a virtual leader, then make sure everyone on your team connected, supported, and set up to succeed during this time of fickleness.
First of all, say bye to the office cubicles because you don’t need them anymore. The statistics are in favor because of this change:
From the beginning of 2019, the amount of companies with a remote work is getting larger. 66% of companies allow employees to work from home and 16% are fully remoted.
With some advanced technology, sales team working remotely is possible. You can be happier and motivated when working at home. But make sure your team has only one goal – deliverables.
A two years study of Stanford University found that employees are 13% more productive when working remotely. The study of 500 employees who worked both in traditional settings and work from home settings resulted that the productivity of work from home was equal to a full day’s work each week.
The biggest advantage of having a remote sales team is savings.
Even though, we have some advantage during remote work. There are many team leads and managers who are suddenly managing a remote sales team completely, it is scary for you, and especially if it is the first time you have ever had to do this and didn’t have a lot of time to prepare.
If that’s you then this list of tips will help you to set up your sales team for success:
#1 Lead Them, Don’t Manage Them
The team is only good as its leader. A motivated and results delivering leaders or managers will inspire those under them to step up their efforts.
Here are a few tips to improve as a sales lead:
• Listen – During team meetings, don’t do all the talking. Ask your team to speak up, ask their ideas, and repeat what they said to determine if you are understanding their issues or ideas correctly.
• Communicate – According to Sales Benchmark Index, over 74% of sales managers admit that they have poor communication skills with their teams. Talking to the team in person is often more effective than email messages. Nevertheless, if you do communicate via email, keep messages short and bullet-point style. Also, limit your message to two or fewer action items.
• Use the right tools – Use tools like sales CRM to assist with organization and productivity. 66% of sales leads said that their team has continuous visibility into their performance but 32% said that team members are only getting performance insight on a weekly or monthly basis. Make sure that your team has access to daily activity progress in CRM.
Some of the sales CRM tools:
1. Salesforce
2. Pipedrive
3. Close
4. Zoho CRM
5. Freshsales
7. HubSpot CRM
#2 Cheer Competitions
You may think, why the same team members need competition among us? Well, everything has a reason.
Theodore Roosevelt once said, “Comparison is the thief of joy. But a little healthy competition could actually be a great thing.”
The competitions could be a motivator to come out on top. Here are tips to bring the team on top:
• Set Goal – Set the goal from the beginning, whether it is to improve customer service, increase sales volume, or simply survive a seasonal slump. You must clearly set the objective for your sales team.
• Keep it simple – Set your focus on one goal during your competition. Make sure the rules which you made are easy to understand so that your sales team members can easily participate.
• Entertain and have fun – There are many chances that your sales team has natural competitiveness. Encourage friendly raillery around the competition to make it more fun and interesting. The main goal is to increase the growth of the company and yourself so make sure to enjoy the process. A little competitive environment is helpful to improve sales performance from your team.
#3 Be Flexible and Focus on The Outcome
First of all, you need to understand that everyone is going through some tough situations, especially in the current environment, your team has a lot going on. That’s not an excuse for things are not done in a time, but it is a valuable reason to reconsider what productivity really means.
It is not possible to manage every aspect of the work done by a remote sales team, especially when your team is disturbed across different locations. Working for eight hours straight is out. Regular work hours are also out for many people.
It’s normal when we adapt to a remote mood. Just trust your sales team, focus on the outcomes, and give them the freedom and flexibility to get work done on the schedule. That’s the only way to help them be the most productive team. Also, that’s good for you to lead your team in a long-way.
#4 Regular Training
Investing in the skills of your sales team will never let you down. It is absolutely clear that sales managers are busy, have many works to do on the table, and will not be in the field all the time. But, make calls for regular training and revisions.
This will help the sales team to sort out irrelevant practices in their schedules and work plans. We use to teach our sales team how to search email id or find email address in our email finder for better understanding, which will helpful for them to have a healthy conversation with customers.
Many things get changed in every field on a daily basis so these can be addressed in the regular training sessions properly, which will helpful for them and aimed to improve sales efficiency. Teach them how to maintain a long-lasting relationship with customers.
“To build a long-term, successful enterprise, when you don’t close a sale, open a relationship.” – Patricia Fripp
Moreover, companies that provide solid coaching to their sales team has a 17% growth in their annual revenue. This will get more confidence out in the field to act with the utmost freedom after the training.
#5 Resource Your Sales Team
Make sure that your team has the required technology to get the work done as per the schedule. If you suddenly have a sales team of remote employees then that means they all need some tools like laptops, software, mobile devices, or even a high-speed internet connection. There is no assurance that everyone has all of those things, and it’s your responsibility as a sales team lead to make sure they do have all resources to work.
Be a good lead, maybe a great one
It is quite a changeling to manage a sales team, which is away from you, but the digital world allows you to adapt in ways that make geographical barriers almost non-exist.
Remember, establishing a meaningful professional relationship with your team members will give better customer service, which leads to a better customer experience. Because customers will enjoy the first-rate service without any exception.
As a lead generation tool organization, LeadMine follows these steps to succeed the sales team remotely. Is there anything, which you follow in your organization that brings major difference? Share with us.
