Tips-On-Remote-Selling-Managing-A-Sales-Team-Remotely
Sales

Tips On Remote Selling & Managing A Sales Team Remotely

More and more businesses are adopting remote work, which can be challenging for employees who are not accustomed to working remotely. This is different from in-person sales. Build an automated selling process without needing to leave your desk, with minimal maintenance and a higher quality of customer service.

In this article, we'll explain how remote selling can help you effectively manage internal and external communication with a virtual sales team.


Benefits Of Remote Selling


Remote selling is the process of making sales where buyers and remote sales representatives don't come into any physical contact. This is similar to the inside sales approach, which uses technology like the internet or phone, to reach out to prospects and close deals.


1. Cutting down the cost


You can save a lot of money by selling your services remotely. You only need minimal start-up costs, such as a good computer, to sell online. You don't have to worry about food expenses and coffee spending during client meetings. By working from home, you can more easily save money.

Some tasks still require intense work and money. For instance, if you want to sell clothing remotely, you'll need to purchase paid resources and apps such as Shopify to set up your home office and process payments.


2. Enhance efficiency


You save valuable time on your calendar by eliminating the time required to travel, meet new prospects, and spend face-to-face conversations. Virtual sales teams can maximize their time using machine learning-based technologies to find the right leads, reach out to them, and perfect their sales pitches. 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.
 

3. Selling On A Global Level


With remote selling, you can reach out and pitch to prospects worldwide. This can be done with a simple internet connection rather than investing in geographical expansion.

Project management and SaaS tools help you automate repetitive tasks, manage your stage of products and keep all of your internal and external communications in order.

In the final section, we will provide an overview of additional remote selling management tools.

4. Boost your sales reps

Selling remotely can get your employees motivated and increase team morale and productivity. Remote selling is particularly popular with small-business owners, who value its flexibility.

Sales representatives feel empowered when they are given autonomy to produce impressive results. They can choose the work environment they want and decide when to work on your predefined guidelines, which reduces stress and increases productivity.

Additionally, remote sales employees don't have to deal with distractions like a commute or office politics. This allows them to focus all of their energy on sales opportunities.

Tips on managing your sales team

Hiring remote sales employees is harder. However, improvements in technology may help with the hiring process moving forward.

With this in mind, sales management job descriptions and the process would still be followed, but when problems arise or the reps are out of reach, it may be very hard to get clarification. This is especially true if the reps are flying all over the place.

This guide will cover four ways to use your leadership skills to manage a job requiring working remotely.

1. Make your expectations clear

Stay on track with sales staff expectations.

Establishing clear expectations for your remote sales force provides them with a standard to maintain. Setting well-defined measuring and evaluation points help them prioritize their workflow and keep track of their productivity.

Sales leaders and remote sales team members must also be willing to hold video calls to discuss performance expectations and how they meet them. The leader should provide a detailed report of each member's specific tasks and their specific desired performance goals.

Realize what type of work goes on and when to do it, such as when prospecting, follow-up work, closing the deal, and the procedures if there are any problems. Recap the players and their roles - who's in charge of what and who's responsible for them.

2. Invest in a good resource that can be used

Most people work in the cloud. Storage providers like Google and Box allow your employees to log in to a shared cloud when needed and view any data securely. Despite this, some people still provide remote workers with VPN access for more security and control related to their projects.

By making data storage accessible from anywhere, your entire sales team can be more productive. Since cloud-based software helps employees update their prospects, everyone in the field can access updated information all the time.

If your team uses personal laptops or smartphones, you should adequately control each salesperson's apps, documents, and other resources.

3. Build trusted relationships

When it comes to remote sales teams, trust is a natural barrier that can be hard to build. Sometimes it is harder to have trusting relationships with people you don't see in person daily.

Communicating with someone in a different timezone can be challenging for remote teams.

Ensure your sales staff is on the same schedule. Spreading out work hours and overlapping across time zones and territories increase communication in a synchronous way. Sales managers should plan their working schedules to overlap with most of their team members.

When you pay attention to your manager's needs, you build trust. However, it is important to avoid micromanaging your team, even though you may feel like it is harder to track their progress remotely.

This allows the team to monitor their progress and also allows them to manage their own time. A metrics dashboard is essential as it tracks activity for each worker so you can see when people work, what they're working on, and how well they're doing it.

4. Encourage social interaction

A great manager will promote interactions among team members and hold weekly meetings. With these meetings, it becomes easy for everyone in the organization to interact, so they can learn from one another.

For instance, your best salespeople can fully explain a new technique they use with reluctant buyers, or someone may share a success story of how they closed four deals in one day.

Using scheduled meetings with your team enables you to address major challenges, share insights and brainstorm new sales strategies. The group benefits from discussing sales performance, reflecting on it individually and as a whole, and brainstorming new ways to increase overall success.

How to train reps when you are not face-to-face

With good training, sales managers can stay relevant and helpful to their team despite the remote work environment. They lead by example to inspire confidence and success in their teams.

It is useful to remember that a key element of training programs is implementing measurable sales strategies. Establish activity- and results-based goals for your reps so their progress can be easily tracked. This will make it easier for your remote sales representatives to monitor their daily or weekly activities and for you to gauge their progress.

To ensure your pitch tracking meets the quality standard, ask your team to share their progress regularly and monitor their calls. You can use the recordings to help them improve in the future.

Additional ways to train:

1. Virtual Sessions

As with a new hire, you can invite your sales reps to engage with your clients in a simulated training session. This will allow them to learn from your years of experience on the job and also provide an opportunity for them to build skills that will help them develop their careers.

Having them join your sales calls or listening to completed meetings will help you do this.

You can receive training in a client meeting environment to teach your sales reps about the expectations for their meetings. In this type of training, you have the opportunity to put your years of sales experience to work and lead by example, showing your reps exactly what is expected of them when they run their client meetings.

2. How to create webinars

Additional ways to train your sales team include doing webinars. Webinars can be used to guide multiple salespeople simultaneously.

Host webinars where you invite popular speakers with your team and share insights, best practices, and tips. You can use GoToMeeting or Livestorm to set up the webinars easily. These services make it convenient for your team.

If you're selling a product that requires technical know-how, or if you want to introduce your team to a particular product or software, webinars are an effective way to familiarize new sales reps with the software.

3. Get leaderboards and dashboards

Great sales managers can leverage team-wide data by using leaderboards and dashboards that publicly display all system metrics.

A ranking system that rewards performance and incentivizes sales reps to improve their results could increase motivation and thus boost performance. If the rankings are aligned with your team's most effective approaches, it may motivate sales reps to work harder to outdo their peers and hit or exceed their targets.

When time is money, teams can choose to forgo the competitive benefits of leaderboards if their goals are not focused on sales and let their individual reps decide whether or not to participate in a public competition. If that's the case, business owners can create multiple leaderboards, which is fair for everyone involved.

You can monitor and manage the performance of your entire team with a customized dashboard, which is given performance statistics based on various metrics. Depending on if the best reps or worst are found, you can implement or terminate unique sales tactics depending on their needs.

Focus on results

Weinberg instructs his clients to focus on the three-step "sales management accountability progression," as Weinberg terms it.

The first step is to view the salesperson's results. If their performance is great and they still want to continue working, you should encourage them to keep going.

Step 2: If you're unhappy with the results, explore the pipeline and opportunities on that salesperson's list. If the pipeline is healthy, salespeople "a million opportunities, and it looks like business is coming," according to Weinberg.

Step 3: If the pipeline is weak, it's time to review its activities. Riemersma recommends reviewing the quality of prospects that salespeople are reaching out to and how they communicate value.

If 80% of your salesperson's calls are to those unlikely to buy and the salesperson is not explaining your product or service with good, clear content, it's time for a change.

The only metric that matters if your pipeline is weak

"If you want realistic expectations, you need to base them on how much money we'll need to make," Weinberg says. "If we only win a certain percent of the time, then we need to do a multiple of X proposals and quotes."

To calculate realistic metrics, you must know how much money each of your salespeople brings in,, and the time it takes for a new sale under different salespeople. You'll also need to know why some have better numbers than others.

For example, if your lead is a new person in the profession or a junior staff person with limited experience. Perhaps they've only worked on leads that weren't easy to close or only had non-sales responsibilities assigned to them.

Setting your sales team to success.

For one of Riemersma's clients, dropping 12 metrics resulted in a growth in deal size and sales cycle time. The only metric that mattered was to increase close rates.

The company focused on sales management, which led to the growth of their average selling price and sales cycle time. Their close rate went up, going from 4.6% to 6.2%.

Prioritizing and figuring out which sales metrics are the most important to your company is a huge step in effective and profitable selling. For example, let's say you want to ensure you're meeting your monthly goals for profitable real estate deals, and your team is closing too few opportunities. You can set up a call with all of your team members and lay out their performance so far, what goes into making decisions about their performances, how often they need to be in touch with the boss, and how they're going to help each other achieve more and what specific goals they should be setting.

Developing a sales environment

Unless you work remotely in an environmentally controlled office, it may be challenging to remain focused. To avoid distractions, set up a professional selling environment to boost productivity and encourage your team to do the same.

Three things you can do to create a productive sales environment

1. Setting up your home office

A dedicated work area in your home, such as a separate workspace, can help you focus and stay motivated.

Find out how to make your office space efficient..

Minimize distractions and achieve healthy work habits

Invest in an ergonomic office chair

Get the best lamp for your bedroom to ensure proper lighting..

Keep stationery items handy.

Organize your desk properly to keep you away from moving here and there

2. Invest in the right technology

Get a fast internet connection, a powerful computer with a fast processor, and other systems and tools necessary for your work. To help your salespeople produce their best work from home, budget accordingly for resources.

Providing employees with high-quality equipment that allows them to work from home improves their quality of life and provides them with a more productive work environment. Investing in these tasks is smart because your team will have higher morale and productivity rates, plus they will regularly be better than others.

If you are writing a blog post in response to current events, it is fine to mention the event without requiring your readers to spend their own money on high-tech gear.

With tools like EzzyCRM's Activity Calendar, you'll have a way to keep track of daily commitments and tasks from wherever you are.

The tool lets you sync your activities with Google, Outlook, and other calendars. You can also set up reminders, so you never miss important deadlines.

3. Create a professional background

Getting ready to show your team's work? Encourage polished work areas.

This piece of advice is critical for your team to follow to establish a professional atmosphere company-wide. Imagine a sales rep trying to sell someone business software while a dirty laundry pile is visible on the screen. That would diminish what the rep was trying to communicate and may result in them being taken less seriously.

Using a plain wall or tucking some pictures in as decoration, workspaces are set up near windows or clear areas where the light shines.

In a professional context, meeting attendees can also use virtual backgrounds to create an interactive environment. Backgrounds with high resolution are best used with a green screen behind them.

Connecting with Clients

After landing that big deal, one of the most time-consuming parts of the sales process, that's where you need to focus your energy on building a sustainable, profitable client relationship.

In remote selling, your reps don't only have to sell but also have to develop strong relationships with their customers. Doing so means they must go the extra mile by fostering trust via conversations and offering quality customer service.

Technologies for remote selling

When selling online, be sure to leverage the right tools and technology to alleviate any pain points in the transition.

There are companies you can use to greatly improve your sales and revenue, including some of our top picks. These apps allow for greater workflow efficiency and help you reach your revenue goals.

1. EzzyCRM: All-in-one CRM for sales management

EzzyCRM is a powerful CRM software tool custom-made for self-employed salespeople. It lets you manage your sales customers, staff, and internal and external communication.

Sin and its advanced analytics, the quick search function, administrative tasks, and an AI-powered sales assistant to boost performance.

2. Slack: For better communication

Slack is one of the most popular business communication and collaboration tools, ideal for small and large teams. Slack is packed with features that facilitate asynchronous communication.

Slack uses many features to make your team communication efficient, such as channels, group chats, and threads, along with file-sharing and integration features.

3. Zoom: For virtual meets

Zoom is an easy-to-use video conferencing tool that is powerful and efficient, supporting up to 1,000 video participants and 10,000 viewers at a time. This app is well suited for remote teams of all sizes and is widely used among global organizations.

4. Loom: Video recording tool

Loom is one of the most useful tools for creating video messages you can share with friends and family. You can also use Loom with your camera or a window on your computer, giving you more opportunities for interesting content.

Improve your business by selling anywhere in the world

Today, companies should be confident in recruiting and managing remote talent. There is no reason not to take advantage of thousands of organizations globally. In this day and age, your business should be well-prepared to make the most of remote selling.

To facilitate the transition to remote selling, invest in effective communication tools such as sales automation software and infrastructure that supports your team working from home.

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