Slack calls and Zoom meetings have replaced watercooler banter and conference rooms as remote working has become mainstream over the past few years. And there's a learning curve to leading a remote team instead of an in-person one.
As a sales team lead, it takes skill to manage your entire team and sales process remotely while maintaining camaraderie and productivity — but the upside is there. After all, 68% of enterprises believe employee productivity has improved since shifting to a remote working environment.
With a few tweaks and some new priorities, you can ensure your remote sales team doesn’t just match your in-office success — it improves on it.
What is a remote sales team?
Is your entire team remote? If so, then you manage a remote sales team.
If half of your sales people work in-office and the other half work part- or full-time remotely, you manage a hybrid team. A fully remote team typically employs reps from different states and there is no physical office. The team is only connected digitally.
Are there benefits to going remote?
Remote sales team management sounds complex, especially if you’re new to a remote setting yourself. But despite its challenges, remote sales reps are perfectly capable of matching, if not exceeding, your sales performance targets — and there are clear advantages to remote selling, too.
Saving money
Naturally, you'll still incur costs working remotely. But a virtual sales team doesn’t need an office space. They don’t need office equipment or incentives like subsidized lunch or free parking.
Expanding your audience
Remote sales give you access to a broader pool of prospects because you aren't limited to your geographical location. It also gives you a broader pool of sales representatives to hire from.
Boosted productivity and efficiency
Working from home reduces commute time and allows employees to re-invest this time into boosting sales. Plus, many remote workers feel more productive outside of a traditional office environment.
Better morale
Today's employees love working in a flexible environment. In fact, 64% of employees at top-tier companies said they would rather work from home permanently than get a $30,000-a-year raise.
Remote working can also minimize burnout by giving sales professionals greater flexibility and control over their daily schedule.
How to manage a remote sales team
Managing remote sales teams also comes with its challenges for sales leaders.
But as with any management challenge, it’s all about the right solutions. And frankly, the solutions to common remote working concerns are good practices to implement regardless of where your team works.
1. Tighten up your sales strategies
You can always make your sales funnel more efficient. Make it a priority to maintain an excellent sales process. You can do this independently as the manager, or with input from your team. The clearer the steps in your sales cycle are, and the better defined your strategies are, the easier it will be for your team to follow.
Keeping your workflow simple, clear, and codified will make it easier to collaborate remotely. It will also make it easier when it comes to onboarding — if your team doesn’t have an office space, it can be harder to train new employees.
2. Set clear goals (and celebrate them)
Similarly, make sure your sales goals have clear metrics. Go over your KPIs with your entire salesforce. The more specific you are about your expectations going into remote working, the less likely you are to have growing pains around productivity.
It may be tempting to wait and see how your team settles into your new normal before setting metrics, but don’t wait. Start with clear templates for success and measurable progress markers so your team knows what to expect. As with any project management, the more confident those below you are, the fewer problems you’re likely to have.
Also important: remember to celebrate success! It’s easy to forget about the interpersonal aspect of work when you’re remote. When an important milestone is met or your team members close deals, follow-up with positive messages and reinforcement.
3. Establish clear and effective communication channels
Communication is the obvious challenge when it comes to remote working. While many companies are already cloud-based and lots of sales activities lend themselves well to remote working, establishing clear communication is key.
Your colleagues can no longer stop by your office to get your opinion or grab a quick word with you over coffee. Due to reduced accessibility, it's easy for your team members to miss out on important details. Find the right messaging platform for your company and set clear expectations for your team's availability during the work day.
Establish daily or weekly standups or check-ins to keep team members accountable and informed about the team's activities.
Set up video conferencing as needed for a little real-time, face-to-face contact. When done correctly, video calls are a great replacement for in-person meetings and can help build camaraderie. Video calls are also great for sales training and one-on-one meetings.
4. Resist the temptation to micro-manage
As we touched on above, remote working offers various ways to communicate across geography and time zones. But it’s important not to abuse this.
If your team feels like they spend all day on camera in video team meetings or are expected to respond to Slack messages at all hours of the day, they may become resentful.
Often, this overreach is the result of well-meaning sales managers worried that quotas won’t get met without the day-to-day oversight of the office. It’s important to resist this understandable temptation to micromanage. Trust your people. You hired them to do a job, so you have to let them do it.
Building trust goes both ways. The more you trust your team, the more readily they’ll trust you. Keep communication open and frequent, but don’t pack your team’s days with webinars and sales calls if you wouldn’t do that in the office. Communicate expectations and sales quotas clearly, and empower your team to take personal accountability.
5. Get better sales tools
Sales leads should actively seek out the best sales tech stack to help their team improve efficiency and hit revenue targets.
Sales tools can help with all aspects of the sales process, from prospecting to demos to moving deals along. Superhuman can keep deals moving by granting AEs greater control throughout the sales cycle.
The bottom line
Fostering a healthy and productive remote working environment can be a management challenge. But with some minor changes and a bit of work put into codifying your team’s process, remote working doesn’t have to hold you back.
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Sources:
Remote Working Is Boosting Productivity, Study Finds | Venture Beat
Micromanagement – A Costly Management Style | National Library of Medicine
The Importance of Employee Recognition: Low Cost, High Impact
