The pandemic has opened the doors to remote work for many companies. Most likely, your company is already handling this new modality to some extent. And if something should already be clear, it is that it is not easy to manage teams remotely, especially your sales team.
Some of the most common problems are:
- Inefficient communication.
- Lower performance of agents.
- Lack of a work culture.
- Bad organization.
These are some benefits of remote work for companies:
- Productivity increase
- Costs reduction
- Better attraction and retention of talent
In this article you will find what you need to make your remote sales team work better than ever. With these ideas you can not only empower your agents, but you will also strengthen your sales process.
Effective Communication
In a company, communication is essential.But it is very difficult for everyone to be on the same page when no one is in the same location. And many times a bad internal communication causes the loss of opportunities.
This risk factor multiplies if your company does not have an appropriate administration for remote computers. And the challenge is even greater if your company has a large number of national or international departments and teams.
For your company to operate correctly remotely, you need to establish communication channels and tools for you and your agents. These channels can be video calls, text messages, email, etc. Later we will mention some tools. The important thing is that communication is constant.
Your agents need all the relevant information to customers at the moment to be able to make sales. If your agents have wrong or incomplete information, it will be impossible for them to perform efficiently. In a sales process with effective communication, your agents can personalize the attention they give to the customer and provide appropriate follow-up without encountering data problems.
What Tools Can Help You ?
The best way to achieve effective communication in any type of team is with a CRM platform like Salesforce.
Salesforce allows you to link the different areas of your company in a single platform so that your agents can consult the complete information of your clients in real time.
Within the same platform your sales agents can also communicate with each other, follow up with clients, check the calendar of activities and more.
But if your team is not ready for a CRM, your greatest allies for remote sales management will be Microsoft Teams, Slack and Zoom.
Activity Calendar
You have probably had the question:
How will working remotely affect my team’s productivity?
And the answer is: it depends.
If you don’t have a well-developed management plan, your team’s performance is likely not ideal.
However:
85% of companies confirm that productivity has increased in their company due to greater work flexibility.
This means that your employees can be even more productive working from home if they are managed correctly.
To increase the productivity of your sales team you need all the activities and goals of your agents to be clearly established. The purpose of doing this is to guide your sales team through their tasks for the day and give them structure. If your agents know exactly what they have to do in a day they can maximize their productivity.
How Should You Meet This Challenge?
Surely your employees already have established tasks, however for a remote team the tasks and activities must be as detailed as possible and updated every day.
Make sure they have a calendar with the day’s tasks, due dates, meetings, events, etc.
You won’t be able to control how your team handles each hour of their day, but this flexibility is what allows them to be more productive.
By establishing activities they become responsible for using their time appropriately. There are many tools for creating corporate calendars to help you with this challenge.
Some options are:
- Salesforce
- Calendly
- Homebase
- When I Work
- Google Calendar
The organizational culture of your company plays a very important role in managing a remote sales team.
This culture in which your employees operate shapes their way of working.
This means that if you foster a culture of collaboration your agents will develop this attitude (in theory).
94% of executives and 88% of employees believe that organizational culture is important to business success.
As you can see, fostering an organizational culture should be one of your priorities if you want to manage any team, remote or not.
An effective remote sales force requires constant collaboration. Whether it’s to share updates and data, help other agents or solve problems. Other values that you can add to your culture are:
- Initiative
- Confidence
- Responsibility