Managing Sales Teams Remotely

At some point over the past two years, there’s a great chance you and your team experienced some form of remote work. Whether you were home for a few months and have gone back to in person work, still utilize a hybrid work model, or decided to switch to being fully remote, everyone has been exposed to working remotely. For those that didn’t have any experience with this before the pandemic, there was a big adjustment period. But many people made that adjustment well and realized remote work is here to stay. So, whether you still use this new way of life at your current organization or may move somewhere that uses it in the future, here is everything you need to know about managing sales teams remotely.

How to Manage a Remote Sales Team

In this post, we’ll cover everything you need, from hiring new candidates to motivating already established players on your team.

Hiring a Remote Sales Team

The first step in this process is to hire individuals to your team. Whether you’re looking to add to an already fully remote team, or you’re taking advantage of more flexibility and expanding your search nationwide, there’s a few things to keep in mind. Whether that’s considerations for if the candidate has access to the proper technology to do their job, what time zone they’re located in, if they have previous experience working remotely, or finding someone with great communication and self-motivation skills, there’s plenty that will affect how well a remote worker can perform.

It’s easier to coach technical skills over soft skills. If you find a candidate with the above qualities, they can be taught any technology. Hire those who you think will make meaningful contributions even from home.

How do you Quickly Onboard a Remote Sales Team?

Once you’ve hired these sellers, the next consideration is about onboarding them properly. Onboarding in an office is much easier, since there’s always someone nearby to help. But here’s a few things to keep in mind when bringing a new remote worker onto your team.

Give Proper Tools

Remote sellers need the proper tools to do their job. This includes things as simple as making sure they have proper Wi-Fi and internet access or a computer or a second monitor if they don’t have one. By giving them the tools needed to get started, you can help ensure that all your employees will be on the same page with their technology, and you won’t risk anyone falling behind for lack of resources.

Walk Them Through the Sales Tech Stack

Once they have the proper hardware set up, it’s time to run them through the software. Giving them access to the sales tech stack early on and walking them through it can help make everything easier. Rather than dumping a CRM, dialer, sales engagement platform and more on them, help take them through how your team utilizes each in their day-by-day efforts and long term goals.

Share Your Processes

Going along with this, share some of your team's best practices and processes. Many of the tools in your tech stack should allow you to easily share your team’s processes and see what’s working and what’s not. If they don’t, then make sure to set your seller up with someone who knows this. Help them learn from your star sellers from day one and let them get started on the right foot.

Here’s some more tips on virtual selling

How Do You Train a Remote Sales Team?

Those last two points tie into this next piece of how to train a remote sales team. Training these new team members, or all members in general is very important. If there's a risk of people falling into bad practices in the office, then that risk is even higher when they’re at home. Making sure to keep consistent touch points with your team, updating them on best processes and always looking for improvement across the team are ways you can help keep this from happening.

How Do You Manage a Remote Sales Team Effectively?

There’s a few general tips on how to manage remote sales teams. Here’s a few of our favorites.

• Establish rules and expectations up front
• Don’t shy away from remote social interactions
• Have empathy and understanding for their environment
• Utilize technology to stay connected

For more great tips like these, check out this Forbes article to see more

How Do You Motivate a Remote Sales Team?

Motivation can be a make-or-break factor for a remote seller. Even in the office, Friday afternoons are hard. Imagine what they are like at home with your kids and dog running around. When people hear motivation, it can sound like a big scary word. No, you don’t need to send your team on a retreat every other week and no money isn’t the only motivating factor. There’s lots of little things you can do to keep your team lively and motivated. Have you ever tried these few?

• Implement summer working hours
• Provide positive encouraging feedback often
• Be open to talking with your team about improvements that can be made
• Offer some type of employee rewards

There’s so many different ways to keep your team engaged and motivated. Don’t be afraid to get creative!

Summary

Leveraging remote sales teams can play a big role in your company’s success moving forward. Being open to remote workers allows you to expand your candidate pool far beyond what was possible before. However, it’s important to remember to set your remote teams up for success. One tool that can help with many of the suggestions we gave is Salesvue, a Salesforce-native sales engagement platform.

Salesvue not only helps with sharing best practices and processes across your new hires but can also be used to help organize and keep everyone on the same page. Salesvue is a fantastic way to ensure your sellers, no matter where they are, all have access to the same processes that help drive your team’s success.

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