Remote sales team tips

My favourite book I read last month is called Remote: Office not required. The book talks about how more and more employees work from home these days. It’s an incredible book as it explains the challenges and unexpected benefits of building your own remote sales team . You’ll find it easy to read and gives a big list of do’s and don’ts when building a remote organisation.

 

 

remote sales team

 

Why aren’t there more remote sales teams?

Remote workers are more common than ever in most job roles, except for sales jobs. Even today, companies assume that sales people can’t be trusted and so you need to constantly ‘manage’ them to make sure that they hit their sales targets. The moment that you give a sales person any kind of freedom, they’ll slack off and stop generating you money.

Companies see salespeople as money making machines that need to be continuously ‘motivated’ with cheesy slogans so that they churn out more sales.

Where does this come from? Well it’s actually because managers are afraid. The Manager is afraid that the income will stop flowing if they don’t control the sales team.

Lack of understanding – Some sales managers simply don’t understand what’s actually needed to do to get the sales

They think that busy-ness = sales – Because they don’t understand, some Manager’s suggestions can actually give worse results

They think that sales people are only motivated by money – Sales people get told ‘No’ all day long, so the best way you can make your sales team feel good is to show them respect

 

Use systems which give you the right level of visibility

All of our sales team work remotely. Our salespeople are talented individuals who are looking for an enjoyable sales role, but with the flexibility of working from home. So how can we know what our salespeople are up to? We’ve created a virtual call centre which allows us to have the right level of visibility whilst maintaining the flexibility of working from home;

 

  • Phone systems – All calls are recorded and the phone system we use allows for in-call monitoring, so we can check call quality with the same ease as though they are in the same room
  • CRM systems –  Lots of great CRM systems give you great visibility these days into activities, so use them to full effect!
  • Chat systems – To create that ‘team’ atmosphere, we have a chat system which our team uses to communicate and report, but also to chat and joke around with each other

 

Clarity of expectations

A massive benefit to having remote workers is that it forces you to be crystal clear with what you expect from someone. If you are cities apart, then they can’t ask you to help in the same way that you can when sat across the desk from you. As such, we have had to develop an entire support network, including training and tools to use for our reps to help them solve problems themselves.

Because everyone works from home, we have had to really condense down what we expect from reps in terms of calls made, hours worked, quality of calls and results expected. As such, things run a lot smoother as a results of having teams work from home!

If you are looking to develop your sales team, I highly recommend considering what a remote sales team could do for your company’s growth

 

Benefits of a remote sales team

Below are just some of the benefits of having a remote sales team;

  • MUCH fewer distractions!
  • Lower costs relating to housing and managing your sales team
  • By design you have a self-managing sales team
  • Greater clarity of KPIs and as such greater focus on the things that actually matter

The biggest benefit to us is that you get access to a MUCH larger talent pool. Remote sales teams allow you to find talented salespeople who’s lifestyle wouldn’t allow them to be in an office 9-5 mon-fri, for example;

  • Talented salespeople who are currently stay-at-home parents
  • Talented salespeople across the UK, instead of just the ones who are in your local area
  • Talented salespeople who need flexible work due to studying, starting a business, etc

Give it some thought! A remote sales team could really accelerate your business