How to Manage a Remote Sales Team – Success Tips

In recent times most employers are choosing their work remotely. Because most employers do not want to move from their living place. Also, the company wants to hire the best talent from all over the world.

Moreover, it is difficult to move everyone and sit them in one place. So the company and workers both prefer working remotely. That’s why a manager should have a strategy for success.

Probably the most important thing is to have clear goals for the team in the context that surrounds the team while giving them space to figure out how to achieve them. That is harder than it sounds, as it requires constant alignment with everything that is external, especially upwards in an organization.

While this is also true in person, it becomes doubly true in a remote or hybrid environment. Because otherwise, people won’t know what is expected from them and what to do exactly.

Once you have clarity of purpose and alignment, everything else becomes easier. You can also experiment with different ways of working, i.e. cancel meetings and use more asynchronous ways of communicating like one-pagers to define initiatives, dashboards that track the key metrics of the company, etc.

Hire a Remote Sales Team

Your business is growing, you’re enjoying success and you’re increasing your workforce to reach more potential customers. Whether you’re hiring your first salesperson, or just adding to your sales team, it’s important to know how to spot a successful sales leader.

To make sure you continue to grow, and hire salespeople that will help you do that, you need to understand what makes a good salesperson and attract the right sales talent to join your team and help you scale. It can be difficult to see through charisma and well-rehearsed interview tactics, but the best salespeople have certain traits that can’t be missed, which we’ll go over in this article. To help your success start to improve your hiring hit rate and make your final decision easy, we’ve created a five-stage process to equip you and your team members with the right tools to use when hunting for good salespeople.

Write the salesperson’s job description

A common mistake when writing a job description is the “more is more” approach, leaving you with pages and pages of detail. Be clear and concise. This ensures the key factors you are searching for (e.g. experience, skills, traits, culture fit, etc.) aren’t lost in an ocean of text.

Simple rule of thumb:

If it can’t fit on one page, it’s probably too long. You also need to set clear expectations that are attainable and trackable. Be honest about what a typical day might look like and try not to oversell the more glamorous aspects of the sales role. While this may attract a lot of sales candidates, it can also lead to disillusionment further down the line.

Reach out to the right candidates

The best sales professionals can sometimes be elusive, so you need to use everything in your power to track your ideal candidate down. Using several portals to advertise your vacancy will give you the opportunity to reach as many candidates as possible.

Your first port of call will probably be searching for coaching team candidates who are actively looking for a new role. Don’t limit yourself to this step when trying to find sales reps (particularly if you’re seeking top performers for a senior hire). You’ll find it’s often worth the extra effort to reach out to potential superstar candidates who aren’t actively searching.

Develop a clear interview process

If you’re looking to hire a salesperson, make sure you have a structured interview process to follow before you begin. Every company has unique requirements and expectations for how to be a good sales rep, but there’s a standard best practice for interviews that can be broken into three key stages:

Informal chat.

First impressions matter, but formal chats can sterilize personalities. By starting with an informal chat, you can more easily gauge things like culture fit, emotional intelligence, active listening skills, et cetera. Have an icebreaker up your sleeve or a series of personality-based questions to get the conversation rolling. Great sales reps shouldn’t simply tick all the right boxes, their personality must also fit with the culture you’ve built in your sales organization.

Formal meeting.

Follow up with a more formal meeting to stress test their sales training and industry expertise. This is an opportunity to ask more pointed and specific questions regarding all areas of the business. Effective salespeople should be able to give comprehensive answers to difficult questions, like how they would handle X type of objection on an important sales call. You can also invite key members of the team the potential candidate would be joining to give them a chance to evaluate the candidate themselves.

Presentation.

Finally, ask the candidate to prepare and deliver a sales presentation for key stakeholders to give you an opportunity to assess how they perform under pressure. Sales is dependent on people who can be persuasive and engaging, so keep an eye on their body language, ability to make emotional connections with the “potential clients” in the room, product knowledge, and so on. A faux sales presentation can offer you a deeper level of insight into whether the candidate is suitable for the role.

Make an offer and negotiate

The interview process can take a long time, but the best candidates may well be speaking to other recruiters, so it’s important to keep the lines of communication open. Don’t wait to give an offer to a great salesperson as you might miss out on hiring them before someone else does.

If you think you’ve found a potential top performer and want to hire them, make sure they know you are keen. Keeping candidates in the loop will prevent them from accepting offers elsewhere before you make yours.

Onboarding your new sales hire

Integrating your new salesperson into the team doesn’t happen automatically after the contract is signed. You’ll need to familiarize them with the company culture and help them understand what they’ll need to bring to the table to meet business demands, your prospects’ and customers’ needs, and so on.

Don’t take any shortcuts with onboarding. If you want to build a team with a high retention rate, take the necessary time to bring them up to speed, train them on company-specific processes, explain your business’s mission and values, and ultimately empower them to want to be a positive contributor.

How to Lead a Sales Team

1. Plan daily check-ins

Although it may seem excessive, this is crucial for teams and managers new to remote working. In addition, successful managers in their remote leadership attempts are drifting toward more regular usage of video conferencing to establish the face-to-face engagement that is currently lacking when email, video calls, phone, and texts may have once been sufficient.

2. Communicate too much

Over-communicating is essential regarding the team’s tasks, obligations, sales tips, responsibilities, responsibilities, and intended outcomes, which we’ll explore in more detail in a moment. It goes beyond the brief daily check-ins. Even in a typical office setting, poor communication can be problematic. However, communication is crucial when workers are working remotely and may now concentrating on new or different activities and goals.

3. Use technology to your advantage

Most of us have already been compelled to embark on a digital transformation journey that might take most businesses months or even years to complete. Most of you already use Microsoft Teams, Google Hangouts, and Zoom, which offer straightforward platforms for addressing suggestions 1 and 2. It was a little unsettling initially, but it was a great approach to promote engagement tactics after fully implementing it. And solely for finishing tasks!

4. Set ground rules for the situation

As we refer to them in the military, ROEs. When managers establish expectations for the frequency, channels, and ideal timing of communication for their employees, remote work becomes more effective and rewarding.

5. Offer resources

A great battlefield commander never sends soldiers into battle without the necessary equipment and training. That may not entirely be the case, but you get the idea. New laptops, improved Wi-Fi, and modern hardware like headsets and webcams are necessities for many remote teams. It might include reallocating already constrained finances to vital equipment. Prepare the group for success.

Remote Selling Skills

Remote sales is when you, the salesperson, and your prospect are never in the same location during the whole sales process. It’s evidently possible that a big part of your sales process is remote and that you’re meeting up with the client once or a few times throughout the process.

1. Communication Skills

If you’re a salesperson, this skill might seem self-evident, but too many sales reps don’t take the time to develop their communication skills, choosing instead to rely on a script to get them through conversation. While a script can be a useful part of the sales call, the ability to veer off the script and communicate with the customer effectively is imperative. Every customer is different; the same script won’t work on everyone and there are times when you may need to bring out your communication skills to close a deal.

2. Active Listening Skills

An important part of effective communication is active listening. That means allowing the customer to express their needs and concerns and then taking steps to address those concerns in your own response. When you employ active listening, you’re much better equipped to tailor your pitch in a way that will appeal to the customer. Listening is also a great way to build trust, and trust is essential for closing deals.

3. Collaboration Skills

We have a tendency to think of a salesperson as a lone wolf–someone who works independently to close deals. However, being able to collaborate with others and learn from your fellow sales reps can be an invaluable asset as you develop your career.

There are a variety of ways in which collaboration can aid your growth; another salesperson might have dealt with a situation you’ve yet to encounter, or they may be able to share alternative strategies with you that can improve your game. Learning to collaborate with your coworkers can help everyone.

4. Self-Motivating Skills

This last strategy involves more than just the sales team—it also involves management. All too frequently, there can be a disconnect between upper management and sales reps, with management not fully appreciating the struggles that sales reps are encountering on a day-to-day basis. If you seriously want to challenge your sales team, you may need to solicit feedback on what they believe is preventing them from doing their best work. Their answers may surprise you, while also giving you a real opportunity to make innovative and advantageous changes.

How to Manage a Remote Sales Team – FAQs

Conclusion 

Remote sales teams are just like any other remote team and require a leader who can keep them engaged while they work from home. If the manager does not ensure that everyone is remaining engaged, it could lead to disastrous results in the future. Use the information we have provided you with to keep your remote sales team engaged and motivated.

Finally, to build a successful virtual sales team, you’ll want to invest in regular sales training with a specific focus on virtual selling.