Modern work culture is becoming increasingly demanding. Between navigating new technologies, acclimating to remote work environments, and keeping up with the daily grind, employees and managers alike may find themselves working longer hours and dealing with a lot of stress. These factors can negatively impact their ability to maintain a healthy work-life balance.
Sending your sales and marketing teams into the field with a well-thought-out plan and a vision of their model client is key to successfully closing more deals. If your team doesn’t know who their ideal buyer is, they’re likely to waste a lot of time chasing dead leads and not knowing how to work around various objections to their offer.
Companies use many different metrics to quantify their success. Some of the more common ones include: reports to track and measure operations data, website traffic, and employee performance. Beyond these, customer lifetime value (CLV) has been identified as one of the most helpful business metrics.
The latest South African Chamber of Commerce and Industry (SACCI) Business Confidence Index rose to a three-month high of 94.1 up from 92 in the previous month. This is attributed to the recovery of external trade and retail sales following the easing of Covid-19 restrictions and the end of the travel ban imposed by several countries.
In a sales representative’s ideal world, every pitch would elicit an enthusiastic “yes” right off the bat. Yet as sales reps know all too well, the real world doesn’t work that way. Pitches and presentations sometimes fail for reasons beyond a salesperson’s control. However, in most cases, their shortcomings can be attributed to one or more tactical errors.
Remote work is not a new concept. Telecommuting was first introduced to the business world in 1973, in response to an OPEC oil embargo and ensuing energy crisis in the US. While the policy has steadily gained traction ever since, it wasn’t until 2020 that companies adopted remote work wholesale. As the early stages of the Covid-19 pandemic forced everyone into their homes, businesses relied on this work setup to continue operations and ensure their employees’ safety.
Fast-forward to the present day: according to Buffer’s 2022 report, almost half of companies today operate in a fully-remote environment. An additional 16% of organizations also reported implementing a hybrid work structure. While the boom may have started as a temporary solution to pandemic restrictions, it seems that virtual work is here to stay post-Covid. More and more businesses have begun to realize the benefits remote work brings, such as improved employee flexibility and reduced operational costs.
Whether you have already made the leap to remote work or are in the process of converting your sales team to do so, there are some considerations to keep in mind. Running a remote sales team brings a different set of challenges than the standard in-person workday. By adjusting for these differences, however, you can get your team up to speed quick—and perform better than ever before! Check out these tips on how to manage your remote sales team effectively.
Trust is the cornerstone of effective teamwork. If team leaders don’t trust their members, collaborative efforts suffer. Instead, team leaders might turn to micromanaging their teammates, which reduces employee morale and contributes to attrition.
Remote work settings, where face-to-face interactions are few and far between, can exacerbate this problem further. Remote employees, by nature of the setup, are conditioned to work independently. Managers must trust them to resolve issues and make decisions on their own.
How do you find trustworthy remote sales employees? There are a few key attributes that can signal a quality prospect. When looking for remote sales personnel, look for individuals who:
Staffing your team with trustworthy individuals from the start can save you the trouble of training them to work properly later.
Your remote sales team – or any team for that matter –can only move in unison and hit targets if they know what is expected of them. This is why setting measurable goals and objectives is critical. To get the best performance from your team, you must clearly specify what it is you want them to achieve.
Start by creating a framework by which to define your team goals. From there, you can start setting objectives regarding different aspects of your sales operations. These objectives might involve product targets, the capacity of your sales team, customer retention efforts, or lead generation endeavors. Once you’ve laid out your objectives, create an action plan. This can also serve as your basis for measuring goals and assessing progress later on.
Communication is essential with any team, but takes on outsize importance in a remote setting. Of course, it also ends up being one of the biggest challenges of telecommuting. As companies embrace asynchronous work hours and virtual messaging, response times lag and it’s sometimes hard to follow up. In turn, this lack of regular communication causes trust gaps within a team which can hinder effective collaboration.
However, with a bit of creativity, one might discover that remote work models actually offer more opportunity for team communication. Implementing a few general practices can help the whole team feel more integrated than ever before.
The remote work movement has disrupted work-life balance for professionals worldwide. Without a physical office and daily commute, many employees find it harder to pinpoint when work stops and personal time begins. Surveys from Los Angeles-based firm Robert Half have found that 45% of employees claim to work longer hours since telecommuting. Meanwhile, 69% of employees have experienced burnout due to remote work, which can lead to employee disengagement and other serious problems.
To avoid this, consider implementing some general best practices for your workplace:
Setting clear boundaries allows managers to curb instances of overworking and foster healthier work environments.
Information-sharing among colleagues may be as easy as going on a call or talking through chat. However, in a sales operation with specific and complicated processes, these modes of communication are not enough. You also need to build a comprehensive knowledge base for your remote sales representatives.
This knowledge base may include FAQs, troubleshooting guides, and a detailing of the company’s standard operating procedures. These resources offer a single source of truth for your employees, eliminating the need to relay information on siloed communication channels.
As a result, you can simplify employee onboarding and monitor quality according to set standards, ensuring dependable output from your team. If your remote team members work asynchronously, this also offers fast access to information without relying on a response from supervisors or coworkers.
As talented as your sales representatives may be, they still need the right tools to perform their jobs as efficiently as possible. However, you might find that a remote work environment comes with different needs than the traditional solutions in a physical office.
Remote sales teams often use their personal devices for day-to-day tasks, so it’s important to invest in multi-platform tools that they can access anywhere. They will also require additional collaboration and communication tools, compared to their office-bound counterparts.
If you are planning on building your tech supplies, here are some platforms to consider investing in:
These tools will help optimize the remote sales teams’ workflow. However, keep in mind that software solutions are not necessarily all interchangeable. Shop around and assess the different platforms’ capabilities so you can choose the right software for your needs.
The remote work movement has proved revolutionary for many businesses during the Covid-19 pandemic. Employees are more productive, while also enjoying the freedom to schedule around their lives. Consequently, this has led to high-quality outputs and fast turnaround times for businesses.
However, before you can reap the benefits of telecommuting, you need to build a virtual work environment that capitalizes on these new opportunities. These tips and suggestions – from building communication protocols to implementing internal standards – are only a handful of the many changes to consider to your work structure.
In addition to organizational rearrangements, consider investing in reliable remote sales tools like Skynamo. Skynamo offers a comprehensive, 360° view of your sales activity. Equipped with the tool’s collaborative features, you and your remote sales representatives can keep on the same page at all times. The platform also provides robust analytic reporting features, offering insights into sales performance so you can make data-driven business decisions.
Reach out to Skynamo today and let’s set your team up for success!
In the recently released 2022 Budget Review, it was revealed that, despite increasing by 10.3% in the first three quarters of 2021, relative to the same period in 2020, manufacturing production remains well below pre‐pandemic levels. Furthermore, the outlook remains subdued.
No matter whether it’s B2B or B2C, relationships can be difficult to manage. Manufacturers working with distribution partners sometimes have difficulty aligning goals that sit askance from one another. Maintaining brand consistency as products move through complex distribution networks can prove to be an additional frustration.
Skynamo’s Sam Clarke (CEO) and Wim Morris (COO) talks to The Margin about the challenges that comes with growing a global salestech business.
Businesses and consumers alike have had to weather several shocks over the past two years. In this article, I advise how businesses can make 2022 a year for rebuilding and taking advantage of new opportunities.
Creating sales success is easy when the data is captured and interpreted smartly. Monitoring analytics closely allows sales teams to refine their strategies and target key areas. In fact, in a recent survey of more than 1,000 sales organizations around the world, McKinsey found that 53% of those that are “high performing” describe themselves as prolific and effective users of analytics.
There have been a series of seismic business shifts over the past couple of years, but one area has endured: Sales Trends. That said, the need for creativity and resourcefulness is becoming increasingly important for sales and marketing teams to be successful as a new year beckons.