by Steve Jensen
4 min read
Connect, connect, connect. With an entirely remote sales team, your saving grace is the 1:1.
You can’t walk down the hall and pop into your salespeople’s office. You can’t catch them by the water cooler. You can’t suggest a lunch meeting at a local sports bar.
These face-to-face interactions have been the staple of sales team management, but the opportunities have vanished (at least, temporarily). Without that eye-to-eye contact, without being able to read the salesperson’s face and body language—how do you know what’s happening with them? As Stephen Sunshine, Director of Sales at Outreach says, “It’s easy to lose sight of one’s path forward, so now, more than ever, we as managers need to be present, provide a clear path forward for our employees and focus on the goals, objectives, and mission.” (Morning Coffee, Virtual Lunches, and Gratitude: Managing a Remote Field Sales Organization.)
Communicate Daily
According to ringDNA, “It’s especially important that you clearly communicate your expectations to your remote team since you don’t see them every day. They need to understand what results they are to accomplish and the actions they must employ to do so.” Furthermore, “maintain an ongoing dialogue with your team members to reinforce the bond of trust between rep and coach.” (7 Tips for Coaching Your Remote Sales Team.)
Hold routine team meetings. Establishing a cadence of coaching and interaction is as important now as it has ever been. Consistent coaching improves rep productivity and it is one of the largest factors in retention.
Keep Your CRM Up to Date
Without day-to-day interaction, managing a remote, geographically dispersed team is difficult, if not impossible. It requires, more than ever, keeping your CRM current and using add-on tools that focus on getting you the information you can’t gather in person but still need. What activities are taking place? What skills could use sharpening? How has going remote affected cycle time or the mechanics of each sales stage? Those are questions you can only answer if you have good, reliable data presented in a way that facilitates action.
A Sales Performance Management System can help. Your reps are no doubt using a CRM (like Salesforce) and a good Performance Management system will use the data they are already putting into Salesforce to provide a host of dashboards and tools to ensure that your remote workers are on-track, energized and constantly improving. Make sure you choose a system that is integrated into your CRM to ensure that it is easy to use from any location.
Track and Measure
Sales leaders are great at setting revenue or quota targets, but often not great at setting other sales goals and expectations. Therefore, great sales analytics can be a remote manager’s best friend. Use your analytics tools to review each salesperson’s performance before each call, so you know where to focus your attention. Be sure to review what they’re doing well, as well as where they need improvement.
Salesloft suggests that “When setting standards, a manager should ask themselves, ‘What is the priority and why? What are the important metrics for success?’ When an employee understands what they need to accomplish, how success will be measured, and why these goals are important, it holds them accountable.” (Virtual Management: Coaching Remote Sales Employees.)
Don’t Micromanage
Use your 1:1a to understand what drives your reps and inspire them to reach those goals. Remove obstacles whenever possible and clear the way for your reps’ success. That’s why collaborative goals are so important—you and the rep are both committed. Explain the expectations early and clearly and then stand back and help the rep fulfill those expectations.
Measure Coachability
Your time is more precious now than ever before. Knowing who will respond to your coaching should be a large factor in determining who gets that coaching time. Spend the majority of your time with those who value your coaching the most. Keep coaching interaction to a bare minimum with those who don’t. Measuring coachability will give you insight into each rep’s mindset and follow-through.
Manage the Pipeline
As a sales leader, you have to have your finger on the pulse of current opportunities, and you can’t let up on that because your reps are now remote. You need a real-time measurement that shows you what is in the pipe, what is more or less likely to close and most importantly, a way to see that each rep has enough in the pipeline to meet and exceed their goals. Moving to remote coaching isn’t a good time to play catch-up at the end of a quarter—in this uncertain environment, you need to know exactly where you are at any given moment.
Aspire and Improve
So, even with the changes brought about by the pandemic, you can close the distance with your reps and ensure that you are on the same page. Regularly scheduled video chat 1:1s can help maintain a much-needed sense of normalcy, and with the extra time that everyone has on their hands, it can be a great opportunity for innovation, fine-tuning sales mechanics, and collaboration.
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Steve Jensen is VP of Marketing for Xvoyant