How to engage your remote sales team ?

As a result of the recent pandemic, remote work has become increasingly popular. COVID-19 helped business owners and workers realize the benefits of remote work. Fortunately, technological advancement made the transition easier for many businesses and workers.

Working from home has its challenges, as remote workers often have trouble remaining productive and staying focused on their employers’ expectations. Usually, their personal lives interfere with their work, reducing their engagement. A sales manager’s role in engaging and motivating virtual sales teams is crucial.

In this article, we’ll share helpful tips on how to engage a remote team and keep them in high spirit to work harder for their company.

5 Tips for Engaging a Remote Sales Team

What should a sales manager do to keep a sales team motivated and engaged? When sales managers combine performance strategy responsibility with managing workers spread across the globe, the tasks might overwhelm them. Here are some tips to keep your remote sales team engaged while still working for your company:

#1 Be clear about your sales expectations

You need to provide your remote sales team with a clear picture of what your company expects of them. When your remote workforce is clear about what they need to do next, and they have a clear direction of your sales cycle and processes that’ll help them succeed, they tend to work harder. According to a survey by Gallup, when managers set expectations for workers, the engagement level is increased by 38%.

As a sales manager, you should be clear about your sales expectations and provide your remote workers with a detailed report about each particular task they need to complete and your goals for the job. It’s also good to set a sales target that includes clear mission statements, sales approach, and resources for effective time management. Putting all these in place for your remote workers would make them struggle less to meet performance targets and focus more on completing tasks for the company.

#2 Leverage the right tools and technology

In a remote work environment, team members need to work together as if they were working in a physical office space. It’s the work of a sales manager to promote teamwork and make everyone feel connected at all times. By making the right tools, technologies, and virtual sales platforms available to all remote workers, individual workers can easily reach out to other colleagues or even the sales manager for help on how to complete a particular task.

Today, many sales managers rely on cloud-based software and file-sharing systems to promote teamwork, which increases team engagement. These tools allow easy sharing of updates, files, and essential documents to ensure business success between sales managers and remote sales teams. That way, you can keep your remote workers up-to-date with the latest information that’ll help them feel motivated to remain productive.

#3 Continuously share and receive feedback

Sales managers should look forward to receiving feedback from their remote workforce regularly. Feedback from your remote sales team would let you know how they feel about being part of the team and how they measure up to set expectations. When you encourage employee feedback in a remote environment, you’re creating an avenue for them to share their honest perspectives of what it is like to be part of your team and what they would love to change about your company if given a chance.

If your remote sales team feels comfortable sharing feedback with you (as their sales managers), you’ll have good insights at your disposal that you can always act on to build trust, retain top sales reps, motivate the team, and keep them engaged at all times. However, as you’re receiving honest feedback from your remote workers, you should reciprocate this gesture by giving them direct input in response to their feedback. Even if you don’t receive feedback from your employees, as a sales manager, it’s part of your responsibility to give regular feedback on your team’s performance.

#4 Established Cordial Relationships with your remote team

For the smooth running of a business, relationship building between employees and employers is paramount. This is also true for sales organizations. The more your sales team trusts you (as their sales managers), the more they’re willing to share the same mission and objectives with you. When you build relationships with your remote employees on trust, they’ll keep believing in you, and you’ll find it easy to get everyone on the same page as you.

A sales manager must develop an interest in knowing more about the team members you manage by getting closer to them and don’t make every of your communication centered around company work. Here, small or idle talks could do the trick, and occasional dropping off-topic messages, instant messages, or funny GIFs to their mail inbox is OK. This little effort from sales managers could help inspire a sense of belonging in the mind of your remote workforce and make them feel safe working remotely for the company you may represent.

#5 Encourage team interaction in your virtual office

Another way to increase engagement of a remote sales team is by encouraging internal communication between employees. As a sales manager, you must find a way to bring the team together and make sure they develop the habit of communicating with one another. You can come up with a virtual meeting once in a while where all team members would have the chance to meet and exchange ideas on the project at hand.

However, it would be best if you emphasized meeting presence for everyone as it can be challenging for someone who’s not present for the meeting to remain engaged and productive. It’s advisable to have a fine on the ground for the absentees with no genuine excuse for not attending. You can leverage video-conferencing tools such as Zoom, WebEx, Skype, and Google Hangout for your meetings with remote employees.

Scheduling meetings that will have all your remote sales team members in attendance will provide you with an avenue to address more critical issues and get together to devise some new sales approaches and strategies. It would help if you also encouraged team-building activities that keep everyone motivated and engaged while allowing them to learn more about the team.

Conclusion

There are many companies today that operate remotely. As a result, the number of remote workers has increased. More and more businesses today (especially sales organizations) hire competent and experienced workers from all walks of life. Sales leaders and managers must ensure proper management for remote workers to stay engaged and productive . Those managing remote sales teams will find our tips on how to engage a remote team useful to keep their remote employees engaged and productive.

Interested in learning more about scaling your sales team while successfully maintaining your conversion rate, team motivation and engagement? At SalesDeck, we provide you with tools and resources to improve the efficiency of your sales team. 

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