You know how important sales coaching is for your team, right? So this article isn’t about that. The benefits of it – enhanced motivation, increased sales, etc – are only heightened when it’s your remote sales team you’re training.
Working remotely has brought a new set of challenges, and it’s important to keep on giving your workers what they need. For many businesses, natural team camaraderie disappeared as fast as chats around the water cooler.
Coaching your remote sales team should focus on their health and wellbeing. You need to make sure they’re in a good place to perform their jobs and work effectively. It’s imperative your remote workers are happy and motivated. If not, sales will take a turn for the worse.
Of course, remote working doesn’t have to mean fewer sales. If the quality of sales coaching is consistently high, sales will be too. Focused and well-managed teams have direction and are self-motivated, individually and as a team.
What’s the best way to coach your remote sales team?
We’ve actually got seven useful tips. Stand by to learn everything you need to ace remote sales and build a happy and successful team.
1. Communicate clearly
Tip number one is communication. Expectations must be clearly communicated so your team knows what they’re doing and what they’re expected to achieve. Some businesses during the pandemic implemented routine debriefings. This way, managers knew tasks had been ticked off, as well as being able to identify areas their staff needed assistance with.
Strong communication skills among team members keep everyone engaged and productive, ready for the next challenge.
To make communication as effective as possible, advancements in technology can help hugely. Collaborative chat tools and visual voicemail are just a couple of options you can use to your advantage. If you’re wondering “what is visual voicemail”, let us explain.
Visual voicemail is a feature for telephones. It allows you to read voicemails on a screen from anywhere. It’s fast becoming an invaluable asset to sales businesses with remote staff, effectively streamlining their communication.
2. Encourage teamwork
It’s essential your remote workers still feel part of a team, even though they’re not in the office. Schemes such as teaming up sales reps to work together and coach each other can be really effective.
For example, get members of your team to run through role-play scenarios to improve their individual selling skills and share tips and insights with each other. This is doubly effective as team members are training and bonding at the same time. It’s also one less task for senior team members to take care of.
3. Select the right software
Time-saving tools are money-saving tools too. The power dialer functionalities of cold calling software, for example, can work wonders at speeding things up. Those higher up in the chain of command can benefit from the right software too.
Take SAP automation as an example. Sticking with the time-saving theme, sales reps need to access data as quickly as possible and make the most of every sales call. SAP automation facilitates this, taking care of data extraction while the team member works on other aspects.
It can also be integrated with intuitive CRM systems, giving you data at the touch of a button. This is where it comes in handy for coaching.
Exporting reports and data on an individual rep’s sales activity gives you an overview of performance. You can drill even further down to review aspects like customer satisfaction and retention. This provides insight into the strengths and weaknesses of each rep, so coaching can be targeted to improve what most needs improving.
4. Be hands-on
An essential part of remote sales coaching is to be able to listen to calls and offer feedback. You have a couple of options.
One, ensure calls are recorded for you to playback later. Two, look for software that includes a live call studio feature. This is a valuable resource for virtual sales coaching as you can jump in on calls and hear what’s happening in real-time.
Ask your sales reps to pick a couple of online courses or recorded calls for you to listen to – ideally, the ones they felt went best and worst. You can then analyze these together, identifying their strengths and weaknesses and formulating a plan for growth and improvement.
5. Hold meetings
Everybody loves a meeting. No trace of sarcasm, honestly.
That being said, team meetings can be fun when they’re casual and there’s plenty of banter. Routine team meetings are also essential for continuing company culture while working virtually.
During your team meetings, give each staff member the chance to speak about their working week – their wins and losses – to bring the team together and provide feedback opportunities from the rest of the group.
You can also set up a space for team sharing. Be it a disastrous call from last week or an update on a tricky client, sharing – and commiserating – is great for team bonding and staying connected.
6. Formulate a plan
Round up all team coaching calls and meetings with a summary and next steps. During the course of your meetings and mentoring sessions, compile lists of tasks to follow up on and designate these accordingly.
Set clear pathways and tasks to keep engagement and motivation high. Your team stands a much higher chance of completing these by the intended deadlines when everyone knows what’s expected of them and when.
7. Tailor your teaching
Finally, a good coach tailors their approach to the individual. Set aside time for each of your team members to find out:
- What they think their weaknesses and strengths are
- Whether they’re working toward a promotion
- If they’re happy in their current role
- What you can do to help further their career
- What their aspirations are
Asking the right questions facilitates a good working relationship, which is based on trust, transparency, and honesty. You can then coach them appropriately and ensure they feel valued and seen. The sales team as a whole benefit.
Are you up for the challenge?
Coaching a remote sales team is not an easy task, but the reason you’re a leader is you have the skill set to rise to these challenges.
Utilize the technology available to connect your team members and learn to adapt to and embrace these new ways of working. It’s surprising how much productivity can be achieved when we work together – in an office or remotely.
