Managing a Remote Sales Team

  Managing a Remote Sales Team Most sales organizations today have some or most of their sales team working in geographically distributed locations. This approach offers flexibility since it expands your hiring pool, and can be more productive since there is less time wasted traveling to and from their sales calls as well as reduced costs due to a decrease in T&E expenditures. At the same time, there are many challenges in managing a remote team. These include: 

• Lack of forum for a salesperson to exchange views, discuss deals, competition and benefit from being in the center or hub of an HQ or regional office.

• Feelings of isolation  - nobody to bounce ideas off,  not knowing what's happening in the company, less people to hang around with or be part of a group

• Lack of discipline – depending upon the individual and how driven or disciplined they are, working alone can be very difficult and they can be diverted by other stuff (like doing the laundry or mowing the lawn, browsing the web too much, etc.)

• No way to hone sales skills without traveling to an office for sales training, and no way to have an on going reinforcement of skills.

• Lack of appropriate technology – the home office might have it but the salesperson might not. For example, a salesperson may need a mobile device or a high speed link but the company won’t provide it or can’t afford it.

 Here are some recommendations on how to prevent or address these issues:  

• Create a work schedule and circulate it to all of the remote sellers. Being reachable and spending with time with them in the field is critical.
• Establish weekly 1:1 and team meetings (virtually) to communicate key goals, priorities and expectations.  Try not to cancel or postpone these meetings if at all possible. You can also use them meetings to do some sales training, strategize big deals, or to discuss the competition.
• Schedule quarterly on site team meetings where you get together to celebrate victories, build morale and do some training. These meetings are great time to do some training or bring in subject matter experts to discuss critical products, issues or skills.  If it’s not feasible to hold these meetings on site, do them virtually.   However, make sure that the subject matter is different from your typical weekly meetings.
• Communicate more often than ordinary since your salespeople are remote and needs to be a part of the overall vision (whether they say so or not).
• Using technology is key. Using web conferencing or video conferencing for your meetings can make a big difference.
• A good CRM package is extremely helpful so you can see if people are doing the right things (qualitative) often enough (quantitatively).
• Have your best people in the field mentor others or give them special tasks (as long as they want to and it doesn’t take them away from their primary responsibility). This will keep your best people motivated and interested and you are less likely to have them go somewhere else.