Lack of tools or too many tools It's been proven that
too many tech tools or too few will directly impact your team's productivity and chances of converting prospects into buying customers.
Too many and your workers feel overwhelmed. Too few and they struggle to reach quota.
Let's break this down:
Tech tools are a must for remote work. Even for in-person jobs, CRMs, messaging, scheduling, video calls, and
sales enablement – all make a difference.
But you have to pick the right tools.
You need to know your team's needs and how they match up with your company goals, and then deduce from there what you need.
A sales team typically needs to:
- Be able to send email sequences
- Set up a sales cadence with multiple touchpoints, including emails, dials, social media
- Have access to calendars to schedule meetings or demos
- For inbound sales, the ability to qualify leads
- Be able to prospect with a research tool such as LinkedIn Sales Navigator
- Connect with other members via messaging and weekly calls
- Keep everything organized and updated on a CRM
Tools exist for all of these purposes and should be part of your tech stack as a company. Every time you adopt a new tool, you should give it some time and then evaluate if it is actually making a difference.
You should ask yourself:
Is your team using it? Is it helping? Why or why not? Do you want to keep spending on it?
These questions will help you gauge their usefulness.
For example, tools that check that your teams are moving their cursor around only serve to stress your workers and generate mistrust.
You've hired them, so trust them to get the job done with the right tools at their disposal.
Keeping motivation levels up It's hard for remote sales teams to see the fruits of their labor. This in turn may make it difficult to keep the level of motivation constant.
Remote sales teams won't always be part of the big, contract-signing meetings that they have all relentlessly been helping to take place.
They won't see the impact all of their daily tasks have.
It makes it difficult for your team to remain motivated if they fail to understand how what they do daily positively affects the company.
It's a good idea to have monthly or bimonthly meetings with your team, going over both the good and the bad, in terms of numbers and strategy. Being transparent and clearly showcasing and communicating how important the work they are doing is will keep your team motivated and hungry to grow.
Difficulty in determining pain points and needs A complication for remote sales teams is the lack of actual face time with prospects.
Especially when initiating outreach, it may make it difficult to determine your prospect's pain points and needs.
Your team may use meaningless messaging or target the wrong
customer profile.
And if they are so off base that they do not receive replies, they may end up hitting a wall quite soon that seems insurmountable.
Your market research is very important for them.
You need to have created base materials for your remote sales team to use as a base. Both an ICP and marketing messaging are absolutely key ingredients in your sales team's success.
Allow them to adapt as needed based on feedback they receive from prospects, but provide them with some talking points and ideas of customers as a starting point. They will then become your main source of information for how to target and market your product or service, as they'll receive immediate feedback and information regarding your industry.
Need for content that truly helps the sale As mentioned above, you need to provide your sales team with existing content to help them sell.
A landing page for your product or service, a blog that provides additional insight into your services or products, white papers or e-books – all are forms of
lead generation in the B2B world that also help your sales process.
But it should not be fluff or sales-y: this content needs to provide true value.
Your team can use similar messaging or links, or attach informative content you've created to help interest and persuade prospective customers to find out more about your product or service.
The sales are not happening in person, in a brick-and-mortar store. The process of persuasion is taking place online, so the more content you have online, the better for your sales team.
Avoiding distractions at home This is a difficulty for any remote team, sales or otherwise.
The key to avoiding distractions at home is to segment time. It's not as if an office is any less distracting, really.
You have several teammates working in the same space that may converse or distract each other throughout the day.
At home, however, children, pets, deliveries, or other distractions may arise.
The best way to help your workers is to suggest they create time blocks.
Set apart three hours for cold calling. Start your morning by sending out LinkedIn connection requests. Make a LinkedIn post around midday. Prospect for three to four hours in the afternoons, and then spend your mornings reaching out to folks.
Time blocks are a great way for remote teams to concentrate on work while maintaining a work-life balance with tasks they may have at home beyond work.