Yesterday I posted some tips for managing a remote sales team.
Those tips were fine, but they were also pretty basic—the stuff we have to do as sales leaders, no matter what. So, I thought a follow up with more specific remote management advice for leading a nascent sales team.
When you are a new sales team, you may not have all your benchmarks identified. That’s not a reason to be wishy-washy, though. Clearly communicate your expectations about activity and/or outcomes, and then measure against them every day.
For some roles or ramp levels, you may need to measure activity. Like calls per day, emails sent, social touches, number of accounts worked, etc. In this case, be clear about the activity you expect, and hold everyone accountable for hitting that activity level.
Better is when you get to the point where you can measure outcomes. Because what you care about isn’t activity but results, like appointments set, opportunities created, pipeline generated, deals won, bookings, etc.
Make sure you measure either activity or outcomes, report on them, share results, and hold people accountable.
If you are running a newer sales organization, you probably have many ramping reps. One of the best things you can do is shadow their calls. This helps you hear their talk tracks but also allows you to jump in and help guide the call if they get over their heads.
When you are remote, you don’t have the benefit of overhearing calls on the floor or getting the quick download of a call when a rep pops into your office to debrief. But when you’re just getting your sales team off the ground, you need to be listening to a lot of calls, and call recording can help distribute that effort.
Leverage call recording software and listen to calls asynchronously. When you are showering, going for your morning run, eating lunch…whenever and wherever you can squeeze it in.
With call recording, the team can listen to (and learn from) each other’s calls. The transparency of call recording is powerful—you will be able to diagnose problems with greater certainty and create best practices for your playbook more quickly.
When you are a newer sales team, you are learning every day—how to overcome a new objection, a better way to handle a differentiation question, a new way to get a prospect into a trial account, etc. Make sure you update your playbook every week with these learnings. With a distributed team, everyone needs a single destination for everything they need.
It’s not enough to update the playbook; you need to coach to it every day. In your individual and team meetings, refer to the playbook, pull up the playbook, and use the playbook. That’s how the team becomes accustomed to using the playbook as a resource. It will help ramp reps more quickly and ensure everyone is selling the same way.
A role-play session doesn’t have to be long—even a 5-10 minute session can be helpful. Some of my favorite topics to role-play are appointment setting, qualification, discovery, and objection handling. This is how everyone learns from each other and practices in a safe space. A new team should spend time doing role-play every day, even when they are working remotely.