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  • Dos & Don’ts – Virtual Sales Team Management

    Dos & Don’ts – Virtual Sales Team Management

    Virtual selling is the new normal. In the existing scenario you cannot attend work meetings in person. But, is this shift easy for all? When we talk about our sales teams, the concept of remote working and virtual selling comes with a unique set of challenges for them.

    Managing these challenges can be a task. This is because the sales reps have less contact with their clients. Ensuring your sales team focuses on the right objectives, delivers team spirit, and achieves their sales targets remotely becomes challenging. The sales managers should help their sales reps. This includes with the right set of skills, information, and best tools to deliver the desired outcome. Mainly because the more your team focuses on the right skills, the more they stay productive and drive better sales. To ensure they are on track, check out the dos and don’t of virtual sales team management for a successful year.

    The dos and don’t of virtual sales team management:

    1. Don’t skip on valuable training
    2. Do make use of video to learn
    3. Don’t ignore the importance of collaborations
    4. Do promote content sharing
    5. Don’t rely only on video calls
    6. Do pre-boarding for new sales reps
    7. Don’t under-communicate things
    8. Do create a content repository which centralized

    1.Don’t skip on valuable training.
    Lack of coaching interactions and insufficient practices between sales managers and reps contribute to productivity’s biggest obstacles. One needs to identify the gaps and bridge them through the power of training. It is a two-way process and should not be skipped as training forms any business fundamentals to grow better.

    2.Do make use of videos to learn.
    Remote coaching helps you to scale-up your efforts, which can be done through recording videos and practice it. Any online video-based practice platform will help your sales reps in this process, and you can also track it well. You’ll see whether they’re delivering consistent and right messaging and where their pitch needs to improve.

    3.Don’t ignore the importance of collaboration.
    Your sales reps will not always get the time. Time to brainstorm, discuss with co-workers, research industry topics, read the newspaper due to power-packed schedules, and assign meetings to attend. Hence, when you involve high performers to share best practices with others. It also helps you gain valuable insights that otherwise would have lost. It also provides a great way to learn for the entire sales team and help solve relevant concerns.

    4.Do promote content sharing.
    Tap peer networks across industry and subject matter specialists. Do use the online video learning, Enhance your Point skills to share stories which matter. Generate ideas, brainstorm, discuss when convenient with the sales reps. Besides, helping you lower the stress of coaching for sales managers and increasing the speed with which creative and fresh ideas execute in the entire team. Besides, everyone in the team gets to discuss and put forward his/her issues and get solutions, for it also helps learn new things to drive better results. This is the most crucial aspect of virtual sales team management.

    5.Don’t rely only on video calls.
    Communication, in any manner, is essential. Just relying on zoom calls for sharing information is not enough, as you might skip crucial communication that has to be shared either with the internal team or with the buyer. Consistent communication helps to stay everyone updated and well-informed about the work happenings and deliverables. Hence, there should be consistent communication both with internal and external teams apart from zoom or scheduled calls where necessary.

    6.Do pre-boarding for new sales reps.
    Instead of hiring new sales executives, make use of technology – mobile and video tools for pre-boarding. Have your new reps practice their pitches, learn your company’s offering, process, and system. This way ensures receiving coaching and feedback without stepping out at all. This practical approach is time and effort saving and definitely worth the try, especially during these days where virtual is now reality & a new way to life.

    7.Don’t under-communicate things.
    During these times, it is a must for leaders to manage work calmly. The communication should be made clear and documented to avoid chaos. The communication between internal and external teams must be on time to ensure all are on the same page. The use of terms and words that can create confusion should be minimized and explained again to reconfirm the assigned task.

    8.Do create a centralized content repository.
    The organization must equip their sales managers with a content repository. To allow the sales team to create, comment, learn, and share important and relevant company information as and when required. Fresh and relevant content that the sales reps can fetch on their mobile will help them answer their FAQs anytime, anywhere, and proceed with their work seamlessly.

    So, these were the top dos and don’ts of virtual sales team management effectively. Do share your valuable suggestions in the comment section below.

     

  • 5 Online Selling Tips to boost your Business Remotely

    5 Online Selling Tips to boost your Business Remotely

    Many sales reps have been working from home for more than a couple of months now. During these days, many sales teams across various sectors have developed remote selling hacks, which will help their sales reps perform better, even without attending the person’s meetings. These virtual selling hacks make use of technology to help their business continue well during this pandemic phase. 

    We have listed some of the best hand-picked 5 online selling tips to boost your business remotely for better sales team performance for your sales reps to follow. So, do share with them and drive better sales online. Let’s get started. 

    5 Online Selling Tips to Boost Your Business Remotely: 

    1. Identify your buyer persona clearly 
    2. Know the importance of body language 
    3. Content is the king 
    4. Use of online tools 
    5. The practice is the key 
    6. Identify your client persona clearly: 

    Unless you don’t target your client persona clearly, you will be pitching and capturing the wrong business leads in your prospect list and wasting time. 

    There are many informative reads online to help you create a detailed buyer persona for your business. So, your efforts and work process don’t go to waste, and you focus only on the right buyers ideally relevant to your business offering. 

    1. Know the importance of body language: 

    When it comes to face-to-face meetings, body language is seen clearly by how you greet, smile, talk, etc. Whereas in remote selling, it has to be rehearsed multiple times in a pattern to come naturally. These include your clarity of speech, tone, greeting, and focus on the meeting as well. 

    There are online sales-readiness platforms that simulate critical situations like objection handling, price negotiation, and hot seat scenarios. It will help your sales team reps practice their sales pitch online and help them monitor things like knowledge assessment and speech speed etc. 

    2. Content is the king: 

    This is one of the most crucial online selling tips. In a physical meeting, you begin with a couple of things before starting the meeting discussion, like the weather forecast, news debate, traffic in the city, etc. 

    In a virtual meeting, you have to get to the point directly, i.e., the meeting’s agenda and content matters that include what you speak, what you present, how well you handle the Q&A session, and the content engaging your audience, etc. It is vital to make sure you share the right presentation, and that there are no too many tabs open on your screen to avoid any confusion. 

    3. Use online tools: 

    Technology has made our lives easy, be it work or entertainment. Machine learning and artificial learning are the next big things to add on. 

    This year has made us redefine the way we used to work. Take any domain sector things are getting automated and work is done online to the best possible levels. Then why not use it to leverage our business online? 

    There are platforms like Hubspot, Salesforce, and Awarathon, that help grow your businesses remotely. These platforms have a bunch of features to help you scale your business. Providing the best solutions to business problems and taking feedback to serve better is what they have mastered over the years. Hence, you as a sales team representative, must explore these platforms. 

    4. The practice is the key: 

    The key to perfection is practice and only practice. Sales reps often ignore this as they are in a hurry to pitch or communicate things with the buyer/ client. If you don’t practice enough, you are creating loopholes in completing a sale. 

    Product knowledge, pitching skills, negotiating skills, presentation skills, communication skills, and greeting skills practice matters for a deal to happen. Hence, practice is the key to mastering anything. 

    These were the 5 online selling tips to boost your business remotely for better sales performance.

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