How to Track Your Remote Sales Strategy
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Sales teams going fully remote has many benefits.
Companies can save up a lot of money when it comes to utilities and overhead costs, the talent pool is now way bigger, employees are more satisfied and productive, and everybody saves up a lot of time not having to transport to work.
But what many don’t talk about is how things have changed for sales managers. How managing a remote sales team is completely different from managing an in-person team.
Now, all of a sudden, finding ways to evaluate if your sales strategy is working or not has become way harder than how it was when your team was working from the office.
Why?
Because of the lack of instant communication.
When your team is working in person, it’s natural that you check up on them multiple times a day. You can ask a rep what they are doing and get an answer in 10 seconds, you can actually see what they’re working on, they have super easy access to you and your help, and the feedback loop is instantaneous. If something’s not working, you can create a new plan right then and there.
Now you’re working from behind a screen and you can’t see what your team’s doing. You can’t just take a stroll in the office to have a quick check-up on what everyone’s up to, now you have to send them actual messages, ask specific questions, and hope that they’ll answer quickly.
Remote sales managers need to find new ways to deal with the communication barriers they now face, and to find new methods to evaluate their team’s performance, give them timely feedback, motivate them to perform well, and ensure that their team understands what their goals and priorities are.
What Goes into a Sales Strategy
So what is a sales strategy about anyway?
Every sales team has a certain goal. A specific amount of revenue the team is expected to generate. The manager’s job is to craft a strategy to meet that goal. To ensure that their team is performing as well as possible, that they are learning and growing consistently, and that they are actually following the best and most efficient practices.
How can you do this?
1. Make sure that your reps understand who you are targeting. Who is your ideal customer? Who could actually benefit from your product? Who fits your company’s qualification criteria?
Your SDRs should not only know who to target by heart, but they should also know how to separate the leads into different segments and use customized talk tracks for each one of them. They should adjust their approach based on each lead’s position in their company, and based on their decision-making power.
Also, you want your reps to invest a good amount of their time into doing research when prospecting so that they can bring in good quality leads that can turn into actual opportunities.
And, one more thing to keep in mind, reps should truly understand their prospect’s pain points before reaching out to them so that they can personalize their message to each one.
2. Clearly communicate which campaigns you want to execute. Whether they are email campaigns, cold-calling campaigns, or LinkedIn outreach campaigns, you want to do your research to determine how to best reach your target audience.
Once you have decided that, make sure your team knows which campaigns to prioritize, and that they understand why each campaign is important. You can clearly explain to them the objectives and goals of each campaign, give them clear guidelines on how you expect them to carry out each campaign, and have regular check-ins to make sure that they are not left with any questions.
3. Give your reps the right tools. The better tools your reps have, the more efficient their work-life can be. The right tools will let your team be more organized, manage their time and tasks with more ease, ensure that they are using updated data and contact information, and track their own progress.
The first tool you want to consider for your team is a CRM system, such as HubSpot or Folk. Another piece of software to help your team’s workflow is an autodialer, such as PhoneBurner or Trellus.ai. And, other helpful platforms designed to make the sales process more efficient include Outreach, Apollo.io, and ZoomInfo.
4. Train your reps so that they are ready to handle each situation. Training and coaching your team is the bread and butter of your team’s performance. You should invest a considerable amount of time into teaching them how to have the right tone, how to build rapport, how to engage prospects, and how to handle different objections.
Also, your reps should be able to come out of every conversation with more information than what they went in with, even if the prospect is not interested in buying anything.
To do this, you can have role-playing sessions with your SDRs, you can listen in on their calls and give them live feedback and training, and you can have your reps learn from each other by listening to each other’s calls and by sharing information and experiences.
5 Ways to Track Your Remote Sales Strategy
Now you might have all that figured out already, but the bigger question is how can you make sure that your efforts are paying off?
As mentioned before, when you work from an office you have a way better understanding of how your team is doing, what the areas for improvement are, and where you need to change your strategy completely.
But when your team is working remotely, all that instant communication is cut off, and now you need to find a way to monitor your strategy’s effectiveness from behind a screen.
Sounds a bit tricky, right?
But I can assure you that with the right adjustments to your workflow, you can keep on top of your strategy’s effectiveness even remotely.
1. Track your KPIs. The good thing about sales is that everything is objective and trackable. So whether you're in the office or remote, you will have the same high-level view of the KPIs.
The first and foremost metric you want to keep your eye on is your revenue. How does your team’s effort translate in terms of revenue? Are they hitting their monthly and quarterly quota? Is this revenue mainly brought in by certain individuals, or are all team members performing equally?
Then look at your pipeline. Make note of how many leads convert to good opportunities, and how many of them become actual closed deals. Notice where and why opportunities are being lost, and if the percentage is higher than the ideal range.
Also, you should look into your sales cycle. How long does it last? Which stages are taking longer than usual, and why? Can your reps do anything to reduce the length of the cycle?
And finally, keep track of your team’s activity. How many calls are they making? How many emails and LinkedIn messages are being sent? How many meetings is each SDR booking? Are they doing any follow-ups?
You should have an account for each sales metric, so you can have access to a high-level overview of your team’s performance with just a few clicks. Tools such as Salesforce can help you keep track of all your sales metrics at all times.
2. Invest in effective communication. When your team is remote, you don’t get to have little impromptu catch-ups with your reps throughout the day. You need to put consistent effort into having those communication lines open with them.
Tools such as Slack can help with that. Not only can you chat with each other throughout the day, but you can have team or one-on-one meetings daily or weekly. And, I would actually encourage you to get your team used to multiple little huddles a day. Try and prioritize synchronous communication because it’s way faster and more efficient.
You can use these huddles to communicate your monthly and quarterly goals to your team on a regular basis to make sure that you’re on the same page. And to be extra efficient, go into each and every conversation with a plan. Have a clear structure you’ll follow, and think about what you want the key takeaway and goal of every chat to be.
3. Listen to your reps’ calls. Listening to your reps’ calls with prospects is a great way to see if your team has fully understood what is expected of them, whether your training and coaching efforts are paying off, and whether your reps have grasped what your sales strategy is all about.
This is easy to do in person. All you need to do is take a little walk in the office and eavesdrop on all the conversations going on.
But how can you do this remotely?
You can either listen to your team’s call recordings, or you can use some video conferencing platform, such as Zoom or MS Teams to listen in on their calls live.
This will let you have a better image of how your team is performing, and what you need to work on to get better results.
4. Shorten the feedback loops. Another key thing that gets affected when sales teams work remotely is the feedback loop. Now they’re way longer than what they would be in an office, and you’re losing time.
You might find yourself having a hard time giving timely feedback to your reps via Slack or Zoom because these tools are not built for sales teams.
The best way to go about this is to get your team working on a virtual sales floor. This way, you can listen to your team’s calls live but also give them instant feedback to improve their talk tracks, objection handling, and tone.
And, not only can a virtual salesfloor help with coaching your reps, but it can also help you stay in the loop when it comes to onboarding new reps. You can track their progress and quickly identify their strengths and weaknesses so that you can adjust your training methods.
5. Have your team do regular self-assessments. Having your reps engage in consistent self-assessments will create a culture of accountability.
You can ask your SDRs to list down the things they think they need to improve on, things that they need to change completely, and things that they currently consider to be their strengths. Then, ask them to create a plan of action on how they will work on their weaknesses and how they will maintain their strengths, and have them assess their progress after a certain period of time.
Another way you can go about this is by having your team members assess each others’ work. You could pair up your SDRs and AEs and have the AEs mentor and report on their SDR’s growth.
Having your team assess themselves and each other will not only encourage your reps to be on top of their own progress and help them identify what is and isn’t working, but it is also an easy and effortless way for you to stay in the loop on what is going on within the team.
Go Back, Review, and Adjust
Now you have your strategy figured out on how to manage your remote sales team, and you know how to monitor if your plan is successful. But not everyone gets it right on the first go, so what should you do if the results are not what you wanted?
As with any other situation in life, you want to go back and review all the steps of your plan one by one, see what didn’t work, and adjust those steps. It’s all about trial and error, but as long as you are able to pinpoint which exact methods did not work, it should be easy and quick to fix them.
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