Dos & Don’ts – Virtual Sales Team Management

Publish date: 29th Oct, 2020
Publish By: Sagar Pradhan, Growth Marketer

Virtual selling is the new normal. In the existing scenario as 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. It becomes challenging to ensure your sales team focuses on the right objectives, delivers team spirit, and achieves their sales targets remotely. 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.