Tips To Launch A Remote Sales Team
Remote working for businesses was on the rise before the health conditions changed across the globe. I mean think about it, less time for the work force in the office means fewer expenses on companies. Workspaces in big cities like Los Angeles, New York and San Fransisco are expensive. There's always two sides to the argument of remote workers being more or less productive than in house or in office.
I read an article a while back that gave a statistic that out of an 8-hour workday, over an hour was wasted by in office workers due to co-mingling (workaholics). The quality of life with a sense of collaboration and teamwork tends to be higher.
When going remote, why not try to bring the best of both worlds right?
Tip #1. Use free communication tools like Slack strategically to promote commroderay. The word strategically is important here. It's easy for Slack Lines to get out of hand fast. Once that happens, most people tune it out and stop paying attention. No one want's to hear about your cat throwing up on the carpet when the pressures on, and they need to find an important note someone wrote to the team.
Strategically also means being smart with the purpose of each thread and the number of people on the thread. If your team wants to have a gossip line, make a gossip channel and add everyone; but if people start going off topic, cut it fast.
With a team that has never worked remote before; it's going to be a major change when no one can walk by and look over your shoulder to analyze if you're getting the job done or not.
Tip #2. Make sure to quantify and unify all the data. Numbers don't lie, unless you lie about the numbers. Launchpadds has an open API, which means you can connect data from almost every single software out there; if it doesn't connect via API, then you can use the integrated Piesync or Zapier.
Aspects of the workday in the office don't need to be quantified, but when stakes are high for a client account, by quantifying the workload, it will position the team to iron out problems, no matter if everyone is in different continents.
If your system doesn't have customized reporting, migrate at once. When working with a remote team, everyone needs to have access to different variables to do their job effectively. My freelancing mentors have instructed me to never take a job if the company doesn't have a way to show you the data in the way you want it.
How is someone supposed to measure the effectiveness of the work? Keeping people in the dark about the numbers does no one good. The luxury of having the data person around when you need them disappears when working remote. They become an email away [as if the email bin isn't cluttered already].
Tip #3. Encourage healthy and thoughtful lifestyles. Humans are designed to have relationships with one another. We inherently feel, but when the changing world is upon us, and we grow older, we subconsciously learn how to turn off our ability to feel. This causes health problems. I'm not even a doctor and I know it to be true. Also, with a healthy and thoughtful lifestyle, it will show in your ability to do great work. When you're on your own, you aren't going to get those afternoon lunches you're accustomed to. It might not seem like much when it first starts, but in time it will become a void. You'll need to force yourself to stay in a positive mindset without the proximity.
Being healthy should be everyone's priority, but when you work alone, it's easy to get caught in the weeds and forget that outside your box exists. Furthermore, other people aren't around to bring you back into the swing of it. It's up to you to be a strong human, and supplement the loss in connection with other connection. Life is all about balance to set yourself up to do great work.
