Virtual selling is increasingly more common in the wake of the pandemic. Many companies now exist primarily online, and they often assemble remote or hybrid sales teams instead of traditional ones.
If you’re a remote salesperson looking to improve their skill set, we’ve got you covered. Keep reading to find 15 tips for remote sales teams.
15 sales tips for remote sales teams
Record your video meetings
A significant part of being an excellent remote salesperson is nailing your video chats with sales leads. But it’s tough to accurately gauge your performance without a way to go back and review.
That’s why it’s smart to begin recording your video meetings. Doing so should help you get better at B2B sales by giving you a clearer understanding of your strengths and weaknesses as a remote salesperson.
Use social media even more
A recent study found that 71% of all sales professionals are using social selling. If you’re not already, now is the time to get started.
This is even more important for a remote salesperson who is looking to fill their sales pipeline. Social media lets you engage with your target audience in the way you might interact with them in person in an office environment.
Come up with creative ways to share your personality with a sales lead
Personality is important in the B2B sales process. It’s easy for a sales lead to get a feel for your character when you’re interacting with them in person. But it can be tough to share that side of yourself with them when you’re online.
That’s why you’ll need to get creative. This can involve adding some flair to your emails, sending lead personalized video messages, or whatever other strategies you can come up with to make a personality-based connection with a lead.
Set notifications to mute
Working from home comes with many distractions that can reduce your productivity as a salesperson. One way to avoid some of these distractions is to mute your notifications – for the ones you don’t need during the workday, anyway.
Even if you’re not responding to notifications, they could still pull your mind away from your work.
Take advantage of the right technology
Technology makes it easier to navigate remote sales. There are many tools that will help you boost your productivity and get more out of your time with each sales lead.
CRMs are great for this, as are remote-working platforms like Slack. You don’t necessarily have to invest in the most expensive products out there. Simply find what works for you and leverage it.
Host virtual meetings consistently
It’s more challenging for a sales team to stay connected when it exists virtually. That’s why meetings are so important. You want to have consistent check-ins to foster the camaraderie in a virtual environment. These don’t need to be long meetings. They can be as short as a quick 15-minute check-in at the beginning or end of the day.
Create defined boundaries between work and personal time
Part of excelling in a virtual working environment is learning how to balance your professional and personal time.
It can be tempting to put in a few extra hours at the end of the day since you’re able to work from home whenever you want. But getting into this habit is a great way to burn yourself out and diminish the overall quality of your work.
That’s why it’s best to create strong boundaries between your working and personal hours. Try to cross these boundaries as little as possible to keep yourself in the right headspace for excelling as a remote salesperson.
Be more thoughtful about how you communicate
When you communicate with someone in person, they receive a ton of information from your mannerisms, body language, and even your tone of voice. But these non-verbal cues either don’t exist in the virtual world (emails and social media posts) or are harder to pick up on (video chats).
That’s why it’s important to be more thoughtful and intentional about how you communicate – both with your prospects and your fellow sales team (there are even digital resources available, like Alida’s voice of employee solution, to help strengthen workplace communication). This will help you avoid unintentional miscommunications internally as well as with sales leads.
Take short breaks every hour
You need to take care of yourself if you want to do your best work as a remote salesperson. Part of that is making sure you get up at least once an hour to take a short break.
Spending about 3 minutes moving around every hour should help you feel more energized throughout the rest of your day.
Build personal accountability into your B2B sales plan
Remote salespeople generally have more freedom than ones who work in offices. There are positive and negative aspects to this. On the negative side, you may not have anyone there to hold you accountable as a remote salesperson.
That’s why it’s crucial to build that accountability into your own sales plan. You can do this by creating goals for yourself and developing a step-by-step plan for reaching those goals.
Hold yourself accountable by making sure you spend your days taking the steps you need to take to move closer to your long-term sales goals.
Try using the time-blocking strategy
Tasks can blend more when you’re working from home. This can be okay to a certain degree. But you don’t want to have to stop and reset what you’re doing every few minutes. That’s a killer for your productivity.
A better strategy is to create time blocks throughout the day that you dedicate towards specific goals and stick to them. You might spend 9-10 AM responding to emails, then 10-12 reaching out to sales leads.
Generally, the better you can stick to a schedule like this, the more productive you’ll be as a remote salesperson.
Look for leads for your sales pipeline in varied places
As a remote salesperson, it’s essential not to become overly reliant on any single source for discovering new leads.
If you’re looking for ways to become more effective in a remote working environment, this could be an area for you to focus on. If you aren’t already, start looking for leads in the following places:
- Your website
- Social media platforms like LinkedIn and Facebook
- Online business directories
- PPC ads
- Email marketing
Start each day with a clear vision of what success looks like
When you work from home, the days are often less defined. This makes it more challenging to ensure you’re getting everything you need to finish the day productively.
It’s why we recommend beginning each day with a clear vision of what success that day looks like. Imagining what you want to accomplish at the start of the day should help you organize what you do to achieve those goals more effectively.
Don’t be too hard on yourself
Lastly, it’s essential not to be too tough on yourself if you’re transitioning from an in-person job to a remote sales role.
It’s okay not to be great at this when you’re getting started. As long as you’re committed to working on it, you will get better over time.
LeadLander makes remote B2B sales easier
Being a part of a remote sales team isn’t always easy. You may need to adapt your skill set to maintain the same level of effectiveness that you achieved in a more traditional sales position. We hope that the tips above will help you do that.
However, one of the most important parts of excelling as a remote salesperson is ensuring that you have enough leads to work with. That’s where LeadLander comes in.
Our website visitor tracking software provides you with a wealth of information about who’s visiting your site. You can use it to discover new leads, validate interest from existing ones, and more.
Sign up for a free 14-day trial today to experience how much value we provide without any risk.
