Remote sales – office-based sales it’s all the same right?
The principles of sales might stay the same, but to be successful at remote sales, you do have to adapt and find ways of optimizing your performance. With these six tips, you’ll be able to settle into remote sales much more quickly and start to see the results you crave.
1. Designated Workspace
Remote work often gets romanticized – think of all the images of people working from their beds or by the pool. No one will be surprised to learn this isn’t the best way to do remote work.
While offices may not be perfect, they have developed over hundreds of years to foster a good work environment. If you’re new to remote sales, then you’ve got to start afresh and go through your own development period to find out what works best for you.
To be successful at remote sales, you’ve got to find the right set up to help you get the most out of your day. You need to be able to maximize your focus, but also don’t forget about comfort!
Here are some ways you can look to create a productive workspace:
- Find your own space
- Create a comfortable setup (desk, chair, ergonomic mouse, etc.)
- Limit distractions (similar to the office, but the distractions will be different at home)
- Declutter and organize
You’re going to be spending a lot of time in this space, so it’s important it’s set up to allow you to do your best work.
2. Routines
When you work in an office, your routines are largely set for you. When you work remotely, you suddenly have a lot more control over how you structure your day.
Of course, this is one of the big benefits of working remotely – you get to structure your day to maximize your performance. When you do this well, it can bring in even better results.
The thing is, it’s now completely your responsibility. You’re in charge of getting the work you need to do done. To do this, it’s important that you maintain good routines. Even if you choose to work with a brand growth agency, you still need to focus on a good routine.
Some managers worry that this means employees won’t do enough work, but when you work remotely, there’s always a feeling that you have to go above and beyond to prove that you’re actually doing your work.
Chaining yourself to your desk isn’t the best way to do this though, instead, you should take regular breaks, and switch off from work at the end of the day.
You’ll find that with the right schedule, you’ll do more high-quality work, boosting your sales.
3. Self-Awareness
You may have a ton of sales experience, but working from home might be something completely new for you. It’s important that you’re able to recognize that you might have to adapt.
Self-awareness is an important trait and it’s going to help you settle into remote sales more quickly. There’s no point continuing with all the tactics you used when you were office-based just because.
You’ve got to constantly look at the things you’re doing and evaluate whether or not they’re still working for you. If they are, then great, but if they’re not, then it’s time to find new approaches that will help you become successful at remote sales.
Some things you can do to help you analyze your performance are:
- Record video meetings
- Be very conscious with your internal communication
- Manage your health and energy levels
- Find ways to build strong relationships remotely
Sales is still sales, but the remote aspect does change things. You’re perfectly capable of adapting your approach, but it’s going to be a much easier learning curve if you’re self-aware.
4. Communication
In many cases, face-to-face communication is the best way to get a message across.
A virtual meeting isn’t quite the same, and this means you’ve got to place even greater emphasis on communication. Strategies such as in-app messaging and email messages can be efficient, but combined with real-life communication, they can provide even better results.
Internally, this means:
- Planning your meetings so they’re not taking up people’s time
- Sharing information as concisely as possible e.g. your sales budget, pipeline, agendas, memos.
- Choosing the right technology platforms and forms of communication: does your message need a Zoom call, or can it be a Slack message?
Externally this means:
- Focusing on building the relationship
- When we have face-to-face interactions, we rely on social norms like a handshake, sharing a dinner, etc. to help us build relationships. How do you replace these?
Sales is centered around communication. How you speak, the words you use, your ability to hold a conversation, they all make a difference. If your method of communication changes (e.g. to online forms), then your communication itself has to change as well.
To be successful at remote sales, you’ve got to adapt your communication. It may be something you do naturally, but it will change slightly.
5. Sales Pipeline
In the vast majority of cases, sales don’t happen the first time you interact with a customer. There’s a journey the customer goes on, where they learn about the products and build a relationship with the business.
People want different things at different points in this journey. If you don’t have a clear picture of your sales pipeline (how it works and where customers are in it), then it’s very difficult to give people the service they desire.
Understanding and keeping track of your sales pipeline is key.
The more you nurture your pipeline and have a clear picture of how you’re going to progress people through it, the easier it’s going to be to make the switch to remote sales.
Organization is a key part of being successful at remote sales, and your pipeline is a key tool to help you achieve this. Make sure you keep topping up your pipeline with new leads and are focused on tailoring your approach based on where someone is in the pipeline.
6. Virtual Meetings
As good as technology is, virtual meetings aren’t the same as physical meetings.
When you’re running meetings, you need to be aware of this and adapt accordingly. One of the most important things to consider is the value of time. Your meeting is obviously important, but each minute it keeps running, it’s stopping people from doing other things that might be equally important.
This is something people struggle with when running physical meetings, but there are even more variables to throw in the mix when you have a virtual meeting. Efficiency has to be one of the most important considerations though, and you need to find ways of making sure your online meetings don’t eat up people’s time:
- Sort out technical details beforehand and encourage other participants to do the same (microphone, speaker, camera, etc.)
- Choose the right platform such as Zoom or Google Meet
- Set a schedule and keep to it
- Consider automated transcriptions
- Acknowledge people in the conversation as if they were in the room
- Share the floor
- Agree on next steps
Conclusion
One of the big changes when you switch to remote sales is that there’s a greater emphasis on how you get the most out of yourself. When you work in an office, many of these things are already planned out for you, but when you move to remote sales, you’ve got to take responsibility for yourself.
The most important step is accepting this new responsibility and understanding that you may have to make small changes to the way you work. The key principles of sales still exist, but you might have to adapt the way you work slightly in order to maximize your success.
Through self-awareness and constantly striving to optimize the way you do things, you can be successful at remote sales and see a bump in those all-important sales figures.
