As the adage goes, sales is not about closing deals; it is about opening new relationships. To run a successful business, your sales team needs a pipeline full of qualified prospects ready to build relationships with. A lot of this is made possible today with the help of CRM and online engagement tools.
Cold email marketing agencies like LeadJoint enable lead generation by identifying the right decision makers, building an email sequence to appeal to this audience, and ensuring technical compliance to ensure that remote sales team achieve a steady pipeline of new, qualified leads.
Unlike traditional sales, remote sales teams often have to contend with fewer in-person meetings and more virtual calls. While this can have an impact on the relationships nurtured, several companies have done this successfully over the past few years.
What does remote sales entail
A quick point to note here – remote sales does not always refer to SDRs sitting behind a computer desk chatting with prospects over Zoom. A lot of businesses today hire sales teams from across different markets in order to reach the local clientele. While these SDRs do coordinate with their colleagues remotely, their job is still on the field.
However, there are also other ‘remote sales’ teams where the entire outreach, negotiations, and closing is done remotely over the phone or computer.
For the purpose of this article, we are going to focus on the latter.
Factors that hurt remote sales
Lack of personal connection
Remote sales removes one of the key elements of effective sales performance – personal connection.
When your time with your prospect is reduced to a 30 minute Zoom call, there really is no way to build the rapport necessary to clinch the deal. Without this human element, success is reduced to your offering and pricing.
To help bridge this gap, small details matter; something as simple as taking the time to create a Zoom background aligned with your brand can add familiarity, professionalism, and a stronger sense of presence during virtual meetings.
Poor technology
Also, while technology has certainly come a long way from the days of dial-up, it is not always seamless. Poor network connectivity, faulty software, or communication devices can contribute to lagging, buffering, or low quality audiovisuals that can really distract the prospect during the sales process.
Lack of focus
Have you ever participated in an online meeting where the participants had their video turned off? When it happens in a sales call, chances are that your prospect is working on other things while you are trying to explain your product and its features.
A lack of focus means your prospect was never truly into the meeting which reduces the chances of having convinced them enough to make a sale.
In addition to this, remote sales also carry a lot of other issues like an amplification of poor communication, inadequate training, and a lack of real-time feedback.
Picking the right online tools to supplement your sales call is important to make up for the issues that make remote sales inefficient and less fruitful.
Tools to make remote sales better
AI Notetaking apps
Poor technology is often the cause for remote meetings to go bad. With an AI notetaker, it is possible for either party to go back and re-read all the discussed points. Apps like Fireflies record the entire conversation and provide the transcripts as well as an AI-generated summary of the conversation. These notes help the prospects and the sales team to review the points more effectively.
Conversational Intelligence
Similar to AI notetaking, these conversational intelligence tools transcribe sales calls, and derive the key objections, competitor mentions, customer sentiment, distribution of airtime between the two parties, etc. These are extremely vital data points that help sales reps look back into what they are doing right, and what they need to improve upon for future conversations.
Some popular conversational intelligence tools include Gong, Chorus.ai, and Jiminny
Sales enablement
Sales enablement refers to the use of technology to provide your SDRs with the necessary ‘enablement’ to perform their jobs most efficiently. This could be in the form of providing the right content, data and guidance at each step of the way.
There are plenty of AI-based sales enablement tools today that help centralize your content (presentations, case studies, playbooks, etc.), and recommend the right materials for every prospect based on their buyer personas.
Popular sales enablement tools available today include Seismic, Mindtickle, and Hubspot Sales Hub.
Chatbots
A large percent of remote sales is inbound – that is, they handle inquiries that come through marketing efforts. Since these customers already know what they want, the conversation often has predictable starter questions regarding the price or features.
Chatbots can be very handy in such cases. They are a key tool in marketing automation and help free up the resources at hand; allowing your SDRs to only take over the conversation once the buyer has been identified to be motivated.
Some popular sales chatbots tools include Drift, Landbot, and Intercom.
Lead qualification
Not all leads are built equal. A lot of the leads you generate may fall outside of your Ideal Client Profile (ICP) parameters. Lead qualification is the process of studying the client profile and their requirements to see if they are a valuable lead. This is often done through a process called lead scoring.
AI-based lead qualification tools help study the prospect profile and provide SDRs with the necessary information regarding their lead scores. They also go a step further towards sales enablement and offer you the exact guidance necessary to translate even the poor scoring leads into potential paying customers.
Lindy.ai is a popular lead scoring platform along with other tools like Docket AI, Demandbase, and Enthu AI.
Remote team alignment
Bigger brands have multiple product or service lines across different markets. For such diverse offerings, communication is key since the messaging needs to be consistent across different SDR teams. Keeping remote teams aligned on the messaging, along with sharing best practices, objection handling scripts, packaging winning playbooks, and ensuring content consistency are critical in driving sales success.
Popular team alignment tools include Slack, Showpad, and Hubbion.
Marketing automation
Yes, marketing automation is not anywhere related to sales. But marketing forms a crucial aspect of lead generation and nurturing that directly impacts the quality of your leads. Investing in marketing-enablement tools can go a long way in building a sizeable audience pool to grow your business. For instance, something as simple as an Instagram reel maker can help build an automated sequence of Instagram posts that drive higher engagement, grow followers, and ultimately set up a larger pipeline for your remote sales team.
Brands are also increasingly using AI to create personalized sales videos, product explainers, and outreach content that resonates better with remote prospects. Predis.ai’s AI video generator, for instance, makes use of models like Google Veo, Minimax Hailuo, Kling AI, and SORA 2 to auto-generate video scripts, build AI avatars, and to turn images to AI for their sales and marketing assets.
Wrapping Up
As remote sales continue to dominate modern business environments, investing in the right tools is no longer a choice. It is mandatory.
From AI note-taking and conversation intelligence to lead prioritization, real-time engagement, and sales enablement platforms, today’s technology can significantly boost productivity, reduce manual tasks, and drive better outcomes.
