Businesses are switching to a remote-first operations model. This includes zero touch training, remote sales, and remote customer onboarding.
The sales function has traditionally been conducted over face-to-face meetings. Although remote sales have steadily risen over the years, the real push has only come in recent months.
If you have been suddenly pushed into working remotely, this is a short guide that can help you reach your targets better, and be a successful remote sales person.
Why remote working fails for salespeople
There are two reasons why remote working fails – not just for salespeople, but in general for many different professions.
The first is with respect to the general skills you are hired for. Remote sales is very different from traditional sales. You still need interpersonal skills, knowledge of your product, and other traits that make sales people succeed. In addition to this, you will also need better tech-savviness, collaboration skills, and self-motivation which are critical to succeeding as a remote worker.
The second reason why salespeople fail as remote workers is because they perhaps were never hired to do remote work in the first place. Sales requires you to hustle, meet new people day-in, and day-out. You need to be passionate about knocking doors.
This doesn’t exist in remote sales which is a desk job for all intents and purposes. An intrinsic aspect of sales that makes it so exciting to people in the industry doesn’t exist while selling remotely – this can tend to bring down motivational levels.
How to succeed as a remote sales person
It’s a new skill – learn it
As a salesperson, you are used to learning new stuff every single day – new product features, industry regulations and competition. Remote sales demands new skills, and to succeed in this role, you have to learn new skills.
You have to be comfortable with video conferencing over face-to-face sales. You must also learn to carry out product demos online instead of physical demonstration. If you are in software sales, invest in screen sharing – they are as effective as physical demonstrations in getting the message across.
Learn to automate
Remote sales may not seem as exciting as hustling in traditional sales jobs. But it is more effective and targets can be achieved faster if you are smart about it.
One way to do this is by learning to automate your tasks. In a regular sales job, you cannot avoid traveling from one client to another. You cannot replace your conversation with a bot.
With remote sales, all of this is possible.
Imagine this – you do not have to travel from place to place. This saves you several hours every week.
You do not have to call every client – you can set up email automation to reach out and follow up with prospects. The good thing about using email in lieu of cold calls is not only that you can automate the process, but can also send your outreach during the recipient’s preferred hours.
If your client is halfway across the world, your email can still reach them at 8 AM in the morning even if it’s night time in your city.
Your outreach too does not have to be real-time. While it is imperative that you talk to your clients to build a connection and establish a relationship, you could invest in quality video marketing content that can pitch your product for you without a need for you to be around.
The good thing about automation is that you only do it once and it can be executed thousands of times. Which means, you can hire a professional to produce your pitch and this can achieve much higher conversion than a real-time pitch can.
Learn to manage time more effectively
Time management is one of the biggest reasons why remote salespeople fail. Salespeople often find it difficult to juggle between various tasks like outreach, meetings, follow-ups and post-sales servicing.
With remote sales, your work is no longer restricted to an eight or nine hour window. If your clients are across different time zones, new messages hit your inbox all through the day and if left unchecked, you could quickly slip into a situation where you are working throughout your waking hours.
This is, however, a personal time management issue that can be solved with a little bit of discipline. While this gets used to, remote salespeople who work from home must learn to separate their personal hours from work hours.
You may choose to have different personal and work numbers so that it is simpler to switch off your work phone at the end of your work hours. Also, using different computers helps so you are less tempted to check mails once work is done.
A disciplined approach can help a salesperson from getting burned out and this keeps their motivation levels high; in turn contributing to better numbers.
To summarize, as a salesperson, you need to ask yourself if remote sales is the future in your industry. If it is, it is time to work on your new skills acquisition, time management and automation so that you succeed.
Remote sales is not for all salespeople. It is a good time to ask yourself if you see a future for yourself in this role. If not, there is absolutely no harm in switching to a different industry or role altogether.