Successfully coach a remote sales team

With the sudden shift to remote and hybrid work environments, companies have been scrambling to coach sales teams remotely. Since this new approach to work environments happened in an instance, there wasn’t much time to ensure a smooth transition. Many companies are adopting this new hybrid approach to work as a viable solution going forward even as more employees can go back to the office. However, this comes with unique challenges, one of which is how to successfully coach sales teams remotely.

Common Challenges Companies Face When Training SDRs and Sales Agents

Coaching has always been important for sales teams. It helps to make sure that all members of the team are well-equipped to convert leads into paying customers. Now with more team members working remotely, this coaching is more essential than ever.

Employees who used to feed off the vibrant energy in the office are finding themselves in a lonely position while working from home. Other sales agents may have trouble focusing due to the distractions that come with working remotely. Along with these are a few other common challenges companies are faced with. In the past, managers may have struggled to find enough time to coach the sales teams, especially if an individual coaching approach is needed.

Being confined to your home, you may find yourself with more time on your hands, allowing you to focus on remote coaching for your sales team. However, in a remote space, actually scheduling the time for training is difficult. There is no longer the opportunity to walk across the room and coach sales agents while they are on calls.

This challenge is the biggest reason why you should focus on implementing successful remote coaching programs.

How to Successfully Coach Remote Teams

Finding new ways to engage your sales team while they work remotely is important for you to see successful conversion rates from your team. This continued coaching will also help your team stay happy and successful while working remotely.

Clearly Communicate Your Expectations

Creating a clear agenda before the virtual training, whether it is a one-on-one or team training session, will help streamline the coaching process. Setting these expectations before the meeting will allow everyone to prepare themselves.

As a manager, you should not be the only one with input in this strategy. When sending your trainee(s) the agenda, provide some questions for them to answer. Choose questions that will help you gain insightful data on areas where your team is struggling.

Monitor Sales Calls With Live Monitoring

Live monitoring is a great way to find an employee’s trouble areas. Listening directly in on the call gives you, as a manager, the opportunity to find areas that could be improved in training sessions.

Utilizing the right software with live monitoring features is essential to find key areas where you can help your team grow and improve.

Regular Meetings With Your Teams

A common challenge businesses have faced with remote work is finding the right balance between having enough meetings but not too many. While some companies have barely any contact with teams working from home, others have overburdened employees with too many virtual meetings.

It is important to establish a regular meeting schedule to give employees the space to speak about any challenges they are facing. When scheduling meetings, give your teams enough time to speak about their challenges. This will give you more training material and areas to focus on.

Implementing these schedules at set times will help combat the isolation of team members and create structure in a remote work environment.

Establish a Learning System

Outlining a clear learning strategy is one thing but you also need to develop a learning system to assist your sales team. This system can use resources and knowledge from experienced sales agents and consist of a library full of helpful recordings for less-experienced team members to access when needed.

This system can also include tips and training material from highly ranked members of the team to give helpful advice to new agents.

A learning system like this helps your agents to learn from each other. This establishes an open environment where your SDRs and sales agents can feel comfortable asking for help and advice.

Share Successes and Losses

Sales agents should always keep in mind that they are a part of a team and one person’s success reflects on all of them. And so do the losses. This is where you need to create a team mentality in which your employees celebrate an agent’s success or reflect on a loss as a team.

This energy is contagious and will help the team improve on areas together and feed off positives to reach their own successes.

Set Up Leaderboards and Dashboards

Setting up leaderboards and dashboards is not only beneficial to managers, but it will also help team members monitor areas that require improvement. If employees are in friendly competition with each other, it will help drive them to reach specific goals set out for them.

An informative dashboard will help managers keep track of progress and possible areas for training. If common errors are happening, this will reflect on these boards and can help drive the implementation of new sales strategies.

Track KPIs

Keeping track of the key performance indicators will help you find gaps in your current strategies. This will also help you monitor potential areas for growth and find new methods to implement. Utilizing specialized software like Myphoner, you can easily track these elements to improve your team’s performance.

Key Takeaways

Switching to a remote work environment may bring about new challenges but it also comes with new opportunities.

With the right tactics and software in place, you can provide real-time training to your remote sales team and track their performance over time. This will help you optimize your coaching strategy and make sure that your agents are set up for success!