What is Remote Selling in Business?

Today, more companies strive to make the sales process easier and more low-cost. Businesses do this by eliminating a large staff of office employees and moving sales to a remote mode of operation. This article will explain what is remote selling, how it differs from traditional one, and how you can create a successful remote sales department to enhance your business.

How Does Remote Selling Differ From Traditional One?

A remote selling is a business process that works in the cloud and Internet space with data synchronized between team members, who can work from anywhere in the world. The main difference between the sales department in the office and online is in the psychological perception of the manager.

This approach often shifts the focus of attention from the results of work to the process of employees’ work, and the process becomes more important than the result. It is practically impossible to control employees at a remote location. A supervisor cannot observe what employees are doing. The only thing they can monitor is their work’s results—whether achieved or not. That remains the only important concept in remote selling. It is this difference that completely changes the approach to sales management and makes it much more effective.

How to Establish Remote Selling?

1. You must carefully establish business processes and work out all sales stages. Without this, it will not be possible to standardize and control the work of sales managers. Otherwise, there is a great risk of reducing efficiency. In other words, you must work out the sales funnel. This is the imaginary route of the client from the moment they learned about your offer to the purchase. You can visualize it differently — a table, a mind map, or a regular list.
2. Create instructions to help your employees move the customer from stage to stage. These should be clear algorithms for sales, taking into account different situations, including the standards of work of sales managers.
3. Create a document that clearly describes the work requirements of your employees. It should include working hours, internal and external communication rules, reporting rules, and other things related to work organization.
4. Think through the process of training and adapting new employees. Create documents with training materials and guidelines that will help the new sales manager to acclimatize quickly to the specifics of working in your company.
5. Select software. A minimum set includes a service for keeping a database of clients and deals (a CRM system), a platform for meetings and appointments, a program for time tracking, and a service for creating reports.
6. Think about the motivation system for your sales managers and how you will conduct team building for them. This is an important point because remote employees experience burnout more often and faster due to the lack of a sense of belonging to the company.

Must-Have Tools For Remote Selling

Quality software with wide-ranging functionality and integrations simplifies the sales process and the lives of your employees, making their work more efficient and productive. Here’s a list of solutions without which no remote sales department can function.

CRM System

It’s a must-have for any, even a small remote sales department. Many solutions on the market offer different functionality in a wide price range. That is why it is high time to forget about spreadsheets and notepads like a bad dream. You relieve managers from manual labor (entering transactions and contacts into the table, reporting, etc.), thereby freeing up their time so that they can do their main work — selling. Also, don’t forget that any manual activities equal the likelihood of errors. Besides, you can control your sales managers through a CRM system. You can monitor how managers work with clients and lead them through the funnel to close the deal (this is especially important for businesses with a long cycle of buying decisions). You will also know at what stage of the funnel potential clients “bounce” and for what reason, which means you can work through these factors and work on your mistakes.

Service for Communication with Customers

Many of them today have approximately similar functions and different price ranges. You cannot do without video conferencing software if your sales are based on calls and presentations. Your sales managers will be able to present your products or services in real-time with HD video while answering questions and objections from potential customers. It’s better than just a presentation sent via email. Choose a service based on your needs. Whoosh will surprise you with its extensive and advanced functionality and ease of use, and Google Meet integrates with almost all Google services.

Messengers

Email is no longer the only way to communicate within the team and departments. Keep your internal communication standardized and use one system with various channels where your employees can communicate.

Cloud Storage

Using cloud storage simplifies the work process for all company employees from any department. This solution allows you to create a database with all reports and files necessary for work, where each employee has their access level. This service will make life easier for any manager and make file storage more secure.

You can come up with other services that can enhance your selling processes. However, these four tools are enough to automate your sales department workflow and improve efficiency.