How to Manage a Remote Sales Team in 2024

Remember the days before remote work was a thing? 

Going into the office Monday-Friday, catching up with coworkers at the water cooler, making packed lunches, hearing rumors of that one colleague who had a fully remote contract….

Nowadays, things are very different. In 2015, 10-15% of SaaS sales teams worked remotely full- or part-time. Today, it’s 71%. 

Sure, office-first companies are very much still out there. But if you’re reading this article, we bet you’re managing a sales team that’s remote all, or at least part, of the time. 

Remote work can be a wonderful thing – particularly if you’re in sales, which isn’t always conducive to office life (having to run a demo with 99% of your colleagues listening, anyone?). That said, it does come with its challenges. A high-performing remote sales team needs a specific type of management and, luckily for you, that’s exactly what we’re going to cover in this article: 

• Recruiting a High-Performing Remote Sales Team
• Building an Effective Remote Sales Process
• Essential Tools for Remote Sales Teams
• Maintaining Performance and Accountability
• Keeping Morale and Motivation High

Ready to become a remote work guru? Of course you are. Let’s get started. 

Recruiting a High-Performing Remote Sales Team

Let’s start with recruitment. Remote work takes a special type of personality to make it work. You’ll need someone who is: 

• Self-motivated 
• Tech-savvy 
• An excellent communicator 
• Disciplined 

Previous experience working remotely isn’t essential, but it’s most definitely a nice-to-have. There’s always the risk that a first-time remote worker might decide it’s not for them – which will waste you a lot of time and money. 

It’s worth noting that you need all of the above to truly excel at remote work. For example, if someone’s self-motivated and tech-savvy but doesn’t communicate well you’ll spend half your time just trying to get hold of them or find out what’s going on. Likewise, if someone’s tech-savvy and great at communicating but not very disciplined it could be easy for their standards to slip. 

So, how do you actually find these people? 

There are loads of remote-specific job boards out there for you to advertise your position on – try FlexJobs or RemoteJobs.io. Flexa is another popular one if your company has any degree of flexibility. 

These platforms will help you find talent from around the world. All you need to do is emphasize your company’s flexibility and commitment to remote work in your job listing. 

The Interview Process 

Ok, so you’ve got a few candidates lined up. How do you run the interview process to make sure the right ones get through? 

First things first – make sure that video interviews are part of the process. Make a note of how easy it is to organize the call, if they have any tech issues and how they present themselves on camera: all of these will give you an idea of how they’d handle a remote sales role. 

You can also ask certain questions to learn more about how they approach remote work, such as: 

• Have you ever worked remotely? What was the biggest challenge you faced, and how did you tackle it? 
• Can you tell me about a time you needed help from a remote team member? How did you go about this? 
• How do you manage your time and stay focused? 

Onboarding and Training Remotely 

When you’ve got a team member ready to start, make sure you have a detailed virtual onboarding process that covers everything – we’re talking the tools you use, what the culture’s like and what the sales processes are. 

These should all have an online home so your new recruits can refer back to them at any time. Make sure that their onboarding and training doesn’t stop once they’ve started selling – online training resources and ongoing coaching sessions will be key to continuous learning and development at a remote business. 

Building an Effective Remote Sales Process

Clearly defined processes are perhaps even more important when you’re working remotely. After all, you’re not physically around to correct employees who go off-piste – so making sure they know exactly what to do is key to a successful team. Make sure you: 

Define Clear Sales Goals and Expectations

Measurable KPIs help you track performance remotely. The exact numbers to keep an eye on will depend on your unique business, but they could look like: 

• Lead-to-close ratio 
• Email response rates
• Number of outbound touches 

Set Up Structured Sales Workflows 

Keeping to a routine is often a vital part of staying productive while working remotely: 

• Regular check-ins and meetings: weekly team huddles and weekly or biweekly 1-on-1s keep everyone aligned. 

• Sales cadences: make sure everyone is following the same cadence for prospecting, follow-ups and closing sales. This is important because 1) you want your prospects to have a consistent experience and 2) your cadences will be based on what works best for your specific business. For example – it takes on average 8 calls to reach a prospect, so you wouldn’t want your team stopping after 4, would you? 

Use a CRM for Sales Tracking

The power of having everything in one place and being able to dig deep into sales data can’t be overstated. Using a CRM can help to boost sales productivity by up to 34% – and 24% more of sales pros will meet quota when they have mobile access.  

In other words, you’ll need a great CRM tool to help you keep track without constantly breathing down your team’s necks (virtually, of course). The best CRMs will also automate tasks like reporting and follow-up reminders. And we highly recommend that you connect your CRM to LinkedIn to make adding and keeping track of new contacts as easy as possible!

Essential Tools for Remote Sales Teams

We’ve touched on how CRMs can help with a remote sales process – what other tools does a high-performing remote sales team need? 

Communication and Collaboration Tools 

Communication becomes even more important when you’re working remotely. You’ll need: 

• Video conferencing platforms: tools like Zoom or Microsoft Teams let you have virtual face-to-face interactions which helps you to build rapport with your team, and your team to build rapport with clients. 
• Instant messaging platforms: Microsoft Teams has this function built-in – or download something like Slack for quick updates, written messages and voice notes. These are key to creating a ‘virtual office’ experience, as they remove barriers to speedy communication. 

Sales-Specific Tools

Ok, this is an obvious one – but you’ll need to choose your sales tools carefully to make sure they work in a remote context: 

• CRM platforms: CRMs like Salesforce and Hubspot are the best of the best for a reason. You and your team can use them to manage leads, track customer interactions and streamline workflows. 
• Lead enrichment and prospecting tools: all of your team should be social selling on LinkedIn (78% of those who do so outperform their peers). As for finding contact details, we’d recommend a tool like Surfe (ahem), which will quickly and easily enrich your lead lists.
• Project management and task tracking: sales is a complicated beast. Tools like Asana and Monday.com will help you and your team keep track of sales activities, deadlines and campaigns.

Maintaining Performance and Accountability

How do you know if your remote team is performing well? Let’s dig a little deeper into KPIs that align with remote workflows: 

• Lead conversion rates: this is the amount of leads that are converted into paying customers, and is a good indicator of how effective your sales processes are – and how well your team members are performing. 

• Time spent on productive tasks: did you know that sales reps spend only 28% of their time actually selling? If you’re not capable, there’s a lot of admin that goes into sales – follow-ups, manual data transfer, and so on and so forth. Make sure to minimize time spent admin by automating or streamlining what you can. Using a time clock app with GPS can also help you track productive hours and improve accountability, especially for remote teams. GPS tracking allows managers to verify location and ensure employees are where they need to be, even if they’re working from different locations.

• Customer engagement rates: keep an eye on email open rates, meetings scheduled and CRM updates – your customers need to be your biggest fans, after all. 

Regular Feedback and Coaching

Performance reviews and actionable feedback are crucial when it comes to working remotely – they’ll give your team something to work towards, which can be a powerful extra dose of motivation when they work from home. 

The best companies are those that give ongoing training and L&D opportunities to their teams. 84% of sales training is forgotten within 90 days – make sure yours stays fresh to keep your teams performing at a high level. 

Keeping Morale and Motivation High 

Working remotely has so many benefits, from increased productivity to improved DE&I and more. But that doesn’t mean it doesn’t come with downsides: it can be difficult to keep up morale working alone, and sometimes it’s easy for motivation to slip with no one around you. Look after your team by: 

Organize Team-building Activities 

Regular remote team-building activities are key to having a team that works well together. These don’t have to be expensive or complicated, by the way – a weekly virtual coffee chat can work just as well as a remote office party or online game. 

Regular team-building helps to maintain the social aspect of work and mitigate the risks of isolation that come from working remotely.  

Co-working sessions are another great idea here – pitch them as an opportunity for your team to share ideas, best practices and support. A collaborative team approach is going to do far more for you than a competitive one will in the long run. 

Foster a Culture of Trust and Transparency 

You’ll want to encourage open communication by practicing it yourself: that means giving regular, transparent updates and establishing trust by giving your team autonomy. 

Recognize and Reward Performance 

Make sure your team knows that you’re their biggest cheerleader – even if you’ve never actually met in person. Celebrate the big wins and the small wins through virtual recognition platforms or monthly awards. 

You can also provide financial and non-financial incentives (like bonuses or a day off) to keep your team driving forward. 

Maintain Work-Life Balance 

Anyone who’s worked remotely before knows that it can be hard to switch off at the end of the day – after all, there’s nothing to encourage you to power down your laptop for the night. 

Encourage a culture focussed around output rather than hours spent at a desk, and encourage flexibility where possible as long as targets are met. 

Make sure your team has access to mental health resources if they need them, and speak to your HR team about wellbeing initiatives to stop anyone from burning out. It’s also important to make it clear when you do, and don’t expect responses (for example: if you send a message at 10pm, the recipient should know they’re not expected to see it until morning) and to encourage your reports to take their holiday time. 

Let’s Wrap It Up! 

By now, you should be feeling equipped to build a high-performing sales team – and a remote work culture that keeps your people sticking around, too. Get both of these things right, and you’ll have a happy, healthy team that drives results. Hey – isn’t that what being a people manager’s all about? 

Go and give it a go. You can thank us later. 

FAQs About Managing a Remote Sales Team in 2024

How Do I Make My Remote Team More Productive? 

Start by assessing where your remote team could improve. For example, if they’re spending too much time on administrative tasks you can look into tools to help speed up their processes. This could be a lead enrichment tool like Surfe, which cuts out time spent searching for contact details and manual data transfer, or a CRM that automates things like follow-ups. 

How Do You Manage a Fully Remote Team? 

Manage a remote team by making sure they have everything they need to be successful. This means a complete remote onboarding process and the tools and tech they need to do their job and keep in touch with their teammates. You’ll want to keep them accountable by providing specific KPIs – and rewards if they hit them – and maintaining the social element of work with regular meetings, catch-ups and socials. 

How to Keep Your Remote Sales Team Productive? 

Keep your remote sales team productive by making sure morale and motivation stays high. You can do this by recognizing and rewarding great performance with financial and non-financial incentives and making sure everyone understands the KPIs they need to hit. The other side of the coin is working to prevent the isolation and burnout that can come with working remotely – do this with regular team socials, meetups, and best practices to keep boundaries in place. 

How Do You Coach a Remote Sales Team? 

Make sure your team has access to all the information they received during their onboarding, and provide ongoing opportunities for learning and development. This could mean regularly listening to their calls and providing feedback, or offering a special L&D budget to be used on courses or conference attendance.