Managing a team of field sales reps can be difficult, especially if everyone is remote.
My experience in working with several dozen sales managers and directors has given me first hand exposure to the major concerns they have with their team of field sales reps. In this blog my attempt is to pinpoint some major hurdles linked to working remotely and pass on some management tactics to help improve the overall experience for the players on these types of teams.
Tracking It should not at all be surprising that the biggest concern for supervisors is this feeling of not knowing what your reps are doing or how they’re spending their time. It is true that mobile technology has expanded the tracking capabilities of field reps, and with this management can feel a heightened level of empowerment because now all of sudden they have a grasp on what their team is doing. Tracking them doesn’t necessarily mean that your people will be more dedicated to selling, let alone their jobs. I would caution that, even though convenient, mobile tracking is often overly relied on as a confidence booster. Do not be misled by this capability. Productivity is ultimately everyone’s reason for being at the dinner table in the first place and this always remains the central focus.
Morale Another concern that management and field reps have alike deals with morale. How will you maintain, or better yet, improve the satisfaction your field reps have with their roles? Being a territory manager can be quite lonely at times, he or she is responsible for developing business within large markets, sometimes while holding a sense that they’re battling in the trenches alone. It’s not a secret that morale and productivity have a positive correlation. Morale also has a significant impact on employee attrition. Managing this attribute is quite often among the top goals for managers, as it should be.
Motivation How on earth do you keep a team of remote players working hard if they are physically/emotionally removed from corporate and cultural ties? It’s easy to forget who and what you’re working for when your best friend is a laptop in your home office. There is a tremendous motivational value in having relationships with your co-workers. That value may manifest itself in horizontal coaching, sharing of best practices, empathy, pep talks, or competition. These are all good things.
The best way to neutralize the downside of these factors is to ensure that the culture of the field team is founded on consistent communication. Finding the right balance for streamlined and open conversation is the key. Here are a few tricks that you should employ to maintain the flow of communication among the players on your team.
1. Weekly Team Calls – This tends to be an obvious tactic to many sales directors. What isn’t so obvious is how to maximize on weekly team calls. The most effective calls are the ones with cross dialogue. The leader of the meeting should spend as much time facilitating conversation between their field reps as they do instructing and providing guidance. Individual contribution, acknowledgement of employee successes, and sharing of experiences/best practices should the goal here.
2. One-On-Ones – Depending on the size of your team, managers should set aside time for one-on-one conversations with their individual team members once a week. These calls are ideal for setting expectations and goals as well as coaching. They are also good for rapport building and allowing for the sales rep to get the individual attention they need to address any outstanding matters or questions they may have.
3. Team Retreats – If it’s in the budget, retreats are really useful for building stronger relationships with your team and sharing important company strategic initiatives. The best retreats are both fun and professional. We recently took the Outfield team on a trip to Lake Travis in Austin for a weekend, and had an absolute blast. The team had an opportunity to learn about company history, get some coding done, and of course hit the lake for some water olympics. Not only did it create valuable memories for our team, but it enabled us to build stronger ties. When times get tough, we’ll remember who we’re in the battle with and who we are fighting for.
Outfield Team Retreat 2016 | Lake Travis, Austin TX – Working Remotely In Field Sales
4. Contests – Team contests are an insanely great way to both stimulate intercommunication between your team and boost overall performance. I don’t toot my own horn often, but for the sake of supporting this tactic I will. One of the best ideas I ever came up with was introducing a March Madness themed competition to one of my sales teams. It was a team of eight and went as such:
I paired two reps together for a month long tourney. The teams were selected randomly and set to face another team. The tournament was broken up into two rounds a first round and final championship round. The teams would score points based on performance driven KPI’s. Moreover, teams with the highest combined scores at the end of each round would win. The tournament winners had a special prize they were able to claim.
The impact of this program was phenomenal! Sales rep’s KPIs were boosted by over 300% in aggregate relative to other months. What was even better was the effect it had on morale and team relationship building. Because the individuals were put into teams, they were compelled to reach out to their partner in order to compete effectively. This meant they worked strategically together. They were also incentivized to share best practices. It was competitive and fun. Lastly, they were accountable to someone other than themselves, which provided additional motivation.
It’s these type of programs that add spice to what can be an otherwise mundane job.
5. Mentoring – Pairing veterans with newer employees works well for team rapport building and increasing the flow of communication no doubt, but it actually does way more. For larger teams where the manager has limited bandwidth, setting up mentoring relationships can provide a level of relief to him or her. It also develops the leadership skills of the person put in place as the mentor.
6. Tools – There are some awesome tools out there for increasing connectivity and communication flow among field sales reps. The first is obviously Outfield (a shameful plug, I know). Another is Slack. We use it every day and love it! It is relied upon so much that I don’t even need to have my team’s phone numbers (I have most of them :-)). Groupme is a similar app as Slack that provides a platform for communication.
In conclusion, there are plenty of other tools and tactics available. The purpose of this blog is to point out the extreme importance of continued communication among your teammates who work remotely, and to provide a few ways that great field teams grow in love with each other and their company from afar!
