Sales Management: 3 Strategies for Managing Distance

It’s a reality: more and more managers are leading their teams remotely. This is particularly true when managing a large team of field sales representatives. You must therefore bridge this gap, as a lack of proximity between managers and sales reps can lead to sales management issues that may result in decreased motivation among sales reps, as well as a lack of team cohesion and belonging.

But how Can You Optimize your Sales Management Even Remotely?

Here are some tips to avoid the pitfalls of poor communication and improve your sales management.

Organize Interactive Team Meetings

Field sales representatives often remark that they don’t feel like they belong to a team. It is therefore important to strengthen this team’s cohesion by organizing regular meetings where you prioritize information, interactivity, and training through role-playing or concrete negotiation exercises, for example. If your sales representatives are spread across France or even worldwide, opt for regular regional meetings, which will be easier to organize, and national meetings once or twice a year.

But these meetings don’t have to be physical. You can also find ways to overcome the difficulty of organizing face-to-face meetings.

Organize Video Conferences

Organizing video conferences is a first tip that will most closely resemble the real conditions of a physical meeting. During these video conferences, it’s important to do a ’round robin’ at the beginning so that everyone can speak and present any difficulties they may be facing, and you can take the opportunity to provide solutions. Be sure to confirm with each participant that they have the appropriate equipment, a working microphone and headset, to be able to participate. You can organize these video conferences in the morning, before your sales representatives leave for client appointments; ‘sharing’ breakfast with your colleagues will foster a sense of closeness.

If you find that setting up video conferences proves complicated, opt for tools like Skype or Google Hangouts , which your colleagues will likely be more familiar with.

Set up an Enterprise Social Network

There is also a tool that will greatly facilitate communication with and among your sales representatives. This is the enterprise social network. We are not talking about a social network where your colleagues will exchange photos; we are talking about a tool that will allow you to improve communication with and among your teams.

Using a collaborative platform, like the one developed by Incenteev, will facilitate your sales management.

By sharing new hire introduction videos, communicating about objectives, and encouraging your sales representatives to exchange information in real-time via this tool, you will foster genuine connections with your teams. Your enterprise social network will facilitate dialogue among your colleagues, bringing increased daily agility, greater productivity, and better mobilization of collective intelligence. It will then become the most reliable source of information for your company and will also allow you to relay all your managerial messages.

The idea is to use your enterprise social network as a true lever for sales management to amplify efforts and energize your teams daily.

And you, what tools do you use to communicate with your sales representatives? Feel free to share your ideas by leaving us comments!

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