How can you improve employee engagement in a remote Sales team?

Great communication is so important. Yes there are so many new and innovative channels and harnessing this potential means paying attention to using the right channel at the right time with the right content. Clearly defining content can help. For example content could be categorised such as: what a team a) needs to know now and do urgently to be effective and b) what the team should aspire to know and learn about soon to excel and c) what the team might find interesting but is not critical. What categories could work best in your team?

From 3 years experience working remotely in sales, I have found effective communication to be key for team building. Setting out clear expectations, goals and consciously soliciting for feedback is relevant for continuous improvement. It also offers the opportunity to openly discuss challenges and while sharing knowledge for the teams success.

In my experience, We can increase the employee engagement by the below activities. Regular Virtual Meetings: Schedule consistent video conferences to maintain team connections and discuss updates. Transparent Communication: Share company goals, changes, and successes openly to foster a sense of involvement and trust. Recognition and Rewards: Acknowledge achievements and milestones publicly, reinforcing a positive work environment. Training and Development Opportunities: Offer remote learning programs to enhance skills and career growth, showing investment in employee success. Virtual Team-building Activities: Organize online team-building activities to boost camaraderie and alleviate feelings of isolation among remote sales professionals.

enhancing employee engagement within a remote sales team demands a thoughtful and multifaceted approach that prioritizes communication, collaboration, and individual well-being. By implementing a combination of technology, regular interaction, and supportive initiatives, organizations can foster a positive and connected work environment, ultimately boosting productivity and job satisfaction. Investing in robust communication tools and platforms helps bridge the physical gap among team members, facilitating seamless collaboration and information sharing. Regular virtual meetings, both one-on-one and team-wide, create opportunities for open dialogue, feedback, and the exchange of ideas, fostering a sense of connection and camaraderie.

Encourage skill development through personalized feedback sessions, highlighting strengths and suggesting areas for improvement. Foster a growth mindset by setting achievable goals, providing resources for continuous learning, and recognizing progress. Create a supportive environment where team members feel valued and empowered to take ownership of their professional development journey.

From my experience, tools as slack, teams, email templates and various internal and external role related trainings have been very useful in improving performance as a remote sales person. Access to resources and regular support has enabled me to perform optimally, and remotely so, independently with less or no supervision.

In my team, we have regular sales teams meetings averaging twice weekly. During these meetings, we interact, share feedback, discuss challenges and solutions, engage in projects and also open up on new discoveries in terms of sales techniques and channels. We also have monthly and quarterly sales contests which create healthy competitions among us.

Remote team engagement could be transformed if each team member adopts a coaching mentality - to invite coaching and feedback in and also to be skilled at giving feedback to peers. The opportunity to give “micro” feedback just isn’t possible in a remote environment in the same way this is possible when a team is together more regularly in an office. In my experience, using coaching software to record, review and share moments makes this process easier, faster and therefore much more impactful.

In my team, each of us have designations in terms of products and industry focus. This renders us responsible for ensuring our industries or products are performing to meet targets. In same vein, we are assigned tasks of outreach to ensure we have successful clients and prospects events. To all of these tasks and challenges, we are offered handsome rewards. These incentives drives success among the team mates and communicates a strong sense of responsibility just as initiative.

During Q2 of 2023, our team lead introduced a special reward for the sales person who brings in the highest number of outbound generated sales. On reaching the goal, I was recognized and rewarded with a gift voucher. This incentivized my hunger to do more in Q3 AND Q4. Meanwhile, I had my colleagues who also wanted to win giving me a good race for the prize. Generally, a great sales commissions structure, bonuses and compliments has been a great way to reward teams and to ask for more. And this is per my experience!

Building a remote team has unique challenges and also has key similarities with “in person” teams. For example one similarity in the foundation of a team is recruitment. Intentional recruitment of people who bring new value to the remote team often really encourages respect, curiosity, appetite to learn, openness, awareness and solidarity. It can foster a culture that means the team really desires each person to succeed. Getting recruitment wrong is usually a very costly error and can erode a team. Using modern recruitment software can help identify strengths and non strengths which could be potentially more important in a remote team environment and gaining this insight early in the recruitment process can be very helpful.