Remember the old saying, “no man is an island?” If you’ve worked in remote sales, you know that’s not true. Selling is by nature a lonely endeavor.By all means, lean into and take all of the support your organization is capable of giving, but also be self-sufficient. That means mapping and mastering your own sales process, attaining a black belt in digital kung fu so you can find and maintain your own online tools, track your own sales funnel and — unless you’re the lucky beneficiary of a robust lead-gen operation — find your own targets

Island Time

You need a dedicated space where you go to work. It can be an isolated nook in an apartment. Maybe you have a giant walk-in closet that can be repurposed If you’re lucky enough to have a spare bedroom, set it up with comfortable work tools: An ergonomic chair, an efficient desk, some shelves for filing and holding notebooks.

Office Space

<ul><li>Write down distractions that divert your attention.</li><li>Office Rules: Make a schedule and stick to it</li><li>Line Up: Only respond to incoming calls/texts/emails sent to a specific number</li></ul>

Narrowed Focus

If you’re accustomed to having others provide the structure and process for your sales, take control. When you have concentrated, uninterrupted time — probably on a weekend — shut off all of your devices. Go outside on the patio. Grab a notebook and pen and think through how you sell, from start to finish: Prospecting, qualifying, contact, follow-up, pitching, closing, post-close handoff. Allow time in your schedule to “clean up” your tools every day. The most effective time is at the end of the day. That will also prep your mind to be thinking about tomorrow’s tasks.

Process Makes Perfect

You need things to do your job: Sell sheets, presentations, price lists, videos. If your company doesn’t have a central repository for these things — a <a href="https://www.google.com/intl/en_ca/drive/">GoogleDrive</a> folder, a shared <a href="https://www.dropbox.com/">DropBox</a> — make one of your own. That will save countless hours searching random folders for that updated product specification sheet.

Stock the Shelves

<ul><li>Set aside time in your day to do each of the things in your process.</li><li>Don't be tempted to "multitask" while prospecting and talking simultaneously</li><li>The idea that humans can do more than one thing at a time is pure, unadulterated horse hockey</li></ul>

Multitasking Is A Myth: Learn to Single task

<ul><li>Make time Friday afternoons to write a brief summary of things you did since Monday along with a forecast for the following week</li><li>The lack of face-to-face communication in sales is a major seismic shift. Leverage the fudge out of that.</li><li>You can make many more virtual appearances than physical ones in a day.</li></ul>

Emphasis on communication

Want to meet goals and achieve quota from the comfort of your own home? Here are 14 tips from the experts on how to succeed as a remote salesperson.

Stashed ideas

How to Succeed as a Remote Salesperson in 2022

Sales face unprecedented challenges for organisations and salespeople.  <ul><li>One reason is the massive increase in competition. The average company today has twice as many competitors as five years ago. </li><li>The other reason is that relying on innovation to beat competition has a diminishing window of opportunity. In previous years, innovation could give you a year or two advantage. Now, you’re lucky if you have a few months at most.</li></ul> That is why many leading companies focus on organic growth by using sales and marketing. However, the trick is how to pull it off successfully.

Sales is in a strategic spotlight

<ol><li>“Hire the same successful salesperson every time.” (The Sales Hiring Formula)</li><li>“Train every salesperson in the same way.” (The Sales Training Formula)</li><li>“Hold our salespeople accountable to the same sales process.” (The Sales Management Formula)</li><li>“Provide our salespeople with the same quality and quantity of leads every month.” (The Demand Generation Formula)</li></ol>

The four components of making sales scalable

<ul><li>Create a theory of the ideal sales characteristics, then score every candidate for each characteristic on a scale of 1 to 10.</li><li>Define an evaluation strategy for each characteristic. Consider what behavioural questions to ask.</li><li>Score candidates against the ideal sales characteristics. For example, fill out the interview scorecards after each interview.</li><li>Learn and iterate on the model while engineering the sales hiring formula. Which characteristics do top performers have in common and will it predict success at your company?</li></ul>

The sales hiring formula

<ol><li>Coachability: The ability to absorb and apply coaching.</li><li>Curiosity: Understanding a potential customer’s context through effective questioning and listening.</li><li>Prior Success: Does the candidate have a history of top performance or remarkable achievement?</li><li>Intelligence: The ability to learn complex concepts quickly and to easily communicate those concepts.</li><li>Work ethic: Pursuing the company mission with a high degree of energy and activity.</li></ol>

The five traits great salespeople have

<ul><li>Find quality passive sales candidates on LinkedIn. Use filters to improve search results, such as Zip code, job title, school, company. Screen the search results using the candidate’s LinkedIn Profile. Look at longevity at their employers, alignment between the prospect’s current buyer context and our buyer context, school and major, quality of the LinkedIn profile.</li><li>Engage with the prescreened candidates.</li><li>Understand the sales talent pool in your area. Find all the companies with inside sales teams in your area. Interview at least one person from each team.</li></ul>

How to find top-performing salespeople

Three elements of the sales methodology:<ul><li>The buyer journey: It increases the likelihood that the buyer’s need will remain centre during all aspects of the selling process. </li><li>Sales process: The sales team can step back and reflect on how to accelerate the buying journey.</li><li>Qualifying matrix: It defines the information you need from a potential buyer to understand if you can help the prospective buyer. Use the BANT matrix (Budget, Authority, Need, and Timing)</li></ul>

Sales training formula

Sales coaching is vital to drive sales productivity.<ul><li>Start with the buying journey. Look into examples of the questions buyers ask at each stage of the buying journey.</li><li>Add exams that focus on factual information, such as product knowledge and certifications to the training process.</li><li>When a hire is on the job for six months, ask him to complete a review of the sales training program. </li><li>Give salespeople an in-depth understanding of your buyer’s day-to-day existence.</li><li>Salespeople should take some time to engage in social media.</li></ul>

Create a training curriculum

Metrics-driven sales coaching. Pick one skill at a time to focus on. Use metrics to find which skill will have the biggest impact on a salesperson’s performance.Motivate through sales compensation plans and contests. There are many ways you can develop your commission plan. However, it is best to let it evolve as your business grows. To keep salespeople motivated, run monthly contests.

The sales management formula

Convert from cold calling to inbound. To make this transition, salespeople should position themselves as thought leaders using blogs and social media. Once the leads come, do not send every lead to sales. Instead, create a buyer matrix to understand who is interested in your product and how they journey before purchasing. When you understand your buyer's journey, you can create a customised experience.

The demand generation formula

Marketing and sales can measure their performance and hold each other accountable. <ul><li>Marketing teams should define how many leads in each buyer persona they are passing on to sales and should be able to calculate the implied value.</li><li>The sales team must decide how to follow up with each lead and work toward the conversion goal.</li></ul>

Marketing and Sales Service Level Agreement (SLA)

A useful book to figure out a framework for the sales process.

Use data, technology, and inbound selling to build a remarkable team and accelerate sales The Sales Acceleration Formula provides a scalable, predictable approach to growing revenue and building a winning sales team. Everyone wants to build the next $100 million business and author Mark Roberge has actually done it using a unique methodology that he shares with his readers. As an MIT alum with an engineering background, Roberge challenged the conventional methods of scaling sales utilizing the metrics-driven, process-oriented lens through which he was trained to see the world. In this book, he reveals his formulas for success. Readers will learn how to apply data, technology, and inbound selling to every aspect of accelerating sales, including hiring, training, managing, and generating demand. As SVP of Worldwide Sales and Services for software company HubSpot, Mark led hundreds of his employees to the acquisition and retention of the company's first 10,000 customers across more than 60 countries. This book outlines his approach and provides an action plan for others to replicate his success, including the following key elements: Hire the same successful salesperson every time — The Sales Hiring Formula Train every salesperson in the same manner — The Sales Training Formula Hold salespeople accountable to the same sales process — The Sales Management Formula Provide salespeople with the same quality and quantity of leads every month — The Demand Generation Formula Leverage technology to enable better buying for customers and faster selling for salespeople Business owners, sales executives, and investors are all looking to turn their brilliant ideas into the next $100 million revenue business. Often, the biggest challenge they face is the task of scaling sales. They crave a blueprint for success, but fail to find it because sales has traditionally been referred to as an art form, rather than a science. You can't major in sales in college. Many people question whether sales can even be taught. Executives and entrepreneurs are often left feeling helpless and hopeless. The Sales Acceleration Formula completely alters this paradigm. In today's digital world, in which every action is logged and masses of data sit at our fingertips, building a sales team no longer needs to be an art form. There is a process. Sales can be predictable. A formula does exist.

The Sales Acceleration Formula

The first sign is a fairly simple one. If your inbound sales team simply isn’t generating the anticipated revenue or leads, then you may need to compliment their efforts with an outbound team. Your outbound efforts can be highly targeted and backed by a more proactive approach, which can be vitally important when you need a boost in sales.That being said, even if your inbound sales team is performing admirably, your business would still benefit from outbound efforts. This will allow your organization to reach its full potential by adding an outbound approach to the mix.

Not Enough Revenue From Inbound Team

Is your product prohibitively expensive? Is it likely that only upper-tier corporations will have the capacity to make a purchase? If so, this is another strong indication that you should prioritize outbound sales. With a smaller pool of potential prospects to draw from, inbound sales often falls short of being targeted enough to generate enough leads. 
The more focused efforts of an outbound sales team will help greatly! They’ll be in a better position to identify, contact, and ultimately sell to those companies who need your solutions and can afford them as well.

Your Product/Service is High-End And Expensive

If you’ve developed a novel solution, your potential customers won’t really be looking out for it. This will render inbound sales efforts largely ineffective, or at the very least extremely expensive. In this scenario, you will need to raise awareness about your new product. One of the most effective ways of doing this is by individually reaching out to the people who you’ve identified as most likely to be interested. This task is ideally suited to an outbound sales team.

Your Solution Is Novel And Unheard Of

If your solutions have long sales cycles, you will need to frequently follow up with prospects. Similarly, sales email sequences can facilitate follow-up emails. Nevertheless, if your sales cycle takes months or years to complete, there is a need to be more proactive in your sales approach and nurture the relationship. An outbound sales team works wonders in such circumstances.

Long Sales Cycles

When you go to events and network with attendees, do they respond positively to your products or services? There’s a simple way of assessing this. If people ask you questions along the lines of “what pricing schemes do you offer?” or “how quickly can you have this installed?” then you can reasonably assume that people are receptive to your offering. 
In fact, these are the types of questions that indicate you’re on the brink of closing a deal. In these instances, an outbound sales team will help you to capitalize on such great opportunities.

You Get Lot Of Interest At Events

If profit margins on your product sales are thin, it will be difficult to afford premium salespeople or adverts. Such circumstances aren’t conducive to successful outbound sales operations. However, if you have high profit margins, you will be better placed to attract elite talent. When a team of results-driven experts run your outbound sales operation, your business is in a much stronger position to amplify revenue and growth.

You Can Offer Good Commission To Sales People

Some audiences are more receptive than others to cold calling and emailing. If your pool of potential clients is not averse to getting sales calls and emails, use an outbound team. Doing so also means you can conveniently guide prospects through the purchasing process, instead of making them work their way through the journey on their own accord. On the whole, this will generally be for more established companies rather than small business and start-ups.

Your Potential Customers Can Be Cold Called

Since outbound sales is a more proactive, targeted strategy, you can focus on the specific people you want to sell to. For example, if you want to contact software developers at Apple, or data scientists at Twitter, outbound is going to be the more efficacious approach. 
Where inbound sales is very broad, more passive, and unlikely to reach an audience that specific, outbound sales will hit its mark without a problem.

A Niche Audience

If you’re a smaller business, you may find that the sales aspect is taking up too much of your schedule. If you’re a founder or CEO and currently handling all the sales for the organization, giving demos, or taking care of outreach could mean other areas in your organization take a hit. If this describes your company right now, it’s time to invest in an outbound sales team so you can devote more time to other business-critical areas. Not only do specialist outbound teams free up valuable time for you but they can also drive better results due to the more dedicated nature of the role.

Not Enough Time

It’s important to factor in the funnel math when deciding if you’re ready to hire an outbound sales team. Quite simply, you’ll need to factor in your average sales cycle and on average how many deals you’re currently able to close a month to determine how much revenue you can potentially generate per outbound sales development rep.  If your average deal size is over $10,000, outbound can be a profitable sales development function at your organization.

The Deal Size Is Big

There are many signs that indicate it’s time to invest in an outbound sales team. This more proactive approach is a great way to enhance targeted prospecting, raise more awareness of your product, and free up your time, among many other benefits. Just remember that even without these signs, you may not be fulfilling your true potential without any outbound efforts. Think about all the outcomes outbound sales teams can accomplish, and then consider how much your business would benefit from adding this strategy.

Taking Advantage Of The Benefits Of Outbound Sales Team

Here are 10 signs that the time to hire an outbound sales team is now.

If you’re looking to create consistent revenue for your organization, a quality outbound sales team will help you grow and succeed.

10 Signs It’s Time To Hire An Outbound Sales Team⎪Predictable Revenue

<ul><li>Entry into new markets: Local people can sell better by understanding the culture and speaking the native language.</li><li>Competitive advantage over competitors who are only operating in a local market.</li><li>Greater access to talent: You could expand your talent pool.</li><li>Ability to help more people: Expanding your market allows you to provide your solution to more people.</li></ul>

Benefits of an international sales team

You may learn about a country from online research but firsthand experience gives you a feel for what the local culture and marketplace are like.  Most work can be done remotely, but it is also good to plan for the complexities of travel.

Get Feet on the Ground

<ul><li>Hire locals in the country as they know the language and understand the culture. They also understand the target customer. Drawback: they don't know your company and products well, and you may have to invest in added training.</li><li>Hire expatriates within the company. It can help you penetrate a market with people already familiar with your company and products.</li></ul>

Find the Right People

Good training is done during the onboarding process and thereafter at regular intervals.  Locals need more training on product knowledge, while ex-pats will need training around the local market and culture.

Train Your Team

When creating an international team, be aware of the necessity of cultivating an internal team culture. The different languages, cultures, and experiences can increase the strength of your team.

Build a Cohesive Culture

Implement a plan and track the results, then study the results. Keep the principles and processes that work and discard the rest.  There will always be limitations and room for growth, and by setting high standards, you could set yourself up for success.

Iterate to Great

Building a high-performing sales team is difficult. Building a high-performing sales team that’s spread across multiple different countries and cultures is even more challenging.

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How to Succeed as a Remote Salesperson in 2022

The Sales Acceleration Formula

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10 Signs It’s Time To Hire An Outbound Sales Team⎪Predictable Revenue

5 Tips for Building an International Sales Team

Bite-sized knowledgeto upgradeyour career

#salesteams

IDEAS ABOUT #salesteams

How to Succeed as a Remote Salesperson in 2022

The Sales Acceleration Formula

It's time to

READ

LIKE

A PRO!

10 Signs It’s Time To Hire An Outbound Sales Team⎪Predictable Revenue

5 Tips for Building an International Sales Team

Bite-sized knowledge
to upgrade
your career