BY TIM HARRIS

We are working in uncertain times

“I wonder what my customers are thinking?”
“What is my sales team feeling?”
“I wonder what they are saying to our prospects?”
“When was the last time we talked to that customer?”
“Does that prospect ever answer your calls?”
“Will that deal close on time or will it be delayed?”
“How can I tell that my team is staying focused and being effective?”

For many, there are more questions than answers

In California, we saw the coronavirus pandemic take our community from an increased warning level on March 4th to a statewide stay-at-home order by March 19th. Overnight, enterprise customers launched travel bans and wide-spread Work From Home requirements. Our customers in professional sports like the NBA, NHL, MLB, and others canceled and suspended games. Our partners around the globe continue to grapple with a new normal, at least for right now. So what can sales and business leaders do right now to enable remote sales teams to serve and help customers in this time of need?

Focus on what you can do. Drive efficiencies, be productive & maintain visibility into all of your team’s activities.

Remote Communication Challenges

As leaders, we are no longer able to connect with our reps or walk over to their desk for a coaching moment. The challenges have become more difficult to identify. Through recent customer seat rides, over just the last few days, we have identified a series of customer communication challenges. Two of them, I would like to highlight as they directly relate to our “new normal.”

1. SDRs and AEs are often providing personal cell numbers to prospects or customers to speak on the phone, text, and nurture the relationship. It’s a battle. Employees get frustrated about having to “Bring Their Own Device” and businesses miss out on valuable conversations. Even if outbound communications work, companies are unable to provide working inbound phone numbers and screen-pop solutions for reps or agents now that they are away from desk phones. Without core systems fully functional, calls go unanswered as communication becomes critical.
2. Phone systems are no longer in sync with your CRM, reps need guidance, and reporting is getting more difficult. Conversations are coming in on personal devices, and as a result, reps are not logging a significant portion of customer and prospect interactions into the CRM. Reports are becoming less and less accurate, and let’s face it; visibility has drastically decreased. It becomes tougher to gain clarity into who reps are speaking to and what they are saying. Lead lists may go un-called and pipeline negatively affected.

There are remote sales strategies to help your teams and managers stay in sync during this challenging time. If these challenges resonate with your current situation, below are seven ways that DialSource can support your sales operations. In the meantime, stay focused on the blocking and tackling, enable your teams to be human, and remember that conversations matter.

Seven Remote Sales Strategies

1. BRING YOUR OWN DEVICE: When your office desk phone is miles away, you can use a softphone, cell phone, or home phone and connect to DialSource right away. Just update your phone number and get back to calling.
2. INBOUND CALLS: If your prospects call you back on a DialSource Denali inbound line, you won’t need to make any changes to your Caller ID as your Denali line will go with you.
3. CAMPAIGN SCHEDULES: Easily sequence and schedule the campaigns that your team works from throughout the day. Make sure all of your SDRs and AEs know exactly who to call and when to call them.
4. LOG EVERY ACTIVITY: Never miss a sales activity. Maintain accurate reports and trust across your team by automating the logging of every call.
5. RECORD EVERY CALL AUTOMATICALLY: DialSource securely captures your recordings and integrates with the popular recording analytics tools you use today, so ExecVision, Gong and others can report on your data.
6. KEEP TRACK OF YOUR TEAM: Monitor campaign progress, daily activities, conversation outcomes and account progression directly within CRM. Salesforce users can access these reports on the go directly from the Salesforce mobile app.
7. COACH FROM ANYWHERE: Focus on the real-time status page and the ability to ‘overhear’ reps (similar to floor walks) by using our ‘Monitor’ and ‘Whisper’ coaching features.

We hope that these remote sales strategies help your reps continue to do their jobs as efficiently as possible. As a result, your reps will be able to better serve customers under this new “normal.” Ultimately the organizations that succeed at mitigating disruptions for their reps’ daily workflows will come out stronger than before.