The DriveSales™ | More Sales Professionals are working from home than ever: How to be productive without working weekends!

When the pandemic struck in early 2020, it almost seemed as if life has been put on hold. With no idea about the adaptation to work and family, a lot of people struggled to maintain a work-life balance.

Everyday work of office with 9–5 working hours and the daily commute was replaced by remote work and lots of Zoom calls.

A sales report revealed that almost 41% of people chose to work from home and were less likely to devote their weekends to the job.

However, it is interesting to note that despite the pandemic and the change of the nature of the job ab and adaptation to remote technology, the situation had a very minimal impact on the sales performance. This just depicts the resilience and enthusiasm of salespeople in adapting to new environments, profiles, expectations, and needs.

Let us explore various ways in which the sales managers and sales teams can adapt to the remote changes and effectively prevent work from interfering in their personal lives and at the same time improve the productivity in their work.

1) Focus primarily on results instead of working hours — When the remote work started for the first time during the pandemic, the major worry of the managers is how to monitor their teams were actually effectively engaged in their work or not. How could they tell if their team member actually working or direct browsing through the internet?

Due to the suspicion, a lot of companies demanded that their employees should be online and reachable at any instant of office hours. In various other cases, employees were monitored through software about which sometimes they would be unaware of.

This over-analysis stems from the far-fetched belief that more time equals more results. However, that is not true. All this constant monitoring does is push its employees to the brink where they might consider leaving your company for a better work environment instead of learning opportunities for salary.

Hence, as a manager, you should monitor the results and targets instead of the number of hours that your employee has put in. This will actually create a healthy and better work environment and will promote job satisfaction amongst the employees.

2) Don’t try to overwork your employees — Just because the team is working from home it is not mean that they have an extra hour in a day. The only difference is the physical environment change. Thus it is important to understand the fact that overworking or overburdening your employees will not yield positive results in the long run.

3) Clear targets and smooth communication is the way to go — Trust is the most important factor to ensure maximum output in optimal use of the resources. Thus, it is important that as a manager you trust the capabilities of your employees and avoid micromanaging them. You can do this through clear set targets and effective and smooth communication.

Your remote reps should be made aware of all the parameters on which their work will be judged. Also, the communication should be open-ended and smooth. This will ensure that your employees can reach you in case of any doubt and as a result, it will lead to fewer errors in the final work.

4) Focus on productivity and effective communication over several meetings — One of the major advantages of the office environment is that you can converse with your team throughout the working hours without any hurdles of booking separate times for every single conversation.

An open-ended work environment is crucial to ensure maximum productivity, optimal use of resources, and error-free work. This particular exercise was easily possible in the company offices.

However, when your employees work from home a lot more factors come to play. They are not only concentrating on the office work but are also engaged with their family. Hence, it is important to have meaningful conversations and clear communication instead of scheduling a separate meet or zoom call for every single doubt.

5) Have proper and scheduled breaks — Just because your team is working from home does not mean that they do not need to rejuvenate themselves throughout the day. The physical work environment does not change the workload or the work demand. It is as stressful and strenuous as it was in the office.

Hence it is important to give your team appropriate breaks so that they could retain and enhance their productivity instead of getting tired of sitting in one place throughout the majority of the day.

This will not only increase your employee’s productivity but will also ensure a healthy work environment and job satisfaction.

You also need to keep in mind that each employee is different from another. There is no one-size-fits-all when it comes to working capacity and attention span. Thus, you need to also keep a few flexible quick breaks that your employees can run leverage when they are burned out or are just required by their family.

6) Adapt your tech usage according to remote working — When your employee was working in the office you could help them regarding the technology the company uses to optimize its work. However, when your team is working remotely, they do not have the boon of contacting you for every doubt or demo with respect to the technology.

It is important to acknowledge the fact that not all your employees will be technically sound. Some might need more assistance than others and this makes it more challenging.

Thus, you need to simplify your tech usage as much as possible. Eliminate any redundant step and automate as much as you can.

Optimize your processes and workflows effectively so that your team doesn’t get stuck with the technology aspect and is able to deliver the assigned task on time.

Now, as an effective SALESPERSON! We can do three things from here.

1. Not ignoring the opportunity and blaming the situation for revenue loss.

2. Taking important notes and going back to revisit your sales strategy with the growth mindset.

3. Reaching out to The DriveSales™ if you need any specialized help for sales.

To conclude, what you choose to think also provides some idea of your development as a consultative salesperson. It is something like Brian Tracy quotes “Approach each customer with the idea of helping him or her solve a problem or achieve a goal, not of selling a product or service.”

#thedrivesales