Remote Sales Teams : Here to stay forever? The perspectives from five tech CROs

Around two months ago, the whole of the sales world changed overnight. 

Offices emptied. Field based ‘road warriors’ stopped getting into their cars in the morning. Prospects were no longer commuting to work. 

In the blink of an eye, the world of Sales became fully remote. Sales teams were needing to adapt to the new norm of working from home, and importantly - no longer getting the ‘in-person’ contact they were typically used to when meeting with customers. Couple this with an economy which had been turned on its head overnight, and this threw up another set of challenges facing revenue teams.

But how have sales teams adapted to this new world of remote selling? What’s changed (if anything at all)? And will this new norm of working remotely simply become the long term solution?

I interviewed a number of SaaS Chief Revenue Officers on the topic to get their take:

Bas Nijer - Chief Revenue Officer - Irius Risk (always fully remote)

Mark Truman - Chief Revenue Office - EdgePetrol (previously mainly office based)

Tom Price-Daniel - Chief Revenue Officer - Headstart (working remotely for a year)

Reg Agyeman - Chief Revenue Officer - StoryShare Learn (previously fully office based)

Mark Colgan - Chief Revenue Office - TaskDrive (always fully remote)

The first topic we discussed was whether before becoming a remote sales team, did they have any specific concerns about not having sales people in the office? The responses were largely positive in the sense it was less a lack of trust, and more based around motivation which was some of the initial concerns faced. But that pleasingly, in some instances these concerns were quickly dispelled:

MT: “I think the biggest thing on my mind was around sales team morale and maintaining that camaraderie. Are they still going to be engaged and enjoy the job? I’m impressed by how they’ve risen to the challenge though.”

TPD: “I didn’t have any of the typical concerns you would have about sales team productivity. At the end of the day, even if your reps are based in the office - does that mean they are being fully productive? The only concerns I had was ensuring the culture of the team was kept alive. We put a lot of thought into it from a process and tools perspective before we went fully remote to make sure we were well setup.”

On the flip-side, there was acknowledgment that the move to remote does have its downsides when it comes to adapting to change:

RA: "I think for some of the team, it has been tricky to adapt. Getting in the psyche of not walking out of the house in the morning to go and meet someone face-to-face, to instead doing it on a video call is challenging for some. Some people crave that in-person contact."

MC: "The one thing I feel you would miss is the knowledge sharing. The type of information you soak up in the office around objection handling, or even de-briefing a call. That becomes a bit lost. So you need to ensure you have your play-books up to date and battlecards shared."

MT: “The impact was actually on the customer side versus the sales team. We sell to quite a traditional industry, where so many of our opportunities require face to face meetings. Getting our customers to switch to having the entire sales process on Zoom was challenging in some parts.”

On the subject of sales productivity, it was put to the CRO’s about whether having a remote sales team has had either a positive or negative impact. Again, the response was largely a positive one:

BN: “I think people actually end up working harder at home. They often end up working longer hours and just seem to ‘get on with it’. There is a downside to this though. Working later into the evenings, and not knowing when to take a break. That’s a discipline everyone needs to work on.”

MT: “I feel like they are actually more productive. I hear from them more and even late in the evenings, and given whats happening in the World right now, work is a positive distraction. Whats tougher to decipher right now is the long term impact on Sales productivity, mainly because a lot of our customers are fighting fires right now, versus engaging with us”

TPD: “We saw a dramatic improvement in productivity. We moved to become a business purely based on outcomes. As a result, people focused more on their jobs. It also meant that people could focus on their personal lives too as there wasn’t such a big focus on WHEN you do your work. We saw an increase in meetings booked, pipelines, and revenue.”

But with an isolated and more cut-off team, there are a new set of challenges facing Sales Leaders in ensuring that the team are properly supported, motivated, and coached. I asked the CRO’s the steps they took to addressing this:

PA: “I traditionally haven’t been a massive Slack user historically, but I have embraced it more recently versus increasing the ‘Zoom Fatigue’ we are all facing. There's also much more empathy which is required to understand how the team are coping outside of work in their personal lives. It’s also not the time to beat people up about quota attainment. Part of what’s important right now, is just building relationships with our buyers.”

MC: “We do a lot of role-play still online and try and do these things first thing in the morning. These are a great coaching mechanism, and key is to make sure the reps aren’t making the same mistakes every time.”

One of the big concerns facing Sales Leadership, is visibility into team performance and effectiveness. The question is whether having a remote sales team would make this more challenging:

TPD: “It’s all about the operating model. If you have the right tools and processes in place, you get all the visibility you need. We’ve actually improved on this front since going remote. This really is no different to being in an office where the ‘perception’ of sales activity is sometimes a bit false, as it doesn’t correspond to outcomes.”

PA: “Theres definitely been a change. I’ve never really been one for religiously tracking metrics like ‘numbers of calls’ etc. One of the major things which I’m looking to track now is the quality of dialogue happening between sellers and buyers”

I then queried whether the move to a remote sales workforce has threw up any specific benefits for the Revenue Leaders, of which there were many. In particular, how the more flexible locality of a company brings strong advantages to hiring talent:

PA: “Moving forward, I think access to sales talent is going to be a key benefit here. It enables us to throw the net open to truly find the best person for the job, versus being restricted by their location.”

MC: “You really manage to hire from a greater sized pool. Another benefit with that is you can hire great sales people on a lower base salary versus a premium London expectation.”

Other benefits included getting a handle of important tasks which typically get put-off with office distractions:

MT: “We’ve been able to cover off some tasks which have been on the ‘to-do’ list for a long time, and which always seem to get pushed to the side in the fast paced world of office sales. For example, we’ve built our Sales Playbook in a week...something which has been outstanding for months.”

One other theme was the benefits working from home brings to a better Work v Life balance:

TPD: “Personally, its helped me spend more time with my family. Sure, you don’t get the chance to go out for beers with the team so much. But the flexibility it gives in your personal life is huge.”

Moving the conversation forward, I discussed with the CRO’s the economic impact that the Covid 19 pandemic has caused, and what advice they can share to Sales Leaders who are leading remote sales teams in tough conditions:

BN: “In every downturn, there are winners and losers. Focus your team on the areas and sectors which are booming. But don’t forget the relationships you have with customers, particularly those who are having a tough time of it right now. This is a time to show true partnering, and is the route to longer term relationships. If they’ve been a good customer to you, then make sure you pay it back”

MT: “I’ve only really ever sold in recessions, so this is kind of my environment. There’s less sales people in a downturn, and so there’s more opportunity for sales people to go out and succeed Also, all of the markets we sell to (more traditional companies), are going to need to change and adapt to the digital world. So as a SaaS company, it really plays into our hands.”

MC: “Key is to focus on your pipeline and nurture existing deals. They may not be ready to close yet, but key is building on those relationships and delivering valuable content in order to stay top of mind. You also don’t need to be the one who is creating the content...share other relevant content which will be helpful for your prospects. Prospects are genuinely more accessible now to talk on the phone too.”

Finally, what does the long term future look like for remote sales teams? Will this become the ‘new norm’, and how has working remotely changed the desires for this new norm in their future careers?

BN: “It will never be the same again and I think this is what will become much more prevalent. I think a lot of companies will see that the World doesn’t stop if you have remote working.”

TPD: “For me, I would never do another role which didn’t allow me to work remotely most of the time. Working remotely has far too many benefits. And I think many companies now will be realising that too. The challenge is just ensuring that they consider their operating model to make their company appropriate for being remote, versus just replicating what they did in the office environment.”

PA: “From a sales perspective, working remotely may be something I propose in our company longer term. If I believe that we can perform as effectively (which I think we can) working from home, then why not? You then look at reducing all of the allowances, overheads, and levels of stress to a certain extent. It starts to make a lot of sense.”

MT: “I think it will become more of the norm, but with the industry we sell to - I don’t think it will ever become completely remote. Customers will still want to meet face-to-face.

On a personal level, I enjoy working from home, but I also like being in the office. But the people you hire may expect it, and if they have the skills and experience to succeed then you shouldn’t care where they work.”

MC: “There are some challenges with being fully remote personally. For example, if I was in an office with colleagues, it would make it easier to align sales and marketing.

There’s two key things here: the sales team and the customer.

If you have a large team of outbound SDR’s who thrive off the team mentality, then theres definitely a lot of value of being together in the office. For other sales teams, this is perhaps less important

If working remotely becomes more of the norm, it's also going to be very difficult to reach prospects by phone or even by email. There's going to need a big shift in understanding how we best catch and engage with prospects as there will be no way to know where they are or on what time."