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6 Tips For Allowing Your Sales Team to Work Remotely

Thinking about moving your sales team to remote work? This can be an intimidating process, as you may not know what to expect, and the move itself can be quite risky. That’s why we’ve put together this helpful list of six tips for allowing your sales team to work remotely. We’ll cover everything from tracking their time for more accurate payments and client invoices to making them feel valued. Keep reading to learn more about how you can make this process work for your business!

 

Track Time

Using a time tracking app to ensure your employees are actually working when they say they are helps ensure you’re invoicing clients accurately and paying employees what they’ve earned. Clients will appreciate more accurate invoices, and your business wallet will appreciate more accurate pay-outs.

While you should be able to expect your employees to be honest about their time clocks, not everyone is always honest. The temptation to earn just a bit more money by falsifying time punches can be pretty appealing, even to the best of employees.

This way, no one is tempted to cheat, and everyone is happier. Clients and employees alike will benefit from a time tracking app, but most of all, you’ll benefit. There’s no easier way to keep track of your remote workers’ hours, and it certainly beats paper time cards and tracking down reports from your workers!

Time tracking apps are available on the web for affordable prices, and some are even free. The best time tracking apps are used by some of the biggest businesses in the world to ensure they’re maximizing their employees’ productivity and minimizing unwanted expenses.

 

Clear Expectations

Setting clear expectations is the most important aspect of running a successful remote team. If your team doesn’t know what you or the clients expect from them, you can’t exactly expect them to perform at your standards. You’ll want to be explicit with your deadlines, project requirements, hourly pay rates, and so on. The clearer you are, the less confusion there will be, and the less room for argument on the side of the remote worker.

While setting expectations is key to any successful team, it’s especially important with remote teams since you won’t be able to directly oversee their work in-person. It’s a good idea to send out an expectations email before a project to act as a sort of receipt for your guidelines. That way, no one can say “I didn’t know what you wanted!” when a project isn’t done correctly.

 

Stay in Touch

Staying in touch is a must with a remote team. If you don’t stay in frequent contact, you won’t know what’s going on or what progress they’ve made on the project(s). Use video conferencing or even online meeting software (like Vast Conference at conferencecalling.com) to meet with your remote workers every week. It’s good to get a status update weekly, so you know if deadlines will be reached or requirements need to be changed.

If you need something a little more in-depth, you can use project management software to ensure projects are on track. This useful tool will allow you to assign projects, set deadlines, and provides a cloud platform to save work on. You’ll also get access to a “home base” page, where you can communicate directly with team members. Since it’s web-based, it will be accessible from anywhere in the world.

 

Provide the Right Tools

As with any job, it’s up to you to provide your employees with the tools they need to succeed. If they’re lacking the tools to do the job remotely, you’ll want to either help them acquire said tools or provide them yourself. Obviously, you’re not expected to purchase a web designer their own laptop, but maybe you can let them borrow a company-issued laptop for the duration of their remote work.

 

Make them Feel Valued

It can be easy to forget that remote workers are part of your organization when you don’t see them in the office every day, but it’s important to remember to make them feel like a valued member of the team. If you’re hosting any company-sponsored events or competitions, be sure to include your remote workers as well.

Don’t forget to praise good work when you see it. Remote and in-house workers alike will feel good when their work is appreciated, and a little praise can go a long way in terms of motivation.

 

Test the Concept

It’s best to start out remote work with just a few employees at first. Test the waters, see what works and what doesn’t, and go from there. You don’t want to throw a large percentage of your workforce into the remote work sector, only to find that it doesn’t work for you!

The best way to learn is through trial and error, but following these six tips will help you avoid some of that error altogether. Be open and communicate well with remote workers, and be sure to track their time for maximum accuracy!


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