How can your sales team overcome the challenges of remote selling?

When working with sales teams, we have encountered the common statement, “More and more prospects want to meet virtually, and that’s harder for me.” However, from our experience we have identified two interpretations of this statement: 

1. If sales are down because your clients are struggling with the current economic challenges themselves and are therefore holding onto their cash, this could be the route of the problem. 
2. But if the reason is purely because ‘selling over Zoom/Teams isn’t as effective’, then there may be underlying issues. 

Often, when we delve deeper into this issue, we uncover more fundamental problems that were already present but have now been exposed by Zoom and online selling. Such as: 

• Over-reliance on a conversational style of selling that is dependent on the face-to-face environment. 
• Preferred style is an informal chat over coffee and a ‘please like me‘ style of selling. 
• Lack of a value proposition that they is unable to be explained to the prospect who is in front of them 
• Lack of high-quality sales materials to support them – presentations, video, research, case studies, stories, testimonials, and references, etc. 

How can your value proposition support your sales function? 

A value proposition should be an elevator pitch that is relevant to each prospect being engaged with. It should match their buying criteria and be supported by proof from other customers who are just like them.  

When we work with High performing sales teams using Zoom/teams these businesses typically display the following: 

• A Structured sales process that delivers results and builds confidence, 
• Relevant propositions prepared for each target audience, 
• Ability to screenshare in the first meeting and present with quality materials and cover what would normally be done in the second meeting, resulting in quicker lead times, 
• Ability to do more meetings in a day given there’s no travel time, 
• Better research ahead of each Zoom call to make the sales deck even more relevant, 
• Planning time to pre-arrange the likely case studies, stories, examples, and demos that they may want to quickly dive into during the call, 
• Employing better targeting and pre-qualification rather than relying on the old ‘spray and pray’ approach to sales, 
• Listening more than they talk, even when on Zoom, 
• Focusing quality time on upsell and cross-sell with existing clients rather than just trawling through cold prospects, 
• Asking clients for referrals. 

The remote selling environment can pose a challenge for many privately owned businesses, but there is no reason why sales teams cannot adapt to increasingly virtual world.  

What’s next? 

If you want to stress test your sales process, or develop a new one, we've designed a workshop that will create your own High Growth, high performance plan.