How to Solve the WFH Sales Management Challenge

Right now, a lot of sales leaders are worried about how to keep reps motivated, productive, and engaged while work-from-home (WFH) policies are in place. In fact, a better way to put it might be that a lot of sales leaders are panicking right now about how to manage their sales teams. 

Working remotely caught these leaders off guard, and they’re not sure what to do. I’ve even seen conversations on LinkedIn about sales managers who want to install cameras to monitor sales reps making calls from home during the day. 

Let me tell you, remote monitoring is not the path to successful sales management. If you want your salespeople to stay motivated, engaged, and productive, you need to set them up to do what they love – sell. 

The Link between Motivation and Sales Productivity

What’s the link between motivation and productivity? Think about it this way: Reps disengage when they don’t spend enough of their time productively, right? Spending their time productively means having sales conversations with qualified prospects. Ergo, having lots of sales conversations raises productivity and boosts motivation and engagement among your team. 

Rep engagement is the unsolved problem of WFH sales management. To solve it, you need two things: 1) trust in the people you hired and 2) the right tools. 

Our own data shows that, during social distancing, the number of dials salespeople make using ConnectAndSell has actually increased. And those dials are actually leading to conversations – the conversation-to-meeting metric has jumped by 38 percent! 

Why a WFH Sales Culture Is the Future of Selling 

Revolutions come in many forms. As a leader, you need to embrace a WFH culture now. 

A fully WFH sales team can comfortably take a month of conversations with decision makers a compress that into a single day. This is kind of like discovering that your commute to “work” can be 20 steps from kitchen to office rather than a frustrating hour sitting in a metal box on wheels on a so-called “freeway.” 

Even for an atypical creature such as myself, as CEO of ConnectAndSell, this WFH/efficiency revolution in the past 60 days has reduced my work days. One, I’ve eliminated travel (saving an average of 20 hours per week). Two, I knock off at 5pm every day so both my fiance and I can get our butts out of our chairs and our eyes into the sunshine for a couple-hour walk (10 hours a week). 

That’s 30 hours per week I get back in my life to relate to family, friends, and fun (and sometimes even sleep). And I love and enjoy my work. 

Life and work can evolve together by eliminating outdated traditions. We have worshipped the factory model for too long.