Inside Sales Telesales Tips Blog

Working remotely: 4 factors for predictable success

  

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This week’s dilemma was posed by a colleague, who is trying to make a decision whether or not to hire a lead qualifying inside sales person to work from his home. Many remote workers have been in my inside sales training courses, and three in particular have been remarkable reps who excelled working at home. 

But here’s the situation my colleague is facing. The proposed individual is making a career change, and although fielding inbound customer support calls, has never made outbound calls to qualify leads. My frank appraisal of the situation was that it had a good chance of being unsuccessful. With so many workers wanting to work remotely today, this concept is on the table for thousands of companies. Here are four factors that should be taken into consideration when determining if a remote inside rep has a predictable opportunity to be successful: 

Factors for success 

1) A proven track record for success in the exact same job. The rep should always have attained or overachieved quota in an office environment, performing the same task he or she did successfully in an office. If this isn’t the case, questions will invariably arise if the remote rep isn’t meeting quota, and frankly no one will know, through actual observation, if the rep is suited for the job, because there isn’t any past performance data. 

2) Meaningful KPIs (key performance indicators). Judging success by dials alone doesn’t get the job done. If the number of dials is the only KPI, then voicemails left will contribute to the number. Actual conversations, demonstrations, etc., are activities that accelerate the sales process, but voicemails don’t. For more on building your own meaningful sales-oriented KPIs, read by blog post on how to build them effectively. 

3) Ongoing, timely two-way communication between the worker and critical contacts at the home office. Because they are not working side-by-side with management and co-workers, remote reps need to have questions handled accurately and instantaneously. In one instance with which I’m familiar, a remote worker saw an immediate need to change her comp plan which, when originally developed, was hazy. Week after week, she called and emailed the home office, and she was ignored. She soon stopped asking anything, and her motivation and production dropped precipitously. For less-experienced remote workers, an active mentoring or coaching plan must be established on a periodic basis. Depending on the rep, it might be weekly, or even daily. 

4) The worker has to be extremely self-motivated to make cold calls. That means everything from creating set hours in which nothing impedes calling to understanding that Marketing may not always provide enough leads for the pipeline. Successful reps working together in offices tend to get creative together, developing their own plans and sharing them with their colleagues. Lots of issues are solved over lunch, at the water cooler, or in informal discussions in cubes, where team communication can take place actively. And that relates to issue #1 (above), because creative problem-solving is always the mark of a successful inside sales or qualification rep. 

I mentioned that there are several inside sales reps I know that are high-achievers working from home. They all either have a tough commute (in one case, thousands of miles) or are parents dealing with getting their children to and from school. But they all share the traits of being extremely motivated, set hard-and-fast work schedules, exceed quota, and have ongoing, frequent conversations with key individuals to whom they report or need to interact with (e.g. pre-sales tech support) on a timely basis. And they all proved their competence first in an office environment. 

So if you’re looking to hire a remote rep, convert a rep from office to remote, or if you’re an inside rep looking to change to a remote setting, take a look at those four factors, and objectively see if it’s a good fit. And add 4 Factors for Remote Success to your Best Management Playbook.