How to keep track of remote salespeople?

[poseidn]

How would you recommend to keep track of a remote salesperson? I.e attending of appointments, calling of warm leads given etc.

Don't want to be the weird micromanager but at the same time want to have a good grip on what's going on.

Job role right now is to attend booked sales calls and call up warm-leads we have.

How would you guys recommend going about this? I've thought about:
- having a dialer in the CRM which they must use (Can see which #'s have been called)
- Post-appt reports (check-in essentially)

Would also be handy if there was some calendar scheduling tool (like calendly) that i can see, so i can see what goes onto their calendar

 

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[TheKingOfMadrid]

Maybe not helpful in your situation but, trust.

You could fire half the staff of almost any company and they would run fine. What you need to do is lead from the front, make your values clear and see if the results match.

My experience of remote view tools and keeping tabs on staff is that they feel compelled to work rather than wanting to and they will not trust your leadership in the same way as if you dominated every day and expected the same from them.

You want elite marines, not an army.

I get that this sounds archaic in today's world of tools and gadgets and data analysis but I've seen this work to great effect.

If I have to rely on something I usually just use Confluence but a simple Kanban will suffice.

 

[alexkuzmov]

How would you recommend to keep track of a remote salesperson? I.e attending of appointments, calling of warm leads given etc.

Don't want to be the weird micromanager but at the same time want to have a good grip on what's going on.

Job role right now is to attend booked sales calls and call up warm-leads we have.

How would you guys recommend going about this? I've thought about:
- having a dialer in the CRM which they must use (Can see which #'s have been called)
- Post-appt reports (check-in essentially)

Would also be handy if there was some calendar scheduling tool (like calendly) that i can see, so i can see what goes onto their calendar

Thats kind of a silly question.
Sales people are the easiest to track.
You just gotta know who brought which client and thats it.
You track them with your revenue statistic, all else is meaningless.

 

[poseidn]

Thats kind of a silly question.
Sales people are the easiest to track.
You just gotta know who brought which client and thats it.
You track them with your revenue statistic, all else is meaningless.

not really, ramp up time for new reps + deal cycle = might take a few months for a new rep to close a deal depending on lead/appt volume. I'm not interested in their sales closing %'s in short-term, i'm interested in their activity rate. As long as i have a few guys who are doing everything they should be doing i'm happy as i can train them.

 

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[poseidn]

Maybe not helpful in your situation but, trust.

You could fire half the staff of almost any company and they would run fine. What you need to do is lead from the front, make your values clear and see if the results match.

My experience of remote view tools and keeping tabs on staff is that they feel compelled to work rather than wanting to and they will not trust your leadership in the same way as if you dominated every day and expected the same from them.

You want elite marines, not an army.

I get that this sounds archaic in today's world of tools and gadgets and data analysis but I've seen this work to great effect.

If I have to rely on something I usually just use Confluence but a simple Kanban will suffice.

yeah i see what you mean and i would like to be that way but i don't know if its as easy to do for remote salespeople that are commission based (no base salary) - if i give X person say 10 fresh hot leads from an ad campaign (that have cost me money), he might call 5 of them then not do the rest? That means i lose 5*lead cost. the biggest issue is because they don't work for me full-time

I completely understand its in their best interest to call all the leads i give them (they make more $..) but i know being in sales myself that a lot of salespeople are lazy and may not use the full resources at their disposal.

I was thinking salespeople have to 'claim' the lead in slack OR they have to add activities in the CRM so i can keep track of it all, and if they dont add activities i ping them a msg and ask them to do so

 

[Johnny boy]

Explain your sales process including CRM's and how new leads find and contact you in the first place.

When I had someone doing sales for me I simply had access to the same stuff they had and I'd say "give ___ a quote they've been ignored for a day".

We simply ran fb ads and it would start a messenger discussion with us and both of us were on the account so we could both see the conversations.

I would set up a system that has one big feature: I can SEE everything that happens, whenever I want. Let the salesperson know this, and set expectations on how often you'll be on their a$$ depending on how they are interacting with the leads. "If you are leaving these people hanging, I will be a dick. If you respond promptly and follow up with leads, you'll rarely hear from me. Sound fair?"