Adjusting to remote work is hard, but adjusting to remote managing can be even harder. You’re supporting not only yourself through this temporary transition but your team as well.
Your team needs a manager and a coach now more than ever. Although you aren’t getting face-to-face time with your team every day, there are still a number of remote coaching activities that you can put in place to help your team succeed until temporary remote working policies are lifted.
COACHING REMOTE
Remote work requires you to adjust your management style to fit the new situation, just as your reps will have to adjust their selling behaviors and methods. Use these six tips to effectively coach your remote team to hit your quarterly goals no matter where your team is working from.
1. Connect through alternative mediums for communications
A recent Buffer study of 1,900 remote workers around the world found that 21% of respondents said their biggest struggle with remote work was loneliness. Loneliness is linked not only to lowered productivity but higher mortality rates as well, so it’s important that your team feels connected. As a manager and coach, position yourself as a listening ear to your reps so they can get their feelings of isolation during this challenging time.
One way to do this is through video communications such as Zoom or GoToMeeting. Virtual meetings allow reps to see each other’s faces, reducing isolation and encouraging connectivity and teamwork even in this temporary remote situation.
2. Keep up with regular team meetings
Besides reducing loneliness, team meetings also serve as valuable teaching moments for your entire team (even you!). Regular team meetings provide valuable moments for reps to learn from each other.
Have your reps take turns sharing how they have been dealing with the transition on their calls, examine what’s working and what’s not, and deploy these ideas across your team. Team meetings also help keep up morale and maintain a sense of normalcy, which will help your team’s productivity in the long run.
3. Set clear expectations
When it comes to remote work, especially if it’s temporary, it is more important than ever to set clear expectations and goals for your reps. This ensures they know what they should be doing every day to hit their productivity and quota goals.
One simple way to do this is by using LevelEleven Performance Scorecards. Get your team focused on the behaviors that drive revenue, customer experience, and business results by identifying the behaviors that lead to success for your team on your Performance Scorecards.
Your reps can see what they need to be doing to hit their goals right from their Salesforce homepage, making it impossible for goals or expectations to be missed.
4. Be consistent
With temporary remote work, it is important for a manager to stay consistent for their team. Keep regularly scheduled sessions such as weekly team meetings or coaching sessions on the calendar and conduct them remotely. This helps foster a sense of normalcy in these uncertain times, helping your team stay focused and sure of themselves and the team.
Additionally, consider adding daily, remote check-ins. These can be with the entire team, or one-on-one. They only have to be 5-10 minutes in length and can be over the phone, video conferencing, or even in a shared doc.
Check-in with your reps, ask them how they’re doing. Ask what’s working and what isn’t. These short moments of connection replace the in-person office chatter and on the fly coaching moments that temporary remote work would normally take away.
5. Use coaching templates
Making time for coaching is one thing but making sure the coaching sessions are productive is a whole different story. Keep you and your reps on track during coaching sessions with coaching templates.
Coaching templates contain pre-determined questions that reps and managers are able to fill out separately before the session. This way, a manager knows what the rep wants to discuss beforehand and vice versa, helping everyone come more prepared. Coaching templates help save time and steer coaching discussions which can help normalize the process, making this temporary situation more comfortable for everyone.
6. Invest in coaching technology
A good coach does all of the above, a great coach knows that there are solutions out there to make coaching, whether in-person or remote, more effective. Coaching technologies such as LevelEleven ensure sales coaching is done consistently with actionable feedback so that you can develop your team no matter where they’re working from.
Although this is a temporary situation, in the meantime, you have to do everything you can to be the best remote manager and coach for your newly remote team. Using the six tips to effectively coach your remote team above, you can easily adjust your coaching and management style.
