Utilize the Full Potential of Your CRM System and Maximize Your Remote Sales Team's Performance

While initially, some companies used the ability to work from home as a perk, as adopting a remote work approach has proven to have overwhelming benefits, in recent years, it has become the norm for many businesses. However, running a remote team does come with its own challenges, and for some businesses, the thought of managing remote teams can seem daunting. The good news is that, with tools such as a CRM system, adapting to a virtual office and organizing and managing a remote team can be made significantly easier.

What are the benefits of remote teams?

The benefits of remote work are endless, and they can be hard to find in one place. Let us take a look at four great reasons why this may be your best option for company culture, increased productivity as well improve your sales pipeline:

Cut down on the costs

One of the most obvious benefits of remote working is the fact that without the need for an office space and travel expenses, both the employees and employers can save money. It also minimizes the costs of dining out with clients for meetings, providing office food and drinks, among other everyday expenses.

While without the need for a physical workspace the costs are drastically minimized, you need to be prepared to pay for different expenses when setting up a remote team, including home office equipment, software, and other necessary tools. However, these will always come to significantly less than the expenses of an in-office team.

Increased productivity

Meetings can be expensive, time-consuming, and inconvenient. Virtual meetings allow you to save money by not traveling for work or otherwise being productive during office hours when no one is around! The more productive your sales team becomes - the better chance they have at closing deals with potential clients; improving strategies and processes in order to find new opportunities as well as perfecting their pitch on everything from prospects to proposals themselves too.

Expand internationally

Remote selling gives sales teams the ability to pitch to prospects worldwide, giving businesses the ability to tap into international markets. Without the need to fly, expanding Internationally, becomes accessible and affordable for businesses of all sizes. All you need are a good internet connection and an understanding of time zones.

Motivate your remote sales team

Remote work is seen as a perk for a lot of employees, so adopting a remote approach can boost morale and inspire your sales reps. Remote work gives employees a sense of autonomy, which can make them feel motivated and, in turn, can result in positive sales results. Along with the feeling of autonomy, it provides employees with more flexibility to choose their own schedule or to work around family commitments, which means they are more encouraged and therefore more productive. Plus, remote workers are often happy to work later if needed or start earlier without the need for the long commute home.

Benefits of using CRM software to manage your remote sales team

While it is evident that there are overwhelming benefits of running a remote team, there are still some challenges. One of the most obvious is the physical separation that exists between team members. However, most of these challenges can be overcome through good management and implementing the right tools that your team can access despite their physical location. One of the most important is a CRM platform. CRM tools like Inperium Sell help businesses improve their sales team productivity.

Inperium Sell is an intelligence-driven cloud-based CRM platform that provides unparalleled flexibility with endless integration potential for limitless growth within your organization or outside of it as well! It’s a truly flexible CRM platform that delivers unparalleled ease of use and is quick to set up. With Inperium Sell, your remote sales teams can close more deals faster and generate higher revenue. Your business can finally stay ahead by expanding its horizons and trying out this powerful software that will change how you operate in every aspect such as:

• advanced quoting;
• integrated invoicing;
• bi-directional email syncing;
• guided selling, advanced filtering, and much more.

Here are four practical ways to manage your remote sales team effectively based on implementing one of the benefits.

Manage your communication from a single place

Communication is one of the most important aspects of the sales process; not only do you need to be able to reach out to leads but following up with prospects is vital to closing deals. If you rely on various software and communication channels, things can get lost, causing missed opportunities. Having a CRM platform keeps all communications in one central location, you are able to contact your customers via email, phone, text, and even WhatsApp. Plus, you can keep all these transcripts in one place, making it easy for any of your team members to access any information they may need and avoid any overlap between team members contacting the same lead.

Provide an overview of your sales pipeline

A static view of your sales processes can be limited, and difficult to understand a holistic view, which is why introducing a CRM platform is important. CRMs can give you a 360-degree view of the sales cycle and provide access to real-time metrics in one easy-to-view dashboard. A CRM platform offers a complete overview of what deals are in your sales pipeline, making it easier to track and manage each one. This will help your team stay on top of their quotas, and it will give insight into what deals should be prioritized, what actions need to be taken next, and provide an overview of your revenue and forecast. Along with being able to keep track of performance, CRMs also make it easier to tweak processes and improve based on live results.

Streamline processes

With seamless processes, CRM platforms help teams to increase productivity by eliminating redundant manual tasks through automation. Allowing the team to save the time spent on repetitive tasks such as data entry, creating invoices, and sending out follow-up emails, meaning they can spend more time answering customer queries, closing deals, and more. Along with streamlining the payment processes, it also means all the invoices and important documents are kept in this centralized hub with the sales information, making it easier to access when the sales team is processing renewals, upsells, and cross-sells.

Provide key insights

Centralising customer and process data will provide key insights that can translate this into meaningful actions that can be beneficial for all users and business leaders. With real-time data being constantly available, timely, informed decisions can be made, enabling organizations to operate at optimum productivity. CRMs can help organizations adopt a data-driven approach rather than relying on gut decisions which ultimately can help to improve the overall sales strategy. For the sales team, this will be sales reports, forecasts, and cash flow, and for marketing, this will be how many leads are attracted to campaigns as well as looking at conversation rate. These key insights are incredibly valuable for businesses to stay on track with their revenue goals.

Best practices when implementing CRM software

While it is evident that a CRM can improve business operations, it will only get you so far if you are not using it to its full potential. In order to make sure that your CRM solution is effective, it is important to know CRMs best practices. Here are seven tips to help you get the most out of your CRM solution.

Implement data management processes

A CRM system is not going to clean up your data for you, so to ensure that your data is stored correctly, you need to create rules and processes on how it is collected and maintained. Consistent and detailed data management can help you optimize search functions, improve data analysis, and ensure that there are no double-ups in data entries. By creating clearly defined data management processes, you can streamline the capture of data and ensure that your business has accurate and detailed records for your sales and marketing teams.

Set up reminders for important activities

As you are not able to see what your remote team is doing on a day-to-day basis, you need to find other ways to keep them on track with their workload and to encourage a proactive approach. A great way to do this is by setting up notifications and emails for key activities. A CRM platform’s notification system is designed to keep your team on track, improve productivity and ensure that you do not lose any opportunities. Using it to its full potential can keep your team up to date on important deals, notify them of scheduled meetings, as well as tell them when to follow up with prospects and customers.

Integrate your CRM system with other tools

Sales CRM software is a central hub that stores all the important customer data, so ensure that you are capturing all possible leads, data, and customer information, you should consider integrating it with other tools you are using. Integration not only helps you capture as much information as possible but can also help with minimizing manual data entry. CRM systems can be integrated with everything from calendars, forms, landing pages, email platforms, social media platforms, email, project management software, and more.

Conclusion

While it may seem challenging to manage staff members who are located in different countries and time zones, CRM platforms are allowing you to adapt your processes making those barriers almost non-existent. CRM software is an amazing technology for remote teams and Inperium Sell is perfect for startup entrepreneurs and companies of all sizes, which offers flexible pricing plans that can be tailored to your needs with no hidden fees or unexpected costs. Pricing starts at just $29 per month! By following these CRM best practices, you can ensure that you optimize your processes, take advantage of data as well as equip your staff with the knowledge to thrive in the remote environment.