Making sales have always been one of the most challenging parts of business. While firm handshakes and eye contact make it easier to build long-term relationships with prospects, physical meetings are becoming rare. People are becoming more inclined to carrying out their daily functions remotely, right from wherever they choose. Also, 2020 has resulted in a lot of people being confined to their homes.
Remote selling is the new normal. It won't go away any time soon. It's now becoming a requirement for many businesses. While many things could go wrong, you can take several steps to boost your productivity.
Here are the three basic strategies for efficient remote selling:
Field salespeople usually meet in coffee houses or sports clubs to network and build relationships. As a remote salesperson, you don't have to neglect your relationships because you work from anywhere you please. The best way to do this is to take your relationships online, via social media.
So how do you start? First, you need to connect with your prospects and associates on social media platforms. LinkedIn has always been a great option for building remarkable professional relationships. However, this doesn't mean that you should ignore other platforms, such as Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram. They can also be crucial in connecting with people in your industry.
Once you've sent a friend or connection request, you can like and share their business-related posts. This can give you a good footing to begin a friendly conversation. You can ask for feedback on your posts. You can do this by making sure you share meaningful and helpful content on your platform.
If you think one of your posts will help a certain person, you can share it with them personally in their inbox. Also, tagging them on the post is a great way to get them involved. Make sure you don't go overboard with this as it will be considered spamming and can affect you negatively.
When in the field as a salesperson, physical meetings are the order of the day. However, now that you're remote selling, how do you handle your meetings? Technology has made this easier via video conferencing.
While hosting a video conference, various things are not in your control. Your client’s Internet connection may be unstable, or they could be in a noisy environment. However, there are a few tools you can use to improve the quality of your virtual meetings. They include:
Remember you should be in a quiet place. Also, make sure you prepare well for the meeting. You may visit sites like Winning By Design to learn how you can set up your remote selling work environment and learn more about how to be successful in remote selling. Websites like these provide a wide variety of courses about remote selling – from teaching you how to benchmark to implementing strategies to help you stand out from the competition.
You need the right set of tools to be effective and efficient in your remote selling. The right tools can even boost your productivity.
Before you select certain software to use in your work, you need to evaluate which of your work activities are redundant. For example, suppose your to-do list is all over. In that case, you can explore and implement a scheduling software that automates the scheduling process and manages your appointments.
When you recognize which area of your business requires automation, you can then explore various software solutions to find the most suitable. This is because each software solution in the market offers different functions.
One of the most overlooked solutions for remote selling is CRM software. CRM software will be efficient in your remote selling because you'll most probably handle multiple clients in between multiple deals. It gives an insight into every deal and every client, hence, keeping everyone on the same page. You don't want to be in a deal where every party has a different version of updates.
As a business owner, you should know the significance of remote selling now that the world is changing. There are a few tips you can use to ensure you have a seamless remote selling experience. Make sure you don't neglect building relationships on various social media platforms, use the right tools, and also ensure you host great virtual meetings.