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Summary:
- Virtual teams have members who work remotely. Sales is a great industry for remote teams, since most tasks are accomplished using telephones or computers anyway.
- The biggest challenges remote teams face have to do with communication.
- PhoneBurner comes with numerous features that help remote sales teams succeed. These include live leaderboards to track progress and encourage healthy competition, live coaching and monitoring, lead distribution tools, and integrations with virtual sales floor software like CallBlitz.
- Advantages for remote sales teams include increased productivity and lower operating costs, while disadvantages tend to focus on communication challenges. The right tools are critical for overcoming these obstacles.
- In addition to using PhoneBurner, remote sales teams can benefit from instant messaging apps, project management platforms, cloud storage services, privacy and security software, and more.
Managing an effective virtual sales team comes with unique challenges—but the right tools can help you solve them.
In this post, we address the biggest hurdles when working with a virtual team and show you how to overcome them using the features included with our power dialer, as well as other useful software.
Let's get started.
How PhoneBurner Helps Remote Teams
PhoneBurner has several features that can help remote sales teams stay as focused and productive as they would be in an office environment. These include:
Live Leaderboards
These leaderboards continually refresh to let you know how team members are performing. You can select which metrics you’d like to display. Live leaderboards can be shared via a weblink and are often highly motivational since they encourage healthy competition amongst dispersed team members. They can also be used by administrators to provide a real-time view of team performance—even when all the members are in different locations.
Related: PhoneBurner is Great for Teams: Group Accounts
Lead Distribution via Leadstream
PhoneBurner’s Leadstream feature makes it easy to deliver leads to active agents without time-consuming manual efforts. Shared lead pools and custom delivery rules ensure leads are distributed efficiently to the right team members, while reducing the risk that leads go cold while waiting to be worked by your team. It’s the perfect tool to improve speed-to-lead, and maximize lead ROI.
Live Call Monitoring & Coaching
PhoneBurner’s Live Calls dashboard gives you a real-time snapshot of your distributed team. See who is active, who isn’t, and the status of live calls along with the ability to Listen, Whisper, and Barge.
Our comprehensive call monitoring and coaching tools make it easy to observe the performance of individual remote agents in real-time and provide support immediately when required. Here’s how they work:
- Listen-In lets you join a call in progress without being heard by the agent or the prospect. This is an excellent way to check in on your team and see where they excel vs. where they can benefit from support.
- Whisper allows you to communicate with your agent during the call in a way that the prospect cannot hear. This makes it possible to coach remote reps as a call is taking place.
- Barge allows you to join the call so that all parties can hear you. This can be useful in situations that need to be escalated or defused urgently.
Learn More: Call Coaching and Monitoring: How to Improve Agent Performance with Listen-in, Whisper, & Barge
Virtual Sales Floor with CallBlitz
PhoneBurner’s seamless integration with CallBlitz makes it easy to launch live dial sessions with your whole remote team. Combining our leading dialing tools with cutting-edge virtual sales floor technology allows teams to collaborate without interrupting live conversations. Sales managers gain valuable coaching opportunities and analytics to drive leadership decisions, while team members make calls in a more fun and engaging environment. Holding these sessions adds a social element to remote sales work, while providing countless opportunities for improved performance.
Learn More about PhoneBurner’s CallBlitz Integration
Now that you’ve seen how PhoneBurner can help your virtual sales team succeed, let’s examine the pros and cons of taking your team remote and look at some other tools that can make the process easier.
The Benefits of Working with a Virtual Team
There are plenty of benefits to working with a distributed team—but the most valuable are as follows:
No Location Restrictions on Talent
When proximity to your office isn’t a deciding factor, you can hire based on talent alone. This means that you can hire the best people across the globe.
Increased Productivity
Remote workers tend to be more productive because they’re not distracted by the office happenings. Without distractions, they can burrow down and do what it takes to complete a task.
Reduced Cost
As a business, you’ll save money when your team works remotely. You’ll save on office lease, office maintenance, equipment, supplies, and utilities.
The Top Challenges of Managing a Virtual Team
However, working with a distributed team poses a few challenges.
While this list might look long, don’t let it discourage you. All of these challenges can be overcome with smart planning and readily available tools.
All kinds of teams, including ours, have met these challenges head-on with great results.
- Poor Communication: Team members who aren’t working in the same place or the same time zones may find it difficult to connect with each other. If communication is ineffective, your team may not have a clear understanding of what’s expected of them.
- Lack of Social Connection: One of the benefits of working in an office is seeing and interacting with other people. But when you work alone, you can feel isolated.
- Difficulty Accessing Resources: When people work remote, they’re not always as proactive about putting their hands up as they would be in the office. It’s up to you, the manager, to ensure that your virtual team has the tools to do their tasks and knows where to look for resources.
- Perceived Lack of Support: Isolated team members who don’t receive regular feedback can feel like they don’t have enough support from their leaders. When a team member doesn’t feel supported, they’ll also start to detach from the team. This can affect productivity and company culture.
- Not a Good Fit for Every Personality Type: The fact is, not everyone has the temperament for remote work. Your team members must be self-motivated, disciplined, and able to work well on their own.
- Unreliable Tools: Unless you supply the equipment, your team members will work with different tools, including desktops, laptops, and smartphones. This may make it difficult to use the same software. All team members will also need reliable internet access.
4 Ways You Can Improve Virtual Collaboration
Although virtual collaboration comes with different challenges than in-office work, it’s easy to make the pros outweigh the potential cons. Use the following suggestions to solve the problems we outlined above so you can make this approach work for you.
1. Make Communication a Top Priority
Communication matters in every workplace, but it’s essential when you’re working with a virtual team. Set communication guidelines for your team to follow when connecting with each other, such as when you expect to receive responses and where (i.e., email, instant message, etc.).
2. Hold Meeting Times Regularly
Meetings help your team stay on track. They also provide your team members with the space to ask for help, get clarity, and find directions.
In addition, you can use virtual meetings to check in personally with your team members and give them that social connection that may be lacking when working remotely.
To further enhance discussion and emulate an in-person dynamic, use video conferencing tools for your meetings.
Want to know how video calling can be useful in the sales process? See our article on Communication Secrets for Selling in a Virtual World.
3. Set a Schedule
Every remote team should have office hours. This sets expectations for your team so that they know when to be “at work” and available for phone calls, meetings, and requests. This also supports a healthy work/ life balance for both you and your team.
4. Use the Right Tools
When working with a virtual team, you need tools to communicate with each other and stay on track. Fortunately, there are a lot of tools on the market to assist virtual teams (we’ll cover those next).
What Are the Top Virtual Collaboration Tools?
To improve collaboration with your virtual team, you need tools. We’ve put together a list of the ones we recommend below.
Better yet, you can integrate many of these with PhoneBurner for extra convenience and functionality! Explore PhoneBurner’s 200+ integrations here.
Instant Messaging
Instant messaging is more convenient than email when it comes to project check-ins and water cooler chat. The best ones also allow you to easily search through messages.
Popular Instant Messaging Tools Include:
Video Conferencing
The ability to communicate face-to-face from separate locations is a game-changer. Many leading video calling platforms also allow users to share their desktop screens with others, which can make it easier to work on projects with visuals.
Popular Video Conferencing Tools Include:
Project Management
These tools let you assign tasks, create deadlines, set reminders, and message team members. Use them to move projects from concept to completion.
Popular Project Management Tools Include:
Cloud Storage
Use cloud storage to save and retrieve documents remotely. When documents are in the cloud instead of on a local hard drive, team members can easily access what they need without delay.
Popular Cloud Storage Tools Include:
Productivity Management
Use productivity management tools to monitor your team. Ensure that they’re staying on task and being productive during the work day.
Popular Productivity Management Tools Include:
Privacy & Security
Use privacy tools to ensure that your data is kept safe. This is especially important when your team is working with devices that may not be updated with the latest protocols.
Popular Privacy & Security Tools Include:
Make Virtual Collaboration Easier with PhoneBurner
While there are a lot of benefits to hiring and working with a remote team, you must be prepared to tackle the various challenges that come with a distributed workplace model. Use the above tips and tools to ensure success with your virtual team.
PhoneBurner also solves key challenges for virtual teams with features that help you track agent performance and support your remote reps no matter where they’re located. From providing extra transparency for your team with live leaderboards and real-time reporting to integrating with your must-have productivity tools, our power dialer makes remote phone sales easier—and lets each agent reach up to 4x as many contacts. Start your free trial now.
Frequently Asked Questions about Using PhoneBurner for Remote Sales Teams
Does PhoneBurner work with any phone?
Yes—PhoneBurner is designed to be used with any modern mobile phone, which makes it easy for your remote agents to use the platform with their own devices. PhoneBurner also offers a built-in softphone, so your team can dial phone-free from anywhere with internet access.
What special equipment do remote sales agents need?
Not as much as you’d think! Gone are the days when a home office had to be a sound-proofed room full of expensive audio gear.
When your team uses PhoneBurner, all they need are their laptops and access to the internet, along with maybe their smartphone and a hands-free headset for best results.
PhoneBurner’s Krisp AI-powered noise cancellation even remotes unwanted background noise from calls, so there’s no need to worry about barking dogs or the neighbor’s kids. That means better call quality for your prospects, and more peace of mind for your agents.
