How to Lead Your Remote Sales Team with Video
March 15, 2022·5 min read
Lori Connor
Struggling to support your remote sales team? Get our tips for using video to onboard, coach, train, and communicate with your remote reps.
Managing a growing remote sales team is filled with challenges. How do you make sure everyone works from the same playbook, stays aligned as your team expands, and keeps up to date on changes?
You can use video for more than just reaching out to prospects. It’s also your #1 tool for supporting and engaging your remote sales team. No matter where they are, a quick video can provide the guidance they need to succeed…without you needing to type up a 500-word email.
Note: We’re not talking about video calls. We mean “asynchronous” video—a.k.a. a video that you record ahead of time, then send out. Your team can watch it when they’re ready. It’s a fantastic fit for any schedule, whether a rep is stuck in a sales call or working in a time zone halfway around the world.
In this guide, we’ll provide actionable tips for using video to lead your team. Here’s what we’ll cover:
- Onboarding: How to use video to provide everything your team needs to know from day one.
- Coaching: How to use video to be the best resource for your team, even when your time is stretched.
- Training: How to use video to help your team constantly learn and improve.
- Communication: How to use video keep everyone on the same page with frequent, open, and ongoing communication.
In a hurry? Grab the pocket-size, shareable version of this guide. Download Guide - Contents
- Onboarding Your Remote Sales Team
- Training Your Remote Sales Team
- Coaching Your Remote Sales Team
- Communication with Your Remote Sales Team
- Remember the Three C’s of Remote Sales Team Management
Onboarding Your Remote Sales Team
So your team is growing, and you need to get them up to speed—fast! Don’t panic. Even if they’re not working the same building/city/hemisphere as you are, video is a great way to bring new reps on board. Here’s how to get started.
Company Onboarding Videos
Company culture, code of conduct, and product knowledge are crucial for new hires to understand. Make this journey as easy as possible with a self-guided series of videos organized into an eLearning module or playlist.
Get Set Up on the Tech Stack
Screen recording videos are a great way to demonstrate how to get up and running with software tools. The ability to pause and rewatch is a gift to any learner.
With Vidyard’s video platform, you can see what sections of the videos your team is watching (and rewatching). You’ll know where they’re struggling so you can expand or rephrase for clarity.
FAQ Videos
There are some questions you just know new hires are going to ask. Get ahead of them by recording FAQ videos answering their most common questions.
Unlike wordy text documents, video can easily answer complicated questions. Once created, you can store them in a video library or video hub for anytime access.
Get your team to record their own FAQ videos the next time they run into a problem and have to seek out the answer. You’ll grow your knowledge base and encourage your team to help each other out!
Discover how to make remote sales onboarding a snap with the right tools and program. Read the Guide Training Your Remote Sales Team
Every sales team needs to continuously learn and improve…but your team’s remote nature can get in the way. Video knocks down those blockers by delivering sales education in a convenient, consumable format. Here are a few ideas for training your team using video.
Practice Pitching
When messaging changes, ask your team to record elevator pitch videos for you to review. Have them repeat the messaging in different ways until they nail it. The final video can act as an example for future training.
Customer Stories
Storytelling is one of the most powerful ways to convey any message. Have your team record customer stories to practice getting comfortable with your value prop. You can give feedback on their delivery, and they can leverage completed videos in their cadences.
Troubleshooting
It can be easier (for everyone) if your team members create quick screen record videos of queries when they’re stuck. That way you can see exactly what’s going on, and respond back with your own screen recording of the solution. Add it to a resource library or video hub for future reference.
Take advantage of your team’s hive mind and make it a best practice to drop questions into a group Slack channel or chat. Questions will be answered more quickly and everyone will be able to see the response. If anyone creates a video answer to a question, you can add it to your (growing) library of internal resources.
Equip your team with the skills and confidence they need to dominate virtual selling. Read the Guide Coaching Your Remote Sales Team
With so many direct reports, it can be hard to get quality face-to-face time with all of them. Video helps you maximize your limited coaching time. Instead of cramming your calendar with calls, check out these ways to use asynchronous video to connect at your own speed.
Check-Ins
Video is the next best thing to being in person, so use it to stay connected to your team—whether they’re remote or on site. You can record quick videos to provide updates or stay in touch. (But sometimes you do need to connect in real time. For those instances, video conferencing tools are your best bet.)
Instant Replays
Record video to support each step of your sales cycle. From prospecting and discovery calls to micro-demos and hand-offs, video can help with deal progression. Review your team’s recordings on a regular basis to provide feedback on things like body language and talk tracks.
Course Correction
Keep a library of gold standard videos for your team to review and refer back to. Point your reps to these videos when they need to adjust their messaging to align with best practices. Use these for competitive talk tracks, objection handling, and more.
Change can be good, so be sure to update your gold standard videos as your goals change and strategies evolve—and whenever someone really knocks it out of the park with a fresh new idea.
Communication with Your Remote Sales Team
Your team needs to be up-to-date and on the same page to do their best work. Frequent and open communication while remote may seem challenging, but video makes it much simpler to stay connected with your reps. Here are our top ideas for using video to keep communication channels open with your remote team.
Problem Solving
When challenges arise, be sure to document your solutions. Whether it’s a quick selfie video explaining how to handle a tough objection or a screen capture of a technical fix, add them to your library for future use.
Messaging and Positioning
When things move quickly, it’s important to provide clarity. Communicate new messaging, positioning, or product updates via video to clearly articulate key information like the value proposition. Make the videos available on demand for quick refreshers before calls and meetings.
Updates
Instead of time-sucking meetings or lengthy emails, communicate important but in-depth information like pipeline and quota updates using video. Get more engagement while giving your team the freedom to watch at a convenient time. You can also track who’s watching to keep people accountable.
Vidyard offers speed controls so you can watch your updates on double time. That’s efficient!
Remember the Three C’s of Remote Sales Team Management
Managing a remote sales team is a big challenge. But video can help you through onboarding, training, coaching, and beyond.
In conjunction with video, we recommend the “three C’s” to guide alignment and long-term success for a growing sales team: Clarity, communication, and collaboration. As long as you keep those C’s in mind (and make video a key part of your team engagement!), you’ll be able to offer your remote team the support it needs to achieve success.
