How to Hire & Build a Sales Team Remotely (2023 Guide)

Remote work has become increasingly popular in recent years. As technology improves, companies are able to hire and build their sales teams more efficiently and effectively, while their employees take advantage of a more flexible approach to their working lives. 

If you already lead a sales team, then you’ll know that sales management is no easy feat. But it can be even more challenging when you’re leading a remote sales team that might be spread across the country, or even the globe.

In this article, we’ll provide tips on how to hire and build your sales team remotely, as well as how to manage and motivate your remote sales team. By following these tips, you’ll be able to build a successful sales team that can help you achieve your business goals.

Step 1: Decide What You Want from a Sales Team

Before you can hire and build your sales team, you’ll need to decide exactly what you want from them. There are many talented sales people out there (one of the advantages of hiring remotely is that it gives you access to a wider talent pool), but sales can be subjective: what makes a great salesperson? What skills, qualities and personality traits are essential to succeed in your industry? What are the unique requirements of your company? Answering these questions will enable you to determine the kind of people you want to hire.

For example, you might want to hire people who are customer-focused, those who have excellent communication skills, or those who are self-starters. In truth, you’ll probably want all of these things, as being a strong seller often requires a combination of skills and competencies. Start by drawing up a detailed plan, then map out your desired company structure, and create a set of clear goals and objectives. Only then will you be able to determine the optimum makeup of your sales team.

Step 2: Define Sales Processes

All sales processes are different, of course, but most follow a similar path. It’s important in any business to have a clearly defined sales process, which includes (but is not necessarily limited to) the following steps:

• Prospecting: finding potential customers and leads
• Approaching: making the initial contact with your lead
• Pitching: presenting a compelling sales pitch, highlighting the key benefits of your product or service
• Objection handling: answering any concerns and managing objections
• Closing: finalizing the deal and getting the necessary agreements in place
• Following up: maintaining an ongoing relationship, offering upsell opportunities

Any new hires brought into your business (more on that shortly) will need to be given an overview of your sales process so they can align with your company’s goals and generate the most sales possible. You can also make use of customer feedback tools to learn more about your customer base, assess how your sales team is performing and figure out where you can improve. Create a sales process template to help everyone follow the same path, which will help you track each person’s progress. 

Step 3: Hire the Right People

Of course, the most important step in the recruitment of sales staff is hiring the right people. When hiring salespeople, you’ll need to find those who have selling skills (of course) but also the right personality traits to make them a good fit for your company. However, you’ll need to be careful when hiring salespeople, as they often have high expectations and high standards. You’ll also need to hire people who can withstand the demands of the sales process. Additionally, you’ll want to make sure your sales team members are prepared for the sales process and have the skills to complete the sales cycle.

A factor when taking on remote sales staff is that hiring and onboarding remotely can be a little tricky, and that’s why clear communication and expectation management are essential throughout the recruitment process. Fortunately, that’s made easier through platforms like Workable (which help to optimize the experience for remote candidates), while if you’re going down the route of hiring international sales team from overseas, an employer of record (EOR) service from a provider such as Remote.com will ensure your onboarding process is not only straightforward, but legally-compliant (which is an additional consideration when hiring international talent). 

Step 4: Train Your New Salespeople

While you want your new salespeople to have experience selling similar products or services as you do, you’ll also want to train them on your company. In this training, you’ll ideally need to teach your salespeople about your company culture, your product or service offerings, your pricing, and your sales process. You can use training software like Udemy to create sales-based training courses for your salespeople, while it’s also a good idea to create bespoke training material (such as videos) to help your salespeople learn more specifically about your company, your product or your service. 

While training can help your salespeople learn about your company, it’s also a great way to onboard new hires. Training helps new hires become familiar with your company and its culture, which can help you prevent culture clashes and potential hiring issues in future.

Step 5: Motivate Your Sales Team

While you want your salespeople to have experience selling similar products or services as you do, you also want them to be excited about what they do. This means you’ll want to motivate your salespeople and help them stay motivated. You can do this by providing your salespeople with recognition, rewards, and mentorship opportunities. Recognition and rewards can come in a few different forms, including: 

• Salary increases
• Promotions
• Equity in the company
• Bonuses
• Non-financial gifts and rewards (such as vouchers)
• Company awards
• Peer-to-peer recognition

To help your salespeople stay motivated, you can also try implementing sales challenges, sales goals, and sales competitions. Sales challenges help your salespeople expand their thinking and help them discover new ways of selling, while sales goals help your salespeople gauge their progress and help them stay motivated. When working remotely, you can use digital sales tracking tools such as Zendesk to keep on top of performance and track your sales against the company’s targets.

Step 6: Keep Your Sales Team Updated

Communication is the bedrock of any successful remote team, and remote salespeople are no different: when you’re hiring salespeople, you’ll want to make sure they understand the importance of communication in a remote workplace. You’ll also need to ensure that, as a leader, you’re communicating effectively with them and keeping everyone in the day-to-day loop. You can do this by setting up communication tools like Zoom, Meetings, and Google Docs. You can also create onboarding and training programs to help your new hires learn how to communicate well.

Be mindful, too, that communication isn’t all about sharing important company updates or work-related information: it’s important to encourage non-work communication, as this is essential for fostering strong relationships among team members. In an office, there’s the occasional ‘water cooler’ chat and casual conversations over coffee, but that comes less naturally in a remote environment — a tool like Slack is great at enabling your teams to share important updates and engage in more informal chatter.

Step 7: Set Clear Expectations

When working remotely, it’s imperative that you set clear expectations and boundaries, so that everyone within your sales team is on the same page. This doesn’t mean micromanaging your employees or ‘checking up’ on them continuously; it simply means letting them know exactly what you expect from them in terms of working hours, communication, meeting etiquette, and so on. This often happens more naturally in an office setting, but when your sales team is remote it can take a little more time and effort to align expectations. 

Failing to establish these boundaries in a remote work environment is likely to have unwelcome consequences — it can quickly become a recipe for workplace tension and conflict, for one thing. If one of your sales team members is seen to be taking undue advantage of their flexibility to work remotely (maybe they’re frequently offline, skipping meetings, or failing to follow up on their sales leads), your other employees are likely to wonder why they’re not playing by the same rules, which can create an atmosphere of resentment and frustration: not conducive to a successful sales team.

Step 8: Celebrate Your Accomplishments

As with any type of role, salespeople need to feel valued, so celebrating your sales team’s accomplishments is essential. This way, your team will feel rewarded for their hard work and proud of what they’ve achieved. You can do this by holding team celebrations, awards ceremonies, and team-building events. Additionally, you can host social events like team lunches or team-building workouts. The more ways you can find to celebrate your sales team’s accomplishments, the more motivated your team will remain.

Of course, the challenge of managing a remote team is that it’s often difficult (or near-impossible, if they’re spread across the globe) to get everyone together in one place. If that’s the case, you can still find ways to get together and shout about everyone’s achievements. How about holding a virtual awards ceremony or an online games night? Peer-to-peer recognition should be encouraged, too; an app like Officevibe is great in this regard — it lets you send ‘good vibes’ to a colleague to highlight their efforts and thank them for their support.

Throughout this process, you’ll want to keep your hiring and sales processes optimized. You’ll also want to make sure your new hires have the right personality traits and are excited to work with you. When hiring and training your salespeople, don’t forget to keep them motivated so they stay excited about what they do. Finally, you’ll want to keep your sales team updated and celebrate team accomplishments to help your team stay motivated and positive.