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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.
- 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.
What Is a Virtual Team?
A virtual team is a group of employees who work from remote locations (even remote sales teams) and connect with each other over the Internet.
Virtual sales teams typically use special virtual collaboration tools to work together despite not being based out of a physical office. Since most sales work is accomplished with a computer and/or telephone, going remote can be extremely efficient as long as it’s supported with the right tools.
How PhoneBurner Helps Remote Teams Solve Key Problems
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, which can be shared via a weblink, can be highly motivational by encouraging healthy competition amongst your dispersed team., Or they can simply be used by administrators to give you 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 easier than ever to send the right leads to the agents most qualified to handle them. This cuts down on the time required to manually divide and send leads to remote team members, and reduces the risk that leads go cold while waiting to be worked by your team.
Create shared lead pools or distribute leads to your team according to highly customizable rules.
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
Wish you could unite your remote team and do live dial sessions together? PhoneBurner’s seamless integration with CallBlitz makes it easy. Combine our leading dialing tools with cutting edge virtual sales floor technology and make dialing fun and exciting. Our integration allows teams to collaborate without interrupting live conversations and provides sales managers with valuable coaching opportunities and analytics to drive leadership decisions.
Learn More about PhoneBurner’s CallBlitz Integration
Now that you’ve seen just a few ways that 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 is long, don’t let it discourage you. The reality is that 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
Poor communication is one of the top challenges that you’ll face with a virtual team. Team members who aren’t working in the same place or the same time zones may find it difficult to connect with each other. This means that information can slip through the cracks and halt productivity.
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.
Unable to Get on the Same Page
Because you’re part of a team, you need to work toward shared goals. However, not being in the same place makes it more difficult to find a working rhythm with your team.
Lack of Clear Goals
Due to communication issues, your team may not have a clear understanding of what’s expected of them.
Lack of Resources
Your team must have access to the resources they need to accomplish their goals. In a traditional office environment, it’s a lot easier to find these resources than it is remotely. It’s up to you, as the manager, to ensure that your virtual team has the tools to do their tasks and also knows exactly where to look for the resources they may need.
Poor Project Management
It’s difficult to coordinate members who are checking in from multiple locations and at different times. This makes it difficult to manage a project on time, especially if you’re waiting for a team member to respond to an email that you sent two days ago.
Perceived Lack of Support
Sometimes, team members can feel like they don’t have any support from their leaders. This happens because they’re in isolation and don’t get immediate feedback (both positive and critical) like they would in a traditional office setup.
Low Team Morale
When a team member doesn’t feel supported, they’ll also start to detach from the team. They may do their job, but not enthusiastically. This can lead to employee churn.
Decreased Productivity
Because you're not breathing down their neck (not that you would ever do that), your team members may be more prone to relax on the job and not get things done as quickly as they would in person.
Not a Good Fit for Every Personality Type
Some personalities will thrive in a remote work environment, but others will wilt. A remote team environment will not work unless your team members are self-motivated, disciplined, and able to work well on their own.
Unreliable Tools
When working remotely, you’ll inevitably encounter incompatible devices.
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.
Internet availability, or the lack thereof, is another potential problem for remote teams. However, Internet access is crucial to virtual collaboration.
What is Virtual Collaboration?
Virtual collaboration is the process of using digital communication tools to work together on tasks, such as ideation, creation, and problem-solving.
Why Virtual Collaboration Is Important
When you work with a remote team, communication is the key to your success. Virtual collaboration tools allow you to work with a distributed team as if you’re working in the same office, shoulder to shoulder.
4 Ways You Improve Virtual Collaboration
As you can see from the above challenges, virtual collaboration faces several challenges, but here are a few ideas for overcome those challenges:
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 a response and on what tool (i.e., email, instant message, etc.).
2. Hold Meeting Times Regularly
To collaborate virtually, you need to meet.
Meetings help your team stay on track as a team. It also provides your team members with the space to ask for help, get clarity, and find directions. In addition, 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.
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.
What Are the Top Virtual Collaboration Tools?
To improve collaboration with your virtual team, you need tools. Here are the top tools to consider:
Instant Messaging
In addition to email, you need a tool that allows for instant communication between your team members. This enables project check-ins and water cooler chat. Instant messaging tools also allow you to easily search through messages.
Popular Instant Messaging Tools Include:
Video Conferencing
Video conferencing tools enable you to have face-to-face communication. They also allow users to share their desktop screens with others, which enables virtual collaboration.
Popular Video Conferencing Tools Include:
Project Management
With project management tools, you can fully manage a project, from assigning tasks to, creating deadlines, setting reminders, and messaging team members. Use project management tools to track your progress, too.
Popular Project Management Tools Include:
Cloud Storage
Use cloud storage to save and retrieve documents remotely “in the cloud.” When documents are in the cloud, and not saved locally on a hard drive, team members are able to 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:
Over to You
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. Start your free trial now.
