Managing Priorities in Remote Selling
By Building Trusted Relationships
In-person selling is no longer available to those who are focused on keeping sales going during these tough times. This requires sales and businesses to pivot and adapt to new “work-from-home” techniques. Independent, direct sellers have been working remotely for decades and offer many lessons to run a remote sales team in the new “work-from-home” reality we find ourselves in. Whether CEOs at large, enterprise companies or small, independent business owners, remote working is now the lifeblood of the US economy. Managing priorities is always a challenge, with a remote team even more so today.
Remote selling is new to big businesses as well as independent, small businesses and contractors like real estate agents, life insurance people, distributors and sellers, etc. These are the people that are needed to get up to speed rapidly to survive and eventually thrive in this new economy. Getting up to speed and getting to best-in-class performance is making the difference as to whom will survive in the new economy.
A case in point: One of The Gig Economy Group’s customers found that as a direct result of implementing the GEG app, first dollar went from 5% of new remote workers to 22% selling product in the first 30 days. They also found a remarkable decease in churn because the app assisted sellers in getting to first dollar.
The graph to the left is Kineviz’s GraphXR graphics which are imbedded in the GEG app and visually exemplifies the case above. It shows how a new seller (dot in the middle) using the GEG Agile Business Concierge has been effectively onboarded and provided best-in-class training, coaching, and mentoring to always have 10 contacts that they are continually communicating with (teal dots). The platform delivers best practices messaging, content, and approaches that are individual to each contact. This personalized content is delivered by the app at the right time and guides the seller to impart the most salient information to move their prospects/customers down the funnel to close (orange dots). Bringing the remote worker to best in class performance in real time. Note: This individual sold deals (orange dots) within the first 22 days of hire.
Research has shown that remote workers who have success within the first 30 days of hire are highly motivated and very likely to continue selling for the foreseeable future. Continued coaching, mentoring, and sharing best practices provides these workers with the tools and support they need to build trusted relationships, gain the confidence and competencies needed to develop a dependable referral network, and create momentum for continued success. Keeping priorities in sync is now more challenging and critical than ever.
The challenge with providing tools and support services to a remote sales organization that is comprised entirely of an independent channel is the lack of control over them—they aren’t required to take advantage of any services or those sanctioned by your organization. Therefore, the only solution is to provide this independent sales organization with a pathway to success that they will wholeheartedly embrace—one that delivers proven results within the first 30 days, provides clear directions to building trusted relationships, facilitates developing a reliable referral network—all accomplished by providing ongoing tools and support to build momentum in a way that is intuitive, easy to use, and walks them step-by-step to success. Synchronizing priorities to deliver on the promise is more important now. A much more productive pathway than existing ad hoc workflows.
Two critical components to any remote worker is building long-lasting, trusted relationships when there is no longer the water cooler conversations or face-to-face meetings. It is important because the success of any business depends upon its reputation. These are the people who can help you, advise you, and refer you to their network. Referrals are extremely important because those who referred to you are essentially saying “this person is trust-worthy, their solutions are solid, and they will take care of you.” It is always easier when your solution is referred by someone instead of cold calling people you don’t know.
The Gig Economy Group is one of an exclusive group of global, forward-thinking, world-class companies that has invested an unprecedented amount of time, expertise, and resources to definitely understand the intricacies that exceptional, worldwide, B2B companies employ to deliver best-in-class, extraordinary results to their customers, employees, and stakeholders, while managing rapidly changing priorities.
The Gig Economy Group recognizes that sales success in the first 30 days of a new seller’s journey is critical for their initial and ongoing achievements and that effective relationship and referral network building is a skill that most people aren’t adept at; moreover, it is a talent that most don’t care to learn how to do. Therefore, a means to guide people through this competency coupled with astute ‘next-best-actions’ recommendations is the most effective approach to achieving unprecedented results.
The Gig Economy Group’s ABC Platform is the only available solution that guides new sellers through the complex maze of building relationships and creating a reliable, effective network. The app delivers step-by-step guidance to reach out and acquire relationships and then to cultivate them into a network that will ensure sales success. The graph below shows how a seller acquired meaningful relationships and started to build an effective network.
This graph shows how a new seller (dot in the middle) has effectively been guided by the GEG platform to initiate and cultivate contacts (teal dots). The app is continually guiding the user to build lasting, important relationships (teal dots). This is the first phase in building momentum to closing deals as outlined in the previous graph above.
The Gig Economy Group has analyzed the unique problems associated with Gig Economy workers and has talked with industry leaders and analysts to uniquely understand the breadth and depth of the issues facing these workers. As a result, and as shown in this blog, The Gig Economy Group developed a mobile, AI-enabled app that effectively onboards new remote sellers, provides step-by-step guidance to them, delivers coaching and mentoring at a time when needed the most, and dispenses best practices with real time recommendations throughout the sales journey. Very importantly, it provides best-in-class guidance to building relationships and creating a critical, viable referral network.
In summary, today’s workplace is drastically different than yesterdays. Keeping a pulse on how your remote workforce can contribute to the bottom line and how, as sales leaders, you can provide the tools and support is essential now—more than ever. Next, we’ll share the benefits in synchronizing priorities between organization and remote workers.
ABOUT THE GIG ECONOMY GROUP
The Gig Economy Group (GEG) provides a state-of-the-art AI-powered sales acceleration platform to Gig Economy networks and workers. This platform enables large, global, independent sellers to accelerate sales and improve sales team effectiveness by making smarter, actional decisions resulting in significantly increased revenues. This AI-powered app with its recommendation engine, delivers precision guided selling advice, continual coaching, mentoring, and sharing of best practices.
ABOUT KINEVIZ
Kineviz is the company that brought GraphXR to the marketplace. GraphXR is a visual analytics platform that delivers unprecedented speed, power, and fluidity to anyone working with connected, high-dimensional, and big data. Its interactive, iterative design accelerates time to insight while enabling analysts and business users to make needle-in-haystack discoveries that evade traditional analytic workflows.
