Tips for Remotely Managing Field Sales Teams During COVID-19

Managing field sales teams has always been a challenge for companies in the pharmaceutical and medical sales industries. From field sales team training to keeping track of field sales rep activities, managers of these out-of-office sales team members have a lot to keep up with. These challenges have only made remote sales team management more difficult.

What are some of the specific challenges of managing field sales teams remotely? How has the COVID-19 epidemic amplified these challenges? What can field sales team managers do to more effectively manage their sales reps?

Here’s a quick explanation of the challenges of managing field sales teams, the impacts of COVID, and some tips on how to manage a field sales team more effectively:

The Challenges of Remotely Managing Field Sales

Some of the common challenges of managing field sales teams include:

• Handling Field Sales Team Training. Employee training is always a concern for any job role. However, medical sales rep training is especially important. Medical sales reps need to keep on top of the best sales strategies to reach decision-makers without violating ever-changing regulations about marketing and selling medical or pharmaceutical products.
• Keeping Track of Field Sales Activities. How many phone calls, in-person meetings, product demos, free samples, and other customer interactions are field sales teams conducting on a weekly basis? Keeping track of field sales activities and verifying that medical sales reps are meeting their process goals can be an enormous challenge.
• Motivating Field Sales Reps. Keeping sales team members actively engaged with their work can play a huge role in their effectiveness on the job. However, according to Gartner’s data, only 34% of U.S. workers are actually engaged with their work (meaning they’re satisfied with their job and will put in extra effort). In other words, nearly two-thirds of sales reps aren’t motivated, and won’t be going the extra mile to close deals and improve the company’s bottom line.

How These Challenges Have Been Amplified Due to COVID-19

While the challenges listed earlier have always been a thorn in the sides of pharma sales rep managers, the COVID-19 pandemic has made them even more severe than before.

With the coming of COVID and the “stay at home” orders many municipalities passed in the hopes of limiting the spread of the disease, many doctors and other decision-makers in health care-oriented businesses have become more difficult for field sales teams to reach. This, in return, requires additional training for medical sales teams to improve their ability to sell without a face-to-face meeting.

Another way that the pandemic has made managing field sales teams more difficult is the distinct lack of personal contact many sales managers have with their sales teams. In a more traditional setting where sales teams have frequent meetings, managers have an opportunity to talk to their teams directly, collect feedback, and provide specific tips or reminders.

With remote sales teams, many of these opportunities to interact with team members are lost. Social distancing rules forcing employees to be in the office even less frequently has further reduced the opportunities for face-to-face time with employees. This can impede efforts to motivate field sales teams, provide training, and keep track of their activities.

Tips for Effectively Managing Field Sales Teams Remotely

What can medical sales rep managers do to effectively manage their remote sales team members? Here are a few tips on how to manage a field sales team:

• Expand Your Online Training Options. With limited time and strict sales goals to meet, field sales reps rarely have the time for more traditional training courses. Instead of trying to force everyone’s schedules to align so they can take an in-person class, consider using online training courses and learning management platforms. These online resources allow field sales team members to take their training at their own pace when they need it. Also, some online learning platforms let managers track which courses their sales reps have completed—ensuring that they know who is or isn’t keeping up with training requirements.
• Leverage Online Communication Apps. Online communication and collaboration tools like Slack or Zoom make it easier, now more than ever, to keep in touch with remote team members. Messaging apps like Slack allow managers to reach out to employees directly with important messages and updates—or even share photos and other files that the sales rep may need. Video conferencing features in these applications can help simulate that face-to-face time that remote employees need to feel connected to their teams—helping to increase engagement and motivation for field sales teams.
• Leverage an Activity Tracking Solution. How do sales reps report on their sales activities? Is there a solution that can track their number of calls made automatically, or are they manually reporting on their efforts? Using a key performance indicator (KPI) tracking tool can be crucial for improving employee sales activity reporting—helping make it easier to track who is doing what and how sales reps are achieving success. If one employee has consistently better results than the rest of their peers, taking a look at their activity statistics can provide insights that might prove useful for helping others achieve the same results.
• Encourage Reps to Communicate with Each Other Frequently. Give reps the chance to form stronger bonds and share critical advice or information with one another by communicating frequently with their peers. Having a convenient collaboration platform like Slack, Microsoft Teams, or even a company Facebook group could help foster a sense of camaraderie among sales reps and motivate them to do their best (or share key tips with their fellows). Additionally, posting a sales team-wide “leaderboard” showing off who is producing the best results to these communication channels can help encourage some competitiveness amongst employees—driving sales results.

These are just a few tips for helping to improve internal sales teams. For companies in the healthcare and pharmaceutical industries who need to build a strong sales team quickly, there’s another solution: outsourced sales development and management.

Outsourced sales management companies like Axxelus can help businesses scale their medical sales departments quickly and efficiently while reducing the company’s workload. Instead of having to manage employee recruitment, benefits, and training internally, these functions can be handed off to an experienced team of specialists.

Need to build your sales team quickly for a new initiative or to cover for a shortage of qualified talent? Reach out to the Axxelus team today to get started!