Creating A Winning Momentum When Leading A Team Remotely

Sometimes, for various reasons, your team might need to work remotely; they may be scattered in multiple locations, travel a lot, or in exceptional situations such as now with the COVID-19. And working remotely requires a special sort of mindset. Especially with sales, having the right momentum and winning culture is essential to keep up as a leader if you want your team to win and stay focused together.

With the unexpected situation that COVID-19 has brought upon, many leaders and managers lack clear guidance on how to ready their team to remain effective and driven during a global pandemic event. To maintain that winning momentum, managers need to take steps that can maximize the effectiveness of remote work during these extreme situations.

Some best practices from us at Management Events – We have collected some actionable tips for you to get things going or boosted!

Tip #1: Prepping Your Weekly Rhythm

How you start and end your team’s week will dictate how your momentum goes throughout, so it’s best to set the rhythm right. Start Monday with a big sales team meeting to get everyone on the same page and then end the week with a wrap-up on Friday so the whole team will be aware of each other’s progress.

Tip #2: Kickstarting A Productive Monday

Monday meetings should be the time for your sales team to set their forecast and targets, share any general news, and give updates on any on-going projects and deals. It’s also a good time to touch base with team members and see how they are doing.

Tip #3: Setting up 1-2-1 (Virtual) Meetings

Keeping the entire team’s winning spirit high should be a major focus for managers and team leads but you should not overlook 1-2-1 meetings with each team member. Set a time for individual 1-2-1  virtual meetings for each member on dedicated time and pre-agreed agenda. Use this time to cover any important topics or catch up on individual progress. It’s a good idea to have a pre-list of topics to discuss or decide before having your virtual meeting.

Tip #4: Celebrating Your Team Wins

Just because your sales team is working remotely, it doesn’t mean you can’t celebrate your team’s winnings and milestones. If you’re using digital channels such as Slack or Teams, create a “deal-in” channel where people can post successful big deals and any moments that can be celebrated as a win by the team.

Tip #5: Making A Channel For Everyone

Working remotely, you miss out on the ability to socialize and bond with team members to improve teamwork. Thankfully, with digital channels such as Slack or Teams, you can create channels also for non-formal teams; to share news, fun stuff, or free-time activities. This will keep the camaraderie high between team members and encourages effective communication.

Tip #6: Encouraging Competition Within The Teams

Competitions (friendly or otherwise) can be a great way to motivate your teams, even they are working remotely. Meeting bookings, offer creations, first target–think what would trigger your team to work harder and achieve the desired outcome for the week.

Tip #7: Wrapping Up On Friday

Conduct a sales team wrap-up on Friday to close out the week with a big meeting so that everyone is aware of each other’s progress, successes, milestones, and on-going projects. If your sales team misses the forecast, discuss what happened and why, wrap it up, and start the following week with a clean sheet.

Tip #8: Welcoming The Weekend With A Message

After a week of hard work from the teams, send everyone a Friday greetings email to end the week. It can be something as simple as a short, written note from the team lead or manager to thank everyone, highlight any milestones, and to wish everyone a good weekend. This puts the team members in a good mood and stays energized for another week of productive remote work.

Bonus Tip: Keeping Up Productivity Through Digital Dashboards

Productivity dashboards offer a great way for leads and managers to encourage team members in achieving weekly goals and target forecasts. Asana and Trello are some of the more popular platforms that you can use to keep your team’s productivity on point. Of course, you can also your own custom dashboard to mark your team’s weekly progress.

Every team will probably have their own best practices (and some that did not work in remote work), still, it’s useful to assess the methods and routines now and then to see if it’s still allowing your team to keep your winning momentum going. Involve the team in the planning–what they wish to implement, how they can benefit from it or if they feel it’s not needed. Alter their suggestions if necessary and then take it into practice.

Before you know it, your team will be in the winning momentum, even if they are working remotely!