Here are several excerpts from an interesting post by Dave Stein, CEO and Founder of ES Research Group, What About Your Salesreps Who Work From Home?:
A lot more salesreps are working from home now than even a few years ago. But working from home isn’t for every salesrep or every company. Now’s the time to look at this issue. It could mean the difference between your home-office reps making their numbers or not.
A post on (Jigsaw’s CEO) Garth Moulton’s blog about the profiles of inside sales reps brought to mind some of the discussions we’ve had with VPs of sales about the challenges related to telecommuting for their salesreps.I recently discussed an underperforming home-based salesrep with his VP of sales. Intent on diagnosing the problem, I asked, “Do you have evidence that he’s working 50 to 60 hours a week… for you?“ The VP said he didn’t know whether the rep was working the hours, or full time for his company. He should have known the answers to both parts of that question and the answers should have been two yesses.
Here are some recommendations…
- Don’t hire a rep for a home-0ffice situation who can’t prove they’ve been successful at it in the past.
- Some salesreps need the support and camaraderie associated with an office environment. Others aren’t capable of working from home due to lack of discipline or motivation. Still others don’t have the knowledge, experience or skills to get the job done. Make sure you know all the strengths and weaknesses of your own reps and anyone you are looking at hiring.
- Certain selling jobs require a fair amount of time in the office. If that’s the case, no one should be based at home. A day a week, fine, but no more than that.
- Don’t let a good rep strong-arm you into allowing them to transition to a home-based office unless you’re certain they’ll get the selling job done.
- Make sure you’ve got the right sales performance measurement system in place. You need to be able to spot trends in individual performance before they impact your forecast.
- If you’re going to have reps working from home, provide them with the equipment they need, including hardware (for example, a backup hard drive), the appropriate sales enablement software (a strong knowledge management system, for example) and a high-quality headset.
Finally, the risks associated with home-based sales reps are mitigated when you have a pragmatic sales methodology, (and a supporting sales force automation system), in place and used across your entire sales team. If you don’t have one, that’s what you need to do, starting today.
