Many managers feel employees are only productive if they’re putting in adequate amounts of face time.
This isn’t speculation.
Microsoft surveyed 20,000 people in 11 countries and analyzed trillions of Microsoft 365 productivity signals, along with LinkedIn labor trends and Glint People Science findings, to find the answers. They found that 85% of leaders don’t believe their workers are productive. What’s worse, 49% don’t trust their remote employees to do their best work.
But despite these feelings, studies show that remote workers are, in fact, more productive and efficient than their traditional-minded co-workers.
Here’s the data.
According to the same survey referenced above:
- 87% of employees report that they are productive at work; productivity signals across Microsoft 365 validate this
- 42% of participants multitask during meetings, during their workdays
Additionally, research shows that:
- 77% of employees who work remotely achieve a dramatic increase in productivity
- 30% of employees produce more work in less time
- 24% do more work in the same period of time, according to a survey by ConnectSolutions.
So, if you want your remote sales team to be more productive, you’ll need to ensure they can monitor their sales pipeline from their mobile. Here are 5 key CRM features for remote sales teams:
And that can be done with Pipeline CRM.
Let’s take a look at our mobile CRM features offered for managers.
CRM Feature 1: Smart Agendas
A smart agenda builds an intuitive to-do list for your team while they perform daily tasks. It’s a reliable way to keep your sales team focused on activities that lead to revenue versus activities that are nothing more than busy work.
Smart agendas should:
- Be built around workflows
- Monitor activities and track performance
- Help you optimize sales team performance
- Identify productivity, performance, and administrative leaks
- Create a consistent action plan for your team to follow
How this boosts productivity:
Salespeople waste their time on underperforming tasks like:
- Pursuing unqualified prospects
- Crafting custom proposals for unqualified prospects
- Searching for (or creating) custom content for prospects
- Attending unnecessary internal meetings
- Administrative busywork (e.g., reports, documentation, updates, etc.)
Smart agendas boost productivity and performance; they help your team to identify the tasks that lead to revenue and those that do not.
In addition, they can:
- Properly define both a marketing-qualified (MQL) and sales-qualified lead (SQL), then verify that employees give their attention to prospects who meet this criterion
- Prequalify prospects ahead of time; have sales reps schedule a meeting to go over the proposal with prospects before the proposal is created
- Help build a team that’s responsible for creating proposals or quotes for clients. Salespeople can share the document with clients once the meeting has ended
- Provide sales reps with response playbooks and a library of content they can use to share with prospects. Have marketing teams create this content ahead of time
- Filter meetings and administrative busywork through smart agendas by asking a simple question: will this meeting help our sales team produce more revenue?
CRM Feature 2: Sales Forecasting
Sales forecasting uses past performance to make predictions.
When you understand past trends, you’ll be able to confidently forecast the salespeople on track to hit quota. This is something that’s treated as a nice-to-have by many sales teams. It’s an estimate, and it’s not set in stone. This kind of thinking is an unfortunate mistake.
Sales forecasting enables you to analyze sales performance over time, understanding the performance between deal owners and between different types of deals (e.g., forecast sales for individuals, teams, and your company).
How this boosts productivity:
Sales forecasting is an essential component of a successful sales team (for a variety of reasons):
- You can reliably identify rainmakers, average, and under performers
- Managers can quickly assess the sales reps who need retraining, redeployment, or should be let go
- Teams can identify the obvious and hidden obstacles that consistently derail deals
- Salespeople will be better able to identify unqualified prospects
Sales forecasting enables you to assess the internal and external factors working for and against your company.
The more accurate your sales forecasting, the easier it is to optimize your sales workflows to maximize revenue.
CRM Feature 3: Unlimited Storage
A recent survey found that employees waste almost half their work day (3.6 hours) searching for data. Several employees stated:
“The stress and hassle of locating the right information impacts employee retention. Over 31% of those surveyed said the frustration of being unable to find information made them feel burned out, and 16% said it made them want to leave their company.”
What’s the solution to this problem?
“The solution to this relevant crisis is providing the proper tools and technology to make information easily accessible. However, identifying the proper tools can be difficult as well. Many organizations have adopted new applications to support productivity, but 58% of people blamed excessive search time on having too many knowledge sources to sift through. “
Filter, sort, and share custom data views so important information is always accessible and organized across teams.
How this boosts productivity:
- Your employees will get close to half of their workday back.
- You provide your employees with the data, files, tools, resources, and credentials they need in a centralized hub, boosting productivity immediately. It’s a
- single source your sales team can use to find the resources they need when they need them.
- You’ll see sharp increases in productivity, performance, and revenue.
You should be free to store all your documents, images, and communication records without additional charges. Combined with Smart Agendas, you’ll see consistent improvements in performance over time.
CRM Feature 4: Tracking Commissions
Picture this: your remote sales rep has just landed a big contract. What’s the first thing he’s going to do?
He logs into his account to verify that he’s received credit for the sale; he’ll check to see when he’ll receive his commission check. This is why commission tracking is so important to reps.
Commission tracking is a motivator that shapes and guides your sales team’s behavior. Automating sales commissions reduces cost, increases transparency, and boosts morale for remote sales teams. Your sales reps should always be able to verify the commissions they’ve earned.
How this boosts productivity:
- As a manager, your commission structure is important. It shows you the products your sales reps are more likely to promote to prospects and the products they’ll probably ignore.
- As a sales rep, commission tracking shows you that your manager/company keeps its promises.
- You receive the commissions you were promised at the rate you were promised. It’s a clear indicator that your company is trustworthy, and it’s a confidence booster.
CRM Feature 5: Email Tracking
Which personal emails get prospects to respond best?
Tracking open and click rates is a straightforward way to identify the content that produces the best results. With full email campaigns and tracking, you can convert your best emails into plug-and-play content for future campaigns. Track all your email messages, opens, clicks, and downloads automatically as activities in your account.
How this boosts productivity:
- Email campaign and tracking decreases the time spent on creating custom content for prospects, and increases the amount of time your sales reps spend closing deals.
- Microsoft Office 365 and Gmail integrations bring bi-directional contacts and calendar syncing to your account, reducing data entry and keeping your information current.
Get Started with Mobile CRM
Trust your remote employees to do their best work with the right tools. These key CRM features ensure your remote sales team produces the revenue and momentum your company needs to grow.
To learn more and see how Pipeline CRM can work for you, request a demo. Alternatively, try our 14-day free trial.
We also have a handy CRM guide to help you choose the right CRM for you.
