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Transitioning an outside sales team to a "work from home" model with Ambition
When your outside sales teams have to pivot from knocking doors every day to working from home, how do you monitor their productivity and how do you empower them to be more successful than ever? We sat down with Chase Emerson, Sr. Director of Sales Operations at Posigen, a solar technology company, to learn more about how he successfully made the transition of his outside sales team to a remote, working from home team in the pandemic in March of 2020.
Key Takeaways:
How did they make the transition from Outside Sales to WFH?
Posigen is the industry leader in solar energy home services, but while their product is forward thinking, the outside sales process was somewhat traditional bordering on outdated. The team took a leap to update their sales model to reflect a more modern processes of B2B organizations. It. Paid. Off! Chase's inside sales teams were already experiencing great success using Ambition to manage performance and productivity, but he saw the opportunity to change the day to day of their outside sales team by bringing them onto the Ambition platform as well. Chase began to pitch this change internally in late 2019, but little did anyone know, Posigen and many other sales organizations would soon require a way to pivot the day to day of outside sales organizations.
What was the pay-off?
"With a click of a button I can see what a region is doing, what a team is doing, what a specific individual is doing and when I need to dive in. It's a tool that allows me to sit back and know when people are operations, when to leave them alone, when to let them do their job, and when to really dive in and say, "Hey, we have something going on here." It's led to months and months of success."
By combining gamification and coaching, you're taking an effective, "holistic approach that can drive your sale's org over a plateau or through a pandemic."
What advice would you give to other sales leaders trying to transition their outside sales team's daily flow?
Introducing this level of accountability and transparency can come with pushback. People might say they're being micromanaged but you should still keep pushing this initiative forward. In Posigen's experience, the same reps who felt uneasy about high levels of transparency and now the ones making "40%, 50%, or 60% more income month over month in a pandemic when they're watching friends and family lose jobs."
See the full interview here
Learn more about Posigen here and follow Chase and Posigen on LinkedIn!
