7 Easy Tips for Coaching Your Remote Sales Team to Success

The importance of sales coaching has been proven. Surprisingly, only 21.7% of sales managers have implemented a formal coaching program for their teams. Part of the problem is that managers find it difficult to find the time to coach their reps.  As challenging as it may be to provide sales coaching, coaching a team of remote sales reps presents its own challenges. Here are 7 tips to overcome these and successfully coach your remote sales team.

Why Coaching Remote Sales Teams Requires a Different Approach

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Communicate: You must communicate your expectations to your remote team since you don’t see them daily. They need to understand what results they are to accomplish and the actions they must employ to do so. Providing feedback on call recordings helps achieve this. Beyond that, maintain an ongoing dialogue with your team members to reinforce the bond of trust between the rep and coach. This will serve to improve your overall results. Scheduling a daily or routine debriefing is another excellent means of ongoing communication. It could be via a team call or written communications like messaging or email.

Virtual ride-alongs: When your sales team is all working in the same office or within the same geographic area, it is easy to do ride-alongs with your reps.  With significant distances between you and all your teammates, it becomes more challenging to have routine in-person ride-alongs. This doesn’t reduce the need to complete these activities on a regular basis, it simply makes it more difficult. Virtual ride-alongs may be completed in a variety of ways. You can listen in on live sales calls with or without your reps’ knowledge to provide them with feedback in real time. Joint calls with reps is a great way to help your team members close more challenging deals.  Listening to recordings of calls is another option, allowing you to provide feedback at your convenience. Plus, all off these methods are easily completed remotely!

Sales Team Efforts

Routine team meetings: Gathering your team together physically may not be a cost-effective or practical option when your sales team works remotely but it doesn’t take away the need for you to meet with your team as a group. Routine team meetings should be conducted virtually via conference call, web call, or webinar. These options allow you to coach your team as a group and interact with them. Go around the group during these weekly or bi-weekly calls and have each person discuss their greatest successes and challenges. They’ll learn from each other’s wins and by helping work through difficult sales scenarios.

Teamwork: Another way to coach your remote team is by creating a best practices library of recordings of excellent sales call. You might group them in categories for reps to locate the examples they need to help them improve easily. Direct reps to particular recordings to aid them in learning new sales or closing techniques. You can also have more senior reps listen to recordings of newer teammates and provide feedback for improvement. Pairing reps allows them to get another perspective on challenging sales scenarios, do role plays, and bounce ideas off each other. These provide additional support to your team while reducing your load a bit. A bonus is the team bonding that takes place with these methods.

Sales Gamification

Weekly scenario challenges: Have your team submit their biggest sales challenges to you via email or by sharing a call recording example for review each week. It’s another way for you to keep a handle on what each rep is dealing with while helping you help your reps with their most difficult situations. Not only does this increase sales, it identifies additional coaching needs.

Leaderboards and Dashboards: Setting up leaderboards feeds the competitive nature of sales teams, while recognizing top reps for their stellar performances. Dashboards aid you and your team in tracking progress while facilitating the identification of strengths and coaching requirements. It also gets reps in the habit of understanding key metrics and tracking their own progress. This enables them to self-correct instead of being told to do so.

Be consistent: Consistent coaching improves rep productivity and rep retention. These are strong reasons to set up a predictable process that ensures optimum results. It also prevents talented reps from leaving your company for another, in search of ongoing growth and learning.

The Top Differences of Remote Sales Teams

One of the key differences in coaching remote sales teams is the increased reliance on technology to bridge the communication gap. Tools like Revenue.io’s conversation intelligence software or Salesforce dashboards become essential for tracking performance and identifying coaching opportunities. These tools allow managers to review call recordings, analyze team metrics, and provide actionable insights, all without needing to be in the same physical location as their reps. The ability to monitor live calls or provide post-call feedback ensures that remote reps receive the same level of guidance and support as their in-office counterparts. Managers should use these tools reactively and proactively—setting up automated alerts or monitoring KPIs in real-time to identify areas where reps may need immediate assistance.

Foster Connection and Communication Across the Team

Another vital element of remote coaching is ensuring that sales reps feel connected to their manager and the rest of the team. When reps work in isolation, they quickly feel disengaged or out of sync with team goals. That’s why regular communication, such as virtual one-on-one check-ins or team-wide meetings, is so critical. For instance, scheduling bi-weekly team video calls where reps can share their biggest wins and challenges fosters a sense of camaraderie while also serving as an organic coaching moment. During these calls, managers can use structured agendas to reinforce key coaching themes, provide performance updates, and ensure reps are aligned with broader company objectives. This consistent dialogue helps remote sales teams feel supported, motivated, and ready to tackle their sales goals.

Try out these 7 coaching tips. You’ll retain your talented team members by providing them with the ongoing instruction and guidance they desire. Plus, you’ll ensure your team is always operating at peak performance.