Remote and distributed sales teams have quickly become the standard mode of operation for most companies. And it’s unlikely this will ever fully reverse.
A full 46% of sales teams expect to continue working remotely for the foreseeable future.
Letting your sales team work from the comfort of home has its benefits, especially for finding and keeping the best talent. But it also comes with some serious challenges. Challenges that weren’t a problem in the traditional workplace.
Challenges like keeping up good internal communication through a computer screen.
If you struggle to engage your sales team from a distance, you’re not the only one. When we all moved to remote work, most companies defaulted to a cobbled-together version of Zoom meetings, emails, and Slack messages. Not the best recipe for long-term success.
Now that we know remote and distributed sales teams are here to stay, we need a better plan. What most companies are missing is a solid, thoughtful strategy — one that adds additional tools like asynchronous video communication into the mix.
Here’s how to build a solid strategy that engages your sales team from a distance — and how asynchronous video ties it all together.
The mistake most companies make with remote comms
When your team is scattered in different locations, it’s hard to know where to start.
Email and instant messages have their place, but they’re poor stand-ins for face-to-face interaction. Relying too heavily on these modes causes all sorts of problems — miscommunication, low morale, and ultimately, lower sales revenue.
Your most important messages just don’t land well this way.
When the world went remote, most companies intuitively turned to video as a way to fill in these communication gaps. Turning to video is the right move. But as with most things in life, there’s a right way and a wrong way to do it.
Many teams continue to make one big mistake that undermines their efforts to connect through video.
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How to develop a solid video comms strategy
Raise your hand if you default to Zoom and Loom for everything. No shame there. On the surface, this seems to make sense, because the whole purpose of using video for internal comms is to recapture the efficiency and engagement of face-to-face communication.
But using Zoom and Loom for everything is the big mistake we alluded to.
Don’t get us wrong. Zoom and Loom revolutionized the way we communicate remotely. They are important tools and they’ll continue to play a role. But over-reliance on these tools results in too many meetings, too many miscommunications, and tons of wasted time.
People schedule far more Zoom meetings than necessary, because it seems so easy to just “hop on a Zoom call”. Or they record off-the-cuff Loom videos that spend ten minutes delivering information which could’ve been covered in two minutes or less.
Zoom and Loom have their place, as long as you use them the right way.
Zoom calls
Zoom calls are meetings. Just like traditional meetings, they eat up calendar space and take time away from sales activities.
All too often, people schedule Zoom calls to distribute information. Maybe it’s because we’ve lost faith in email (too many messages left unread in crowded inboxes). Or maybe it’s because we’re just defaulting to the technology we’ve all come to know so well.
But Zoom isn’t the place to distribute information. It is the place for brainstorming, having discussions, and making major decisions. Reserve your Zoom calls for these activities.
Zoom meeting recordings
With a distributed team, it’s sometimes hard to even gather everyone for a Zoom call. Inevitably, a few people have to miss. This leads to the dreaded Zoom meeting recording, distributed in its entirety for later reference.
The hard truth about Zoom recordings is that they’re terrible. Like all conversations, Zoom conversations tend to take a long, winding path. There’s a lot of fluff in between the important parts.
This meandering is necessary in real-time conversation. Discussions are inherently unscripted and unedited. But watching Zoom recordings to “catch up on what you missed” is a huge waste of time.
Most of the valuable information in a Zoom recording could be summed up in a few minutes of scripted video. But people have to watch the entire recording to see those few critical minutes.
That’s wildly inefficient. In almost every situation, a planned, scripted video is the best method. (We’ll show you how to do this in a minute.)
Loom videos
Loom videos are great for one-to-one communication, especially if you’re outlining processes, reviewing and changing documents, or coordinating with quick, informal responses.
But as with Zoom, this method has its limits. Loom videos suffer from the same issues as Zoom recordings. They tend to meander, and they’re inefficient for delivering important information.
This all might feel a little defeating. Are we really left with email and instant messages as our only options for distributing important information? Are we doomed to having Zoom meetings until we drop from Zoom fatigue?
The short answer is no. There’s a better way to use video for this type of communication.
When to use asynchronous video with your sales team
The best way to engage sales teams with video is to use well-planned, asynchronous videos that feature on-screen text and animation. (If this sounds difficult and time-consuming, it’s not. You can do it in minutes with Biteable.)
This type of video is the best option for engaging your sales team in all the contexts where Zoom and Loom fail.
Get attention for important information
Embedding videos in emails drives those messages to the top of the inbox, ensures your internal comms emails get opened, and gives you the analytics to track engagement.
Sending video in a Slack message, “stops the scroll”, grabs attention, and saves your messages from being swept away by the frenetic pace of instant messaging apps.
Send a crystal-clear message
Creating videos enables you to leave all the excess minutes that bloat Zoom recordings and Loom videos on the cutting room floor. Stick to the bullet points so people are crystal-clear about what they need to know and what you want them to do next.
Need to make sure everyone gets a message, without adding another meeting to the calendar? Put that message in a video. Need to recap what happened in a meeting, without all the wasted minutes of watching a recording of that meeting? Create a quick video to summarize the high points.
Need to engage your entire team on any important topic? Make a video about it. People remember 95% of a message they see in a video, compared to ten percent in text.
When you’re ready, share your videos with comms tools you already use — email and instant messaging. Embedding videos in email can increase open rates by 204% and click-through rates by 189%.
Create self-serve resources for busy sales teams
Short videos are also an ideal tool to use as self-serve resources for your sales team. Create videos that outline your sales playbook, deliver product updates, and give sales reps timely training resources.
Because these videos are short, they’re easy for your team to pull up on-demand and watch in just a few minutes. Then it’s back to doing what they do best — selling.
Engage from a distance with Biteable Teams
Video is the missing piece you need to engage your sales team from a distance. Distributing vital messages to your team through video is the best way to cover the inadequacies of email and other video communication tools.
With Biteable, you can create all these videos quickly and easily, without the hassle and exorbitant costs of outsourced video production.
Branded templates and scenes remove the need for any production expertise. An easy-to-use video-making platform gives you the power to create videos by simply pointing and clicking.
Make an unlimited number of videos and update them as often as you need. All for roughly the cost of a single minute of video from a professional production company. But we dare you to tell the difference!