*Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey told employees in an email that they'll be "allowed to work from home indefinitely"*

“Google tells all North American employees to stay home"

By now we know the team is not coming back. Not just the sales team but the entire sales ecosystem will be officing at home now and likely for a long time into the future. How to respond? New tools and training are part of the solution. There are three types of training, two are visible and formal. The third is largely invisible to management, relatively ad hoc, yet is the most important learning tool influencing outcomes. The virtual office puts this critical third training method in jeopardy. And it is this method that impacts close rates by as much as 21%.

JPMorgan, Facebook, Capital One, Amazon, Microsoft, Zillow and others, announced that they’re extending their work-from-home policies.

The first type of training involves how-to sell in the general sense. The second is company-specific training—addressing details about your products and services. The third type is self-directed, self-motivated talent development. Reps are cut lose from class-style learning, and take up their residency, achieving by doing, by asking, making inquiries, with a focus on peer-to-peer learning. In this immersion process reps learn the art-of-persuasion, what works, what to avoid, and insightful ideas for unique solutions. Peers sharing information enables superior crafting of solutions, leading to the right to ask for the order.

A study by Robert J. Kelly, Chairman Sales Management Association, investigated the matter of which training approaches “yield the best results for sales forces, and how firms can anticipate future developments in learning direction”. His findings are instructive and will surprise many:

Salesperson best practice sharing is rated as most effective by managers and reps
Peer-best-practice-sharing is the most important salesperson development technique
Coaching and peer-learning are the highest ROI activities related to salesperson development.

With an emphasis on rep’s moments of need, more peer learning and knowledge sharing is clearly better than less. New ideas, confidence, and courage are all developed in two-way conversations among sales practitioners, the basic ingredients of a successful sales team.

But how are sales managers to preserve both the quality of peer learning and the revenue it generates when the entire sales ecosystem is officing in isolation at home? How can sales managers mend failing work-social bonds while encouraging the on-going development of inspiring work relationships? How can sales managers encourage meaningful information flows among sales team members and overcome physical distances?

"... what is needed for a remote sales ecosystem is not yet another method of communication but a method of basic introductions"

Our emerging environment requires new technology. Shared videos and online work-spaces are the means to communicate. But what is needed for a remote sales ecosystem is not yet another method of communication but a method of basic introductions among team members, based upon common ground, leading to collaboration and knowledge sharing. Knowing whom to contact, based on one’s specific need, is central to the process.

Imagine a system (think Waze for the sales ecosystem), driven by AI and ML that knows who within the enterprise has specific knowledge, who sold what to whom, why, and all the details including the sales team members, sales leaders to pre- and post-sales engineers. Armed with a smartphone, reps working on an opportunity to identify those that successfully preceded them – dig in, connect, and find out how they overcome similar issues, objections, managed personas, created a business case and closed. The entire remote sales team, regardless of location, is transformed into an available deep reservoir of experience and knowledge that can be tapped on-demand. Why have reps reinvent the wheel when time-to-close can be compressed by virtue of superior sales knowledge shared among sales team members? Knowledge and experience handed down by those who possess specific expertise and a winning track record, regardless of location!

The entire remote sales team, regardless of location, is transformed into an available deep reservoir of experience and knowledge

RadiateBuzz’s services JustSoldIt (JSIt) and JSIt Analytics streamlines the process and provides a new level of management visibility. JSIt analyzes activities, calculates, and tracks knowledge, skill sets, and expertise within organizations. It does so by reinterpreting existing corporate information. No new data is required, as the data that drives JSIt is already available within the enterprise. For management, JSIt is a valuable tool. With any device, managers become the oracle of human enterprise knowledge, a deep resource within their own sales ecosystem. Further, a new wealth of management data and sales metrics are produced for enhanced guidance and executive decision making. JSIt can play a valuable role in every department of the sales ecosystem, from sales to marketing, to competitive analysis, to the CFO. JSIt is a superior, faster, smarter way to sell and manage. A necessary tool for today’s virtual office environment.

In Part 2 of this series we discuss JustSoldIt from RadiateBuzz -- Specifically, how JustSoldIt leverages CRM, positively impacts corporate relationships, and improves sales outcome. (www.radiatebuzz.com)