Understanding Remote Selling with Rachel Shi

Sales has evolved rapidly over the years, from cold calling to now making your pitch on a laptop screen. But, if you want your sales team to excel in this new era, you must refine how you sell remotely.

We spoke to Rachel Shi, a GTM sales coach and the strategic account executive at Metadata, to understand how remote selling can help salespeople win more revenue in 2024.

TL;DR,

• Remote and hybrid sales setups have made selling easier for sales teams, but success depends on individual aptitude and motivation.
• While metrics and tools help track performance, sales leaders must focus on influencing the 91% of buyer time not spent with sellers.
• Strategies like creating deal rooms, effectively leveraging intent data, and incorporating videos into sales tactics can enhance engagement and drive successful outcomes.

Let’s dive in 🏊

Why remote selling is here to stay

56% of salespeople who work remotely or in a hybrid setup say that selling remotely has made it easier to sell. Most companies today have the right infrastructure and use various sales intelligence tools that optimize every part of the sales cycle. 

In the current environment, it all comes down to the salesperson's aptitude and intrinsic motivation to close the deal. Sales leaders must be more tactical when hiring and understand whether the candidate has what it takes. 

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How to quantify the impact of remote selling?

While many tools help you track your metrics and KPIs, it’s important to note that there’s no concrete way to determine a salesperson’s success. 

According to Gartner, buyers only spend 9% of their time with your sellers, so sales leaders must focus on how they can influence the remaining 91%. 

Here are some tips to influence the 91% (get an infographic)

• Put yourself in the buyer’s shoes
• Offer educational content
• Create a deal room

Using deal rooms in remote selling

A deal room is a “leave behind” asset for buyers where they can showcase your product to their internal team and decision-makers to influence the deal. However, this doesn’t imply that you rely on the buyer alone to make the pitch. You must co-own this process by adding relevant marketing collateral like templates, case studies, and customer testimonials.

Your deal room must enrich your buyer’s experience and make it easy for them to get all the information they need as the deal progresses.

“You also want to personalize wherever possible, depending on what you heard of their challenges and ways that your product or solution can consult those. This again, should be very simple and succinct to read and something they can easily take to a busy executive who doesn't have time to listen to a whole pitch.”

The role of intent data in sales

When you want to leverage intent signals, you must understand which ones to prioritize for your sales efforts. It’s important to not overly rely on intent data because a prospect may not be high intent just because they visit your site. 

For example, if your target account visits a demo booking or a pricing page, they’ll likely have higher intent than someone just browsing your site. You can also use segmentation to understand the sources from where your target accounts discover your solution and how they engage.  

“The key thing, I think, is for sales leaders and founders to get very clear on what intent signals mean in terms of engaging with that buyer because, for salespeople, it can actually be also a key thing. So you need a playbook, and you need to define what good intent signals are because it can also lead people to chase things that aren't real.”

💡Read more: How To Leverage Signals For Account Scoring

Using video in sales

If you don’t want to appear pushy with your pitch and genuinely want to offer value to your prospects, video is the way to go. It’s a smarter way to sell that doesn’t replace the other approaches but rather supplements it. Here are a few ways you can employ videos in your sales strategy

• Send educational videos when prospecting 
• Embed video testimonials to build trust when following up
• Include product explainer videos to show off different features
• FAQ videos for simpler onboarding 

Here’s how Rachel incorporates videos in her sales motion:

Wrapping up

Whether in-person or remote the core principle of sales stays the same, i.e.; it’s about building meaningful relationships with your buyers. When you use the right tools to perfect your pitch, you can master the art of remote selling in no time. 

Check out Rachel on LinkedIn to see how she’s coaching founders and AEs to improve their sales GTM efforts. If you want to learn how to use intent data in your sales strategy, speak with our team today.