5 tips how to strengthen communication in a virtual environment #softwareSales

Seamless communication between the sales and the professional services teams gives growing software organisations a huge advantage;

• The professional services team work with the customer closely, and have a deep understanding of their current challenges. For the sales team, gaining customer insight about their current challenges helps them solve their customer's problems and close a sale quickly.
• On the other hand, the sales team have day-to-day visibility of the sales pipeline knowing which customer projects are likely to progress through to close, and for the professional service team to work with. For the professional services team, having an overview of upcoming engagements is crucial for capability and capacity planning and highlighting any risks early.

Cultivating a culture of trust and open communication in a virtual environment can sometime prove challenging; growing teams with new hires, undocumented processes and fragmented systems can lead to conflicting work priorities, overburdened employees and avoidable customer issues.

How to make the best out of a remote team and help everyone achieve their goals through effective communication? Here are 5 tips to get you started:

1. Decide the main tools for communication, and share this with everyone in your organisation. Using a multitude of tools can be confusing for many, especially if they are working from home for the first time, or if they have recently joined the organisation. Often sales teams and professional services teams use different types of communication which makes it even more important to share best practice. Make sure that the chosen communication channel meets its usability and access requirements; e.g. use Slack for instant messaging, Salesforce for all customer interactions, and Zoom for all meetings.
2. Agree when is a good time to get in touch. Whilst sales teams have a number of customers with frequent opportunities for short breaks, professional services teams can spend their whole days with one customer. It is good to be mindful and respectful of each other's needs for uninterrupted time and their schedules.
3. Communicate company-wide strategic initiatives and translate them into easy to understand priorities. Multi-tasking (or sometimes, aptly, referred to as switch-tasking) is a productivity killer, often making the employee feel that their work isn't important. Share your company vision for the team, and align team-wide initiatives with the wider company strategy. When conflicting priorities arise, it is easy to resolve them by linking all activities back to core values. This helps when sales team ask the professional team for "just a 5 minute call with a customer".
4. Have clear responsibility and role definitions for your teams. Again, helping with workload, managing priorities and tasks; a clear responsibility matrix shows who owns which task. Is it the presales team or the professional services team who will take their time to solve a key customer's business problem?
5. Help others give feedback and show appreciation. Create a way for anyone to express their opinion, in a way that suits them. Remember the impact of appreciation, and appreciate publicly and as often as you can. Also have an option to give anonymous feedback for improvement and make whole process transparent and easy to access. If your team is small, consider whether this would be an HR-led initiative. For inspiration, read Dare to lead by Brené Brown and Time to think by Nancy Kline.

• + 1: Sales and professional services teams can be perceived to work at a different pace, or have very different drivers. Facilitating a structured discussion where everyone has a voice, helps create a human connection and clear any assumptions on either side. More often than not, both teams will strive to do great work and what is best for the business. Having a clear, visible communication strategy helps individuals make the right decisions that is right for the customer, the business, and for the team.

Tuuli Bell Ltd is a boutique management consultancy helping sales directors of growing software companies reach their sales target www.tuulibell.com