Bringing your sales reps back to the office comes with many advantages. You often benefit from stronger collaboration and communication, an improved work-life balance, and better team morale. Sales reps are typically naturally social people and want to visit face-to-face with their colleagues. When they can work alongside each other or step into coworkers’ offices, your entire sales team may benefit from more creative off-the-cuff ideas.
However, the traditional office set-up can’t match one perk of remote work: silence. According to David Dye, the president of Let’s Grow Leaders, silence is one of the best benefits of working from home. In a home office or other quiet area, you have the space and stillness to be creative, return emails and generally be more productive. You don’t have to worry about someone stopping in to say, “Hey, do you have a sec?”
Fortunately, you can still create space and silence even when you’re back in the office. In this issue of Promotional Consultant Today, we share Dye’s tips on how to give the productivity gifts of space and silence to your sales team.
Be smart about scheduling meetings. Do you really need a meeting, or can you answer the question or solve the issue via email? Dye recommends using the communication infrastructure you have built over the past year of remote working. Only schedule meetings when they are the best use of everyone’s time.
Run an audit. When your sales reps return to the office, take time to consider what you eliminated during remote work. Did you stop doing something that you can permanently remove? Instead of falling back into location-based habits, Dye suggests working with your team to prevent unproductive habits from resurfacing.
Leverage communication. Another way to bring space and silence back to the office is to continue the communication platforms that work for your team. Does your sales team enjoy Slack, Chanty or Google Chat? Continue with those to avoid the distraction of in-office pop-ins. This allows everyone the chance to do their best work, Dye adds.
Press pause occasionally. Working from home made many professionals more comfortable with pausing. Whether they waited for someone to unmute or paused for a moment to avoid speaking over a colleague, waiting was a natural part of remote work. Dye says professionals can bring this pause back to the workplace by giving questions room to breathe. Don’t always rush to fill the silence, he says.
Carve out quiet time. Your sales reps need time to do deep work without the interruption of meetings or calls. Dye says you can recreate the silence of working remotely by carving out 90-120 minutes once or twice a day for deep work. Inform your team that you are still available for urgent situations and define what those situations look like.
Create shared expectations. For the gifts of silence and space to work in a team environment, everyone needs to be on the same page. Take time to understand how your sales reps work best and what they need to thrive now that they are back in the office. Developing shared expectations and understanding will help boost productivity across the board, says Dye.
Even if you fully close the door on remote work, you can still reap the productivity benefits. By purposefully creating quiet moments and personal space in the office, you can blend the best of both worlds for your sales team.
Compiled by Audrey Sellers
Source: David Dye is the president of Let’s Grow Leaders, an international leadership development and training firm.
