The Benefits and Liabilities of Virtual Teams

According to a study by MIT’s Sloan School, well-managed virtual teams can potentially outperform teams sharing a location. The benefits of virtual teams include:

• Integrating diverse knowledge and skills to drive innovation, address complex tasks more effectively, and make better decisions
• Reducing costs due to eliminating overlapping functions and sharing of best practices
• Sharing knowledge about different products and markets
• 24/7 productivity by teams working across global time zones

To achieve these potential benefits, however, leaders need to overcome liabilities inherent in the lack of direct contact among team members and managers. Team members may not naturally know how to interact effectively across space and time. They need strong team skills such as setting goals, sharing responsibility for getting things done, and providing mutual support. And they need smart leadership to make sure they can leverage those skills in a virtual working environment. Without team skills and effective leadership, a virtual team can become ineffectual and dysfunctional. Problems can include:

• Difficulties in communicating and understanding one another, resulting in a lack of common ground, trust, and shared responsibility
• Failure to develop task-related processes such as setting clear goals and standards
• Inability to collaborate in a way that takes advantage of different perspectives, knowledge, talent, and expertise
• A lack of full engagement and commitment by all team members to deliver their best performances when completing tasks and progressing toward team goals

Leaders accustomed to observing and interacting with their people face-to-face often find it difficult to coach, motivate, and otherwise manage a dispersed team to achieve the highest possible performance. So how do leaders adapt to overcome barriers and lead effectively from a distance?

6 Leadership Strategies for Virtual Team High Performance

While many of the same management practices that are effective with co-located teams can be applied to virtual teams, some important adaptations need to be made to address the unique challenges faced by teams working together virtually. Managers facing these challenges should consider these six strategies:

1. Keep All Team Members in Close Communication

Creating a sense of team is a critical success factor for any team, but especially so where members can’t interact with each other directly. Regular communication among all team members is essential to bringing people together and fostering a sense of inclusion, while providing ongoing opportunities for input and influence. In some cases, there may be a core group at one site while other team members are located elsewhere, making it even more important to ensure off-site members don’t feel out of the loop.

Whether using teleconferencing, e-mails, instant messaging, web meetings, video conferencing, or the many emerging networking media to stay in touch, team members need opportunities to participate, share ideas and work outputs, and get to know each other regardless of where they are located. This regular contact helps build trust and confidence among team members, despite distance, time zones, and differences in culture.

2. Create a Collaborative Mindset

In a hierarchical organization, competition is often tacitly or directly encouraged between individuals, departments, and divisions. The result can be a win-lose mentality that damages the ability to work together for common goals. Within work groups, competition is sometimes replaced with cooperation. Cooperation can be positive, but sometimes creates a “let’s get along” culture leading to suppression of valuable opinions and different viewpoints and perspectives, and a lack of willingness to confront tough issues.

A collaborative mindset brings together the best of competition and cooperation, fostering respect for all team members’ interests, talents, and expertise. It also allows for vigorous discussion of differences while encouraging a focus on mutual gains and shared goals.

3. Clarify the Team’s Purpose and Goals

All teams need to understand their reason for being, but this is even more important for virtual teams. Members of the virtual team need to understand what contribution the team is making to the larger enterprise, what specific results are expected, and how they contribute to the team as individuals. Without this clarity, team members are unlikely to become fully engaged and focused. Knowing their purpose not only enhances team identity, but also creates energy and a sense of urgency, even when virtual team members are acting individually to carry out tasks and assignments.

4. Establish Clear Performance Standards

Again, every team needs to have performance standards and expectations, but this is particularly vital when the manager is unable to observe behavior directly. The team needs to understand not only what they are going to achieve, but how they will achieve it. When people come from a diverse set of experiences, functions, and possibly even divisional or geographical cultural backgrounds, it should not be assumed that they all share the same perspective about what constitutes quality or excellence. This is an opportunity for the leader to set benchmarks, suggest sharing of best practices, and encourage the team to clearly articulate standards by which their performance will be evaluated.

5. Adapt Coaching Strategies for Distance Management

Effective coaching is a challenge for most managers, but especially so when they lack the opportunity to observe their team members carrying out tasks and interacting on a regular basis. Nonetheless, coaching is as important, or more so, when the team is dispersed. Leaders of virtual teams need to set individual and group expectations, monitor the team’s progress, and give feedback, just as they would if everyone were sharing the same location.

Adaptations include making virtual observations of performance by evaluating work outputs and deliverables such as:

• Documents and reports
• E-mail communications to team members and internal/external customers
• Contributions on team conference calls
• Sales quotas achieved or customer satisfaction ratings

Leaders should also plan regular feedback for the team in a group environment such as a web meeting or conference call, as well as for individuals via phone calls, e-mails, and other channels of communication. When possible, occasional face-to-face meetings with individuals should be arranged to allow for more personal connections.

6. Celebrate Milestones and Successes

Feeling like a team means not just working together, but being recognized for team members’ sacrifices and accomplishments. Leaders of virtual teams have a great opportunity to reward the team for high performance, reinforcing the collaborative mindset and the sense of being part of something larger than oneself. Participatory celebrations are especially valued by team members who are isolated from other members or when the only recognition for their team contribution comes from a remotely located manager. “Reward the group and the group will reward you.”

Although growth in the number of virtual teams may have been accelerated by recent downturns in the economy and corporate responses to those declines, the trend in this direction was already underway. It is safe to say that virtual teams will likely be the norm for many people, if they are not already; and many, if not all, leaders in larger companies will eventually have the opportunity—and challenge—of managing a virtual team.

By adopting these clear, tangible strategies, leaders who manage at a distance can overcome performance barriers that result when teams cross time, distance, and culture. Their teams and companies will be positioned to leverage the efforts and talents of diverse teams, working together to create a source of advantage in a global marketplace where the rules of competition are constantly changing.

If You Manage a Virtual Team, Ask Yourself . . .

1. Are your virtual teaming tools (webcast, shared sites, etc.) designed to keep all team members fully engaged and motivated?
2. Is there a strong foundation of trust, respect, and collaboration among team members, even if they have few or no opportunities to work together face-to-face?
3. Are the diverse talents, knowledge, and expertise of team members being used to achieve the best possible outcomes?
4. Are you coaching and giving feedback to all team members, even though they are not working at your location?
5. Does the team know their achievements and successes are appreciated and recognized by the organization?
6. Does each team member know what is expected?
7. Are outcomes for each project clearly defined, communicated, and understood?

While the need is clearly urgent, there is plenty of time to do it right and ensure any training offered integrates well with the other key elements of overall sales effectiveness. This should not require a lengthy delay or otherwise encumber a timely response, and it will avoid a “one-off” feel to your response while supporting full adoption of new skills that will produce improved results.

A Few Common Myths

Virtual selling is completely new and different.

Although selling virtually is different, it’s not that different. The degree of difference from what has been good practice for your business until now varies widely based on a number of factors (what business you are in, what you sell and who you sell to, the shape your sales process is in, etc.).

It’s all about getting good at using virtual meeting platforms.

In fact, there are a variety of digital technologies that should be part of your virtual selling repertoire, but technical proficiency alone will not make the sale.

You can’t build the same level of high-quality, trusting relationships virtually that you have built in person.

Actually, you can, but it takes a more thoughtful, deliberate, and planned approach.

Let’s clear up some of the confusion about what’s new and what’s not, and identify the best way to respond to the need.

What Are the Challenges for Sales Organizations?

We’ve heard the following challenges from our customers in recent weeks:

• Our salespeople are “behind the curve” on selling virtually. While we were already moving in the direction of selling virtually, we were not ready for the sudden and complete shift to virtual selling.
• The current crisis has exposed weaknesses in our sales process, sales methodology, or the adaptation of both to selling virtually.
• There is a lack of clarity or agreement among our key stakeholders about where gaps exist, as well as what is the same and what is
  different when selling virtually.
• We are trying to avoid a “knee jerk” response (i.e., a program called “Virtual Selling”) in order to respond in a way that actually improves
  sales performance.
• Our salespeople rely heavily on remote selling tools to communicate with customers, yet they’re not proficient in using these tools.

The Reality Behind These Challenges

Let’s take a closer look at the weaknesses that have been illuminated by this sudden shift to selling virtually.

Sales Process

The organization may not have a clearly articulated sales process or may not consistently use the sales process already in place. The sales process may require updates based on how customers buy today.

Sales Methodology

Sales professionals may not be demonstrating effective use of the skills and behaviors that are necessary to execute each stage of the sales process, especially when selling virtually. Any existing weaknesses have been illuminated and are showstoppers when selling virtually.

Virtual Technology

The salesforce may lack the knowledge, skills, and techniques necessary to effectively use virtual meeting platform functionality and features, as well as the broader mix of tools necessary for virtual selling (e.g., multiple

platforms, social media, file sharing, email links, etc.).

Sales Enablement Technology

The CRM and other sales enablement technology are not being used to support and reinforce effective execution of
the sales process and methodology (e.g., lack of integration, no adaptation to current reality, or poor adoption by
sales and sales management).

Wilson Learning’s response to these challenges encourages reinforcing and adapting counselor selling skills for selling virtually. Why are these skills so crucial in the new reality?

Not the Time for a New Sales Methodology

• The challenge of quickly establishing credibility and building trust is heightened at a distance. Pre-call planning for virtual meetings is essential at all stages of your sales process.
• Uncovering business problems and finding opportunities to help customers requires discipline and structure in a virtual environment. Thoughtful, well-planned, and efficient identification of customers’ needs, motives, and preferences become the foundation of effective solutions.
• Presenting solutions at a distance requires delivering a clear and compelling message. Focusing on solutions and recommendations aligned to the discovery paves the way to success in a virtual sale.
• Active follow-up via phone, email, or text message ensures continued sales, repeat business, and referrals.

In fact, if you already have an embedded sales methodology, introducing new core selling skills to your sales professionals may send the wrong message:

• It reinforces the misconception salespeople may have that selling virtually is “completely different” and that they are not already prepared. Don’t give them an excuse.
• It dilutes the advantage of the common language for selling and coaching that the organization already benefits from.
• Implementing a new sales methodology is both an additional and an unnecessary expense.
• It is inefficient and requires time for both salespeople and coaches to adjust to and adopt the new skills.

Leveraging an existing sales methodology helps organizations:

• Capitalize on progress already made in improving sales effectiveness and add to the ROI already achieved.
• Reinforce a common language, rather than introduce a conflicting terminology that differs from what salespeople already know and use.
• Provide an efficient, economical approach that directly connects the methodology to virtual selling to provide an immediate and significant payoff.
• Strengthen adoption and application of your preferred sales methodology and its application to a virtual selling environment.

Putting It All Together

Selling virtually brings its own set of unique new challenges. It also requires a heightened level of attention, discipline, and excellence to the use of all of the selling skills that have been part of selling effectively on site. There is less margin for error and no tolerance for winging it. The same heightened requirement applies to using an updated sales process to ensure that you are adding value at each step of your customer’s buying process.

In short, salespeople are required to be better at what they may already have been pretty good at and consistently so. It is well worth taking a half step back from launching a new virtual selling program in order to reinforce and carry forward the best of what you already have in place. This will ensure that the new virtual skills your salespeople are learning are anchored on the framework of your core sales methodology and a reapplied, if not reimagined, sales process.