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Managing a Team That's Suddenly Working from Home
62 Plays5 years ago
Life, both personal and professional, has changed quite a bit in just a week or two, hasn't it? Suddenly, many of us are working from home right now to help "flatten the curve" of coronavirus cases. If this is your first time managing a remote team, then maybe you need a few tips to make things run smoothly.
David Kreiger of SalesRoads has been operating with a remote workforce since he's company's inception. Regardless of whether you're managing a sales team, a marketing team, or some other group, the advice David shares can help you have a sense of connectivity, collaboration, and productivity during your team's work-from-home stint.
After you listen to this episode, be sure to check out David's blog post for a full list of the tips and tools he recommends during this episode.
Want to get in touch with David? You can reach him on LinkedIn or www.salesroads.com.
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About The B2B Mix Show:
The B2B Mix Show with Alanna Jackson and Stacy Jackson is brought to you by Jackson Marketing. Need help with your B2B online presence? Let's talk!
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Transcript
Introduction to The B2B Mix Show
00:00:00
Speaker
Welcome to the B2B Mix Show with Elena and Stacey. In each episode, we'll bring you ideas that you can implement in your sales and marketing strategy. We'll share what we know along with advice from industry experts who will join us on the show. Are you ready to mix it up? Let's get started.
00:00:20
Speaker
Hey everybody, this is Stacey Jackson. And I'm Elena Jackson. We are the co-founders of Jackson Marketing. And in case you still haven't heard, we are also sisters. Stacey, what are we talking about today?
Exploring Remote Work with David Krieger
00:00:31
Speaker
Today we're talking about a subject that's not new to you or to me or even our guests. We're talking about working from home. And I know a lot of people out there right now, this is our first foray into working from home. So it can be a little bit of a challenge maybe if you've never done it before, but today's guest is going to help us
00:00:50
Speaker
learn how to do it right and how to manage a distributed team when you are in a situation where everyone is working remotely. Alaina? Yeah, and one thing is that for us, we had to kind of learn on our own. So the great thing about this is our guest is going to share a lot of tips and tools that you can use to make life easier with working with a distributed workforce.
00:01:17
Speaker
So we're going to switch it up a little bit today. We're going to go straight to our break. And then afterwards we will have an uninterrupted conversation with today's guest, David Krieger, whom Elena will introduce right after the break. Some of you may already know our guest from the introverts and sales episode earlier in the season. But for those of you that missed that episode, let me introduce you to him.
00:01:47
Speaker
David Krieger is the founder and president of SalesRoads, a business to business appointment setting, lead generation and sales outsourcing company. He has been named as one of the most influential leaders in sales and lead management in the last four years in a row and by Sales Lead Management Association.
00:02:06
Speaker
David's team at SalesRoads focuses on developing and implementing high quality professional business to business inside sales teams for clients with their turnkey solutions. These include recruiting, training, and retaining high quality skilled workforces, developing powerful call approaches, rebuttal strategies, and leaving the latest technologies to build pipeline, increase sales, and lower their clients' cost per sale. David, we are excited to have you on the B2B Make Show again.
00:02:35
Speaker
Yeah, thanks, Alana. It's great to be back with you guys. So we are kind of living in some crazy times right now, David. I never expected to be alive during a pandemic, although it sounds like epidemiologists have been predicting this. It's changing the way a lot of people are living and working. I know the team at SalesRoads has been virtual since your inception, but has it changed anything for the way you guys are working otherwise?
00:03:03
Speaker
For the most part, it really hasn't changed that much as far as the operations of the way that we work. As you mentioned, 13 years ago, we started the company with the concept of having everybody remote and working from their home offices.
00:03:22
Speaker
As far as the operational standpoint, that hasn't changed. Obviously, so much has changed in our country and around the world. And so some of the ways that we are approaching prospects and talking to individuals has definitely changed. And also obviously with our employees and just making sure everyone's staying safe and things like that. But from an operational standpoint,
00:03:41
Speaker
One good thing for us is that we have been remote and we've been able to just stay working from an operational standpoint the same way that we were working a month ago, three years ago, five years ago, even given the current pandemic. Have you noticed any of your clients or vendors saying that they're having to start working from home now?
00:04:01
Speaker
Yeah, most of our clients and our vendors have started working from home. It seems like, at least with the people that we're working with, it's an exception, not the rule that people have decided to close their offices up and have everybody work from home. So over the past week, I think it's really been quite a fire drill and not really a drill, right? For everybody to change their,
00:04:28
Speaker
their work habits as well as the way that they work. But really a testament to the people, our clients and the vendors and also just the people I've been seeing and talking to and seeing on LinkedIn. I think a lot of people have just really handled this with grace. I haven't seen from my vendors any hiccups and things have been working really smoothly given such a seismic thing that's going on right now in the economy. I'm sure some of them have turned to you since
00:04:55
Speaker
your company was kind of created with the idea of working from home, right? So I'm sure they've probably gotten some questions on maybe what they should do best, which maybe that's what led you to write some of the four keys to keeping up your remote sales team productive.
Effective Communication Strategies for Remote Teams
00:05:13
Speaker
And we found that on your site and have looked over that and it's got some really good information in it So we kind of wanted to walk through those if you're good with that Yeah, that sounds great. So I think the first one is talking about communication I think I think on the blog itself say communicate communicate communicate. So Obviously communication is a huge thing when you're working from home. We're well aware that since we've worked from home as well So what are some of those best practices and suggestions?
00:05:41
Speaker
for keeping that communication open. Yeah, and we have been getting a lot of questions from people that we work with. We've proactively tried to reach out also to companies that we know we're making a switch to try to help where we can. And I think a lot of the principles that we outline in the blog and we'll talk about today are a lot of things that are best practices, I think, in a centralized environment, but they're even more important in a remote environment. And if you do them well,
00:06:09
Speaker
facilitates a way to be able to work, promote the same way that we're able to work in a centralized environment. And I would argue there's a lot of benefits to remote work over a centralized environment. And so absolutely a lot of what's
00:06:23
Speaker
where this all starts is communication. And a lot of times people say to us, especially before all this happened is, I just don't think that we can facilitate the same type of communication. There's gonna be less knowledge sharing, balls will get dropped, things like that if we worked in a remote environment.
00:06:41
Speaker
And I can tell you from 13 years of experience that that's just not true. As long as you put in the right types of processes, have the right type of technology, and the right type of mindset, great communication can happen anywhere. And I'll tell you, great communication can happen in a remote environment. And terrible communication can happen in a non-remote environment. But you just need to make sure you're executing well.
00:07:08
Speaker
So where that starts for us is making sure that we have well-established meeting rhythms. Now we don't want to have people, especially salespeople in meetings all day long. And so the way that we've constructed that is around a certain type of philosophy which allows us to have
00:07:26
Speaker
regular types of meetings that are check-ins, that are very efficient, that facilitate the type of communication you need, as well as the social interaction that people do crave, working both in a centralized and in a remote environment. So what it does, the first thing we would really highly advocate, and some people do this in a centralized environment, but I think it's really key in a remote environment is to have a daily huddle. And that daily huddle is three to five minutes.
00:07:52
Speaker
It can be scheduled anytime. It can be midday. It can be the first thing in the day. It can be the last thing in the day. Whatever is the right rhythm for your team. But then you have a very structured daily huddle for each department. You don't want the huddle, I don't think, too big. Each department, each sales team, management team, and nobody should be in more than two huddles.
00:08:14
Speaker
The agenda that we basically use is we have everybody start out with any victories or news. We then say, what is the number one thing that you want to achieve that day? And that can be a sales goal. It can be an appointment goal. It can be a certain project that you're working on, a certain proposal you're putting together. But if you could only get one thing done, what is that one thing that you would do? And everybody needs to shout that out.
00:08:40
Speaker
If anybody is stuck on anything, they should then shout it out. Now we're not going to solve that stuck in that three to five minute huddle, but then you figure out where to take it offline. So that way you're facilitating that communication. So the sales rep isn't stuck on a certain, you know, getting a certain approval for pricing or whatever it might be that stuck comes out.
00:08:56
Speaker
And then we like to do a core value shadow. So if somebody has done something great, shout that person out, and then we end with a team cheer. And when done efficiently and run well, that only takes three to five minutes. You go really quick, it's high energy, it's beat, but you are able to give a lot of information in just three to five minutes and make sure everyone is staying in sync.
00:09:18
Speaker
So that's the first principle of good communication, just having a huddle. And then what that does also is it minimizes a lot of the little phone calls and slacks back and forth and other meetings that might not be necessary. That just take up a lot of people's time. Then you want to have one weekly team meeting. Now that's pretty common sense, but a lot of times people are skipping it. One weekly team meeting, again, very well structured, where you go over KPIs, you go over metrics, you try to solve certain problems as a team. And that can be as much as 90 minutes, but a structured weekly team meeting that nobody misses and you facilitate good
00:09:48
Speaker
good information right there. And then some people have asked me, one question a lot of people come to us, especially in the sales industry is, how do you do coaching? How do you do one-on-ones in a remote environment? Should I do one-on-ones in a remote environment? And the answer is absolutely.
00:10:07
Speaker
you can't not do one-on-ones in sales, and you can't not do one-on-ones in a remote environment or a centralized environment for all that matter. So I think that having your one-on-ones and again, structuring them well, you just do it over Zoom, right, versus just sitting in the person's office. If you don't have Zoom, you can do it over a phone call, but I like doing Zoom because especially in one-on-ones, you want to go over metrics you want to do.
00:10:28
Speaker
be able to do screen shares and things like that. And then lastly, I think it's very important to have a quarterly company-wide meetings. We call them town halls, where everything is reviewed, all of the big things that we are working on, our big metrics are reviewed, we do awards, we make it a lot of fun. And that's just, again, done over soon, right? And everyone who shares their camera, if they're comfortable, and we make it fun, high energy, and everybody comes together as a company on a quarterly basis.
00:10:54
Speaker
I was going to ask you about the video aspect. Are you guys using video in your meetings? I know a lot of people that are just now working from home. Our mom actually had to work from home this week and had to do a video or thought she would and she just couldn't stand that idea.
00:11:11
Speaker
What are your recommendations to get people more comfortable with that if they are doing video calls? Yeah. So I do love video and I always try to put my video on just because I love people to be able to see my facial expressions and I feel it's more engaging, but we made a decision not to require video. You know, one of the things, and we'll probably get to it, it's part of the blog is, you know, one of the benefits of remote work is giving people a sense of freedom and autonomy.
00:11:40
Speaker
that I don't think is re-creatable in a centralized environment. And so we don't want to force somebody to have to like, you know, make sure their hair is perfectly combed and they look perfect for a video call. You know, so we just don't want to have that type of, you know, so we never force anybody to do video. I always put it on and a lot of people follow suit, but those who aren't comfortable don't put it on. And so I think it's nice. I don't think it's critical. I don't think it has to happen in a remote environment. And I think it's worse if you force it to happen in a remote environment.
00:12:10
Speaker
Yeah, you've got some good tips here too on the different text based communications, especially like your point, another meeting that could have been an email. That's the words when you have a meeting about something that could have just been an email or the other way around. Any specific ones that really stand out as the biggest offender that people have when they are working from home.
00:12:37
Speaker
Yeah, so I think we'll get into this in a little bit, but I think Slack is the most amazing tool in general for remote work, but also when used improperly can be a detriment.
00:12:51
Speaker
We do have some really good guidelines for our company around that. We use it and we try to create some creative ways to create communication, as well as community around Slack. But it's really important for people not to Slack people when something could be an email. Slack is for urgent communication or
00:13:13
Speaker
lively communication, you know, where there's some back and forth and you can. But if you interrupt people all day, nobody can get their work done. And one of the most amazing things about remote work is, you know, before I started the company, I worked in an office setting. I've heard a lot of people say this is in order to get any work done, I have to come in early and I have to go late, leave late, right? Because nothing gets done between nine and five because you're either in meetings or people are coming by your cubicle or your office and it breaks your concentration.
00:13:42
Speaker
in a remote work, you don't have that, right? So you can really focus and be more, I believe, much more productive. And so what we try to do with Slack is encourage both people to not Slack when it can be an email, but then we have different
00:14:00
Speaker
that we've created. One very important one is do not disturb and people shouldn't slack when you're on do not disturb you might be power dialing you might be working on a project, you know, we say we have rocks that we're working on every quarter you can say I'm just working on rocks or you can say I'm in meetings and so we create good communication so people aren't slacking all the time and creating a disruption versus making it productive. Yeah, that's one thing that
00:14:25
Speaker
I've found is that sometimes for me, I like to focus on what I'm working on and Slack can be a big distraction at times. Like if there's a group message going on or just having some fun and I may not join in on that conversation until it's like way late because I like to just ignore it and just keep working on what I'm working on. And that's, I think a lot of people have a hard time
00:14:53
Speaker
not answering. Oh, there's like, I got to answer it. There's like, I got to answer it. It's like an itch you have to scratch. Yeah. Yeah. So I think some people, some people will do okay with avoiding those interruptions and some people maybe not always will do as well. So what should they do in those instances? Turn it off.
00:15:16
Speaker
Well, first of all, I do think that it is important to create some cultural norms around what is an appropriate slack and what's not, and not be afraid to push back on people and say, could this have been an email? Just to try to really keep people aware of what should be slacked and what shouldn't be slacked.
00:15:37
Speaker
Um, even though one little one seems kind of petty, it's just important, I think, to, to, to let people know about that. But then as far as just individual, uh, executives or reps, um, I, I think it's okay. If you're power dialing and you really need to focus and you know that Slack is going to be a distraction, that little red dot, you know, when it comes up, turn it off. Absolutely. You at the end of the day, you know,
00:16:02
Speaker
I think with remote work as well as any work, you're accountable for your results. First of all, we try to trust our team to be accountable for the results. If they need to turn off Slack at a certain period of time because they're power dialing or they're working on a project and they know that they're just going to get distracted, that's fine. They need to come back on and maybe check just to make sure there's nothing urgent that comes on.
00:16:25
Speaker
time block that time for an hour, an hour and a half, whatever it is you need where you need no interruptions. I'm a big proponent of that. That's how I get a lot of work done. I can, I'm very focused so I can ignore that little red button very well. So I don't have to turn off slack, but if you can't, absolutely. I think it's great to turn it off.
00:16:42
Speaker
So I think we'll hit a few more of the issues around different technology when we get to the tools later so I wanted to move on to your next big point about boosting morale and combating loneliness and Elena I have I have worked from home since 2011.
Boosting Morale in Remote Teams
00:17:00
Speaker
we also are in the same house so it's not exactly that we're alone but you know we get on each other's nerves sometimes of like other co-workers but but we know that that that doesn't always happen so how do you encourage people to um boost morale make sure people aren't lonely
00:17:19
Speaker
Obviously, in the case of the two of us, we don't have other employees, we work with clients, so that's one way we can change our loneliness factor, get on there and talk to our clients and colleagues. But how do you do that in a situation where you have a distributed team of employees?
00:17:38
Speaker
Yeah, so I think it's really important. As you guys know, since we did the podcast, I'm more introverted. So I don't necessarily crave the social interaction, but in sales, a lot of people do. And I think it's important to acknowledge that as a company, if you are doing remote, even if it's just during this period of time, or if you as a strategy are wanting to do remote,
00:17:58
Speaker
moving forward. And so there are a number of things that we've done that I think are really important. One is, and this is going back to Slack, is creating a channel and we call it the virtual water, we just call it water cooler, but it's like a virtual water cooler. And that's just a channel just for fun stuff.
00:18:15
Speaker
We celebrate birthdays there, but one of the things we started doing that's really done, I think, amazing things is we have one employee who posts a question every single day. And so it could be anything from what was your first concert to what's the view outside your window. Just even tell me a little bit about yourself or one thing that nobody else knows.
00:18:39
Speaker
or tell me a funny story. And then anyone, again, who wants to can respond. And we start learning about each other and it becomes just a fun, you know, it's nothing to do with business in the water cooler, just a fun place for everybody to express themselves and tell a little something about who they are. And that has really just taken off. I think it's been really fantastic way for everybody to get to know each other and be a little social around our virtual water cooler.
00:19:06
Speaker
Yeah, one of our clients has a channel like that on Slack and they get a lot of interaction with the different things that get brought up. It's just, like you said, it's just a fun channel on there and it does create some good engagement. Yeah, I think it's been great for us. And the other thing is,
00:19:26
Speaker
And again, this is around trusting your employees, but I think it's important for people to be able to reach out to coworkers, either on Slack individually or just have a call with each other, just like if they were sitting in a cubicle next to each other, just to talk about their weekend or sports team or whatever it is. Obviously they need to hit their numbers and they need to be working hard, but that social outlet shouldn't be banned.
00:19:49
Speaker
And what we've seen at SalesRoads, and it's really just, it's remarkable that there are some really close friendships that have developed between people who have never met each other.
00:20:00
Speaker
But they become and they consider themselves friends. And actually, I was on, you know, one of the things we talked about is sort of taking your employees out to a virtual lunch, which I actually did this this afternoon or, you know, around 1230. I did a lunch with, you know, five other other folks and we all just sort of got to
00:20:19
Speaker
know each other and talk, but there were two that were actually really good friends. And one said that one had talked about how there was a complete run on toilet paper, where they live, which is one of the realities that we're living in. And the other individual lives in a very rural town. And you would think maybe in rural town, maybe the supply chains aren't there, but also in rural town, there's not a lot of people to have runs on toilet paper. So she had lots of toilet paper.
00:20:49
Speaker
So she went out and bought toilet paper for this individual and her husband UPSed it over to, to, to the other employee at sales roads so that they could get toilet paper. These are two people have never met. Um, and they created, you know, a close meaningful bond, uh, you know, uh, just three, three sales roads. And that, I just loved that story when the two of them told me that today. That's very cool.
00:21:15
Speaker
Yeah, one thing that we're actually going to be doing after we record this with you is we're going to have a virtual happy hour with one of our clients marketing team. So that's a new one I've never done. So that's another thing that people could do.
00:21:31
Speaker
They don't record it. Yeah. Yeah. No, I think it's great. We've done that. It's a lot of fun, you know, um, and we've even had people, you know, some people, you guys might be doing it on zoom, which is a lot of fun, but we've even just had people go out and we said, listen, you know, buy two drinks, you know, inexpensive on sales rows and just send us some pictures and we slack back and forth and things like that. And everyone just knows they're kind of having an happy hour at the same time. And that's actually been even fun. That's fun.
00:21:58
Speaker
So the next item on the list is creating an at-home office environment. What kind of tips do you have for that? I know that Stacy and I know the challenges of that. We used to actually have an office where we sat in it together and then we found that there were issues at times where she would be on the phone and I would be on the phone. It was just
00:22:18
Speaker
one of those open office kind of ideas that I don't like at all. So what do you recommend for people when they are setting up their home office?
Home Office Setup and Work-Life Balance Tips
00:22:30
Speaker
Yeah, so I can talk a little bit about setup. And then I also, I think that a really important thing is how your mental approach to it and communicating that approach to everybody else who might be in your household. So I think at home environment, if you can have an office where you can close the door, it's obviously ideal. And that's, you know, even just converting a room where we have people who've converted just basements and things like that, but having a separate space for yourself, I think is really important.
00:22:58
Speaker
And it's one of the things that we really focus on when we're bringing people on. We want to make sure that they have a quiet work environment because if you set up in the kitchen and then kids come home from school and think it's just not very conducive for work. So I think it is very important to try to have a separate area that hopefully has a door to have a very good home office environment.
00:23:22
Speaker
So that's one important thing. The second thing is, you know, even if you have a door, if there are other people living in your house, they might think it's important to come in and talk to you or ask you a question or things like that, right?
00:23:36
Speaker
We think it's very important to make sure to communicate to everybody who also lives in your house. And this is especially true, I think, people who are going rapidly to remote, because it's such a new paradigm, right? And people might think in their household that they're home, and therefore they're not really working, or they can just barge in. But it's important to sit down with everybody in your family and say, listen, I'm still working. I'm working from home.
00:23:59
Speaker
right, but when I'm in the office I'm working and listen I might work from this hour to this hour and you know we're also all balancing things like homeschooling things like that so I might come out for this hour and this hour and and and do homeschooling and go over homework and things like that but make a schedule and make sure everybody else in your
00:24:16
Speaker
household understands that schedule because otherwise you're going to get interruptions just like you're in an office, maybe more so. So I think it's really important to have that mindset, communicate it to the people in your household to make sure that you've got an ideal work environment. One thing that you mentioned, like the mental or emotional aspects of working from home, that one is one that getting that work-life balance is often a challenge for me because you'll be sitting on the couch at
00:24:46
Speaker
And then somebody's like slacking you or wanting to talk about something and you just can't ever leave work mode sometimes. What are your recommendations there so that you don't let it blur together too much. Yeah, so I, we have a recommendation for that and also it's been interesting.
00:25:07
Speaker
more of a unique problem when we started the company when people were working from home, but it's actually now the blur between work and home because of smartphone and laptops and things like that has been a problem for a lot of people, you know, and so it was more of a unique issue for folks who are working from home before that era, but I think a lot of people struggle with it but I think it's really important.
00:25:30
Speaker
And still may be more important for remote work because you have your office and you could just be there and you don't have your commute and just, you know, there's not, you don't see everybody leaving. So I think it's really important for people, for you, we talk about boundaries with your family, but boundaries for yourself, right? So when you go into, you know, that schedule or knowing when you're gonna, when is work time and when is closing down the laptop time and time to be with the family or when is that break during the middle of the day where you can go take that walk and you're gonna go out with your spouse or with your family.
00:26:00
Speaker
It really is so important. I was reading something the other day about Winston Churchill and he did so many things and he achieved so much in his life. But even through all that time, he took time to go every day and dress up for lunch and have a very nice lunch with his wife and to go take a walk at a certain time and have tea at a certain time.
00:26:25
Speaker
And he knew how to have boundaries and recharge either throughout the day or on either side of the day. And I think that's just so important. Otherwise, work can just be consuming and actually your productivity goes way down if you allow that to happen. Yeah, burnout for sure. Yeah, it's hard sometimes to even just get up and go do that lunch break because you're in the middle of something, you got a groove going or whatever, but you have to force yourself to
00:26:55
Speaker
make time for yourself. A hundred percent. Yeah. So as far as the final big point before we get into talking about the different tools that you recommend people having is building a culture of trust and accountability. And I think that for some reason is still an issue even without the pandemic thing in the mix where people have had a holdout on letting people go work from home because they feel that
00:27:25
Speaker
they're going to lose the ability to make people accountable or to trust them when they go to work at home. How can you help assure managers, CEOs, executives, business owners that you can create a culture of trust and accountability with a distributed workforce?
Trust and Accountability in Remote Work
00:27:44
Speaker
Yeah. Well, the ironic thing is it starts with the managers and they're there the way that they approach remote work. And one of the reasons why we included this in the blog is it's one of the main questions we get, you know, how, if somebody's going remote, how do I know that they're actually working? And I think that's one of the main reasons why a lot of people didn't want to go remote is they felt that they weren't sure whether their team was going to be working and
00:28:12
Speaker
I have found that that's just wrong if approached the right way. I think that remote workers can be much more productive. And productive is the key word, right? They might not even work as many hours, but they will produce a lot more because they're more effective during the time. They're not being interrupted all the time. They don't have the commute and they're not getting tired when they get there because they are just going in and they're getting their stuff done. But the way to foster that and the way to make sure that it happens is you start with a culture of trust.
00:28:42
Speaker
So you trust your employees to do their work, to be professionals, and to get it done. Now, that doesn't mean that you don't hold them accountable and that you don't create clear KPIs and metrics by which you know whether they're getting their work done or not.
00:29:02
Speaker
But you don't need to lean over their shoulder and see that they're working and see that they're typing and see that they're at their desk to know whether they're getting their work done because at the end of the day, if you created those KPIs and the KPIs are good metrics to gauge their productivity, you'll know.
00:29:18
Speaker
And so what I say is make sure that you trust your team. Don't feel like you have to slack them to see if they're at their desk and they're making calls. And obviously we have technology to be able to monitor that to some degree too, but just don't go in with that mindset. However, have your one-on-ones every week and go over their metrics.
00:29:35
Speaker
you know, see how many appointments they're getting and what their sales pipeline looks like, what they're closing. You know, if they're managing a certain project, how is that progressing through? And what is the end goal of that project? And how is that going to impact the certain metric? Go over that in your one-on-ones, you know, go over it in the weekly meeting in a public setting where everybody sees each other's KPIs.
00:29:56
Speaker
And if they're not hitting their KPIs over a period of time, then you either got to coach them and figure out something or they're not doing something right. Or if they are slack enough and I'm not saying everyone's perfect, then you have to address that. But don't address it by just slacking and micromanaging and hovering over people. You got to start with trust because for the right executives and the right salespeople, the right people, that's going to set them free.
00:30:18
Speaker
to be more productive, be more effective at what they do, and you're going to really get the amazing benefits that we've seen over the past 13 years from a remote workforce.
00:30:28
Speaker
And the funny thing is a lot of managers probably don't even realize just how much in office people are goofing off because I've worked in a couple of offices and I know some people were always online, some people were always out in the break room or just they weren't working. And so if you're not even looking at what's happening in the office right now, you may not even realize they're not working already.
00:30:55
Speaker
When they get home their productivity is probably gonna go through the roof Such a good point absolutely so you also list a lot of Tools that will help people to be successful with moving to remote working and things like that So I wanted to kind of go through some of those so the first one you talk about is an
00:31:19
Speaker
having an instant messenger, which we've kind of already touched on that about with Slack, but what are some of the other tools that you recommend that could be useful?
00:31:29
Speaker
Yeah, so, so yeah it's good to have some some form of instant messenger. We like slack. But then another one I think a lot of people have realized this too but zoom is just an amazing platform for meetings and it really just works you know we've lived through we've had other other providers that that make it a little bit more difficult and you're always spending five minutes beginning the call to get on but zoom just works.
00:31:54
Speaker
And so it's just a great, great platform to host your meetings, your one-on-ones. And we also love the recording capability because that way we can see what happened. We throw it in also.
00:32:07
Speaker
the recording into a tool called Otter.ai, which will transcribe the meeting so we can look at little notes from it and things like that. So that's been great. Obviously, soft phones are important now, or if you just have it transferred to people's cell phones, that's fine, but we do like soft phones on people's computers. And the other
00:32:31
Speaker
key one I think is screen recording tools. Now that's different than Zoom. It's something like if people have heard of Loom or Snagit and what we found is that a lot of times instead of writing an email or even making a call
00:32:47
Speaker
creating Loom, which you can just click with a button, you do a little screen share, or not screen share, you can record what's happening on your screen, or you can also have a little bubble which shows your face so it makes it a little bit more personable. Being able to walk somebody through a spreadsheet or some KPIs or maybe a call approach by showing them that on the screen while talking them through it is a great way to facilitate both
00:33:12
Speaker
effective communication, but also a lot of times some of the things that you want to communicate, the person who's receiving it might want to see it a few times, right, and be able to have it as reference. And so it's just a great way to create a good, steady way of communicating in a remote environment. Yeah, I use Snagit all the time. Me too, I love Snagit. Yeah, absolutely.
00:33:37
Speaker
So David, do you have any predictions on whether or not this whole coronavirus situation that's made companies have to work from home in the short term might change people's minds about telecommuting and remote work in the long term?
Future of Remote Work Post-Pandemic
00:33:52
Speaker
I really think it will. Obviously, we're not going to go to 100% remote environment, kind of like what we're heading towards right now, at least for the next few weeks. But I think companies are going to see, and employees will also see, the benefits of working remotely. Companies who have just been stubborn and felt like you can't manage people, you can't do communication, can't hold people accountable. All the things that we're talking about, they're going to see, that's just not true.
00:34:19
Speaker
that you can do all those things the same way that you do it in a centralized environment, maybe even better. And employees are going to love the fact, you know, I don't think employees right now love the fact that they're trying to do their work and their little ones might be crawling all over them and things like that. But, you know, while they're if they're at school, it's a whole different thing. You know,
00:34:39
Speaker
that I think employees will realize how it really sets you free and allows you to both achieve your true potential because you're not having to deal with a lot of the stuff that comes up in a centralized environment and all the distractions. But also, and we've seen this with our team, is you don't have to live in a certain place if you're working in a remote environment. It frees people up to live wherever they live. Maybe they're living in a certain city because that's where their job is, but their family's in another city.
00:35:07
Speaker
Well, with remote work, you can live where your family is, right? Or maybe you love, you know, you've always wanted to live in Colorado, but you just can't because, you know, your opportunities have been in Texas, whatever it might be. It just adds a layer of freedom and you are not confined to geography. And I think you can do the same work and hopefully I made a case and people will see that they can do their work better.
00:35:31
Speaker
in a remote environment. So I think there's no going back. I think that we will see a seismic change in the way that work is done and how much more comes into a remote environment. But absolutely, I mean, the old fashioned way of working isn't going to go away. They will still have offices or still certain professions, obviously, that do need to have those offices. But we're going to see a lot more remote workers in the years to come.
00:35:53
Speaker
So David, you've already been on the episode and we ask you our fun question, but we came up with another one for you. Oh, good. If you won the lottery, what are the first couple of things you do or spend that money on?
00:36:08
Speaker
So let me think. So one of the things that we've been able to do because of remote work is that though we live in South Florida, in the summers, because South Florida is not the best place to be in the summers, we have started spending our summers in Boulder, Colorado. And we've gotten an Airbnb there and we've put the kids to camp in Boulder.
00:36:37
Speaker
And, you know, we just rent every, um, every summer. But if I won the lottery, I don't think we would have to rent anymore. But Boulder is very expensive, but I guess if I had the lottery, I could afford it. I'd actually get us a place in Boulder so that we could, uh, call it our home and make it, make it our home, um, still for those, just those months, but, but really have a place. And I don't know, I'm a simple guy. I don't know if I, there's much, uh, so many things I need, but that would, that would definitely make me, make me happy.
00:37:07
Speaker
Well, that kind of plays into us too. Now that you've mentioned that, if we ever win the lottery, we might do the same thing because... It's hot in Tampa too. Yeah, Tampa is hot as well. We'll all get houses next to each other when we leave in Colorado. Well, thank you so much for joining us again, David. We appreciate it and for sharing all of your knowledge and experience on managing remote teams and employees.
Connect with David Krieger
00:37:31
Speaker
If our audience wants to connect with you, how should they do that?
00:37:35
Speaker
Yeah, one of the best places is LinkedIn. I've been trying to be active there, especially around this topic, but other topics as well. So they can just look me up on LinkedIn, reach out, connect with me. Just David Krieger, K-R-E-I-G-E-R at
00:37:50
Speaker
on LinkedIn or you can go to our website or email me at David at salesroads.com. Always great to hear from people any questions you have on remote work, making the transition. If you're an employee doing things remote, just let me know. I'm happy to help in any way I can. All right, and we will include that information in the show notes.
00:38:10
Speaker
And everyone needs to make sure they go follow and connect with David. And if you want to get in touch with me or Stacey, you can hit us up on social on Twitter. You can find Stacey at Stacey underscore Jax that's S T A C Y underscore J A X. And you can find me at Elena underscore Jax that's A L A N N A underscore J A X. And if you're not a Twitter fan, you can always look us up on LinkedIn. And don't forget, you can leave us a voicemail on the anchor mobile app or on our anchor.fm show page. See you next week.
00:38:42
Speaker
The B2B MIX show is hosted by Stacy Jackson and Elena Jackson of, you guessed it, Jackson Marketing. If you need help with your B2B inbound marketing efforts, visit us at JacksonMarketingServices.com.