Selling from Home

By Jim Elliott, President
James G. Elliott Co., Inc.

May 18, 2021

Since vaccinations against Covid-19 have become widespread, conversations about the workplace have ramped up.  Many offices are reopening and there is much discussion of what a return to work will look like in different industries. Executives of some companies who had considered getting rid of their expensive real estate and housing their employees in their home offices are now having second thoughts.  Issues like liability, workers’ comp insurance, and taxation are surfacing; employment lawyers and HR departments are sure to be busy for the next couple of years.

Over the past year, we’ve all become more adept at using videoconferencing technologies like Zoom, Teams, and Google Meet.  We have learned to do many of our tasks remotely, perhaps just as well as we had done them in offices.  But performance of certain job roles may suffer.  One of these may be sales. 

I believe that salespeople need the energy, feedback and encouragement they get from a sales office environment to do their best work.   True, salespeople can schedule appointments and make phone calls effectively from home, and they may have more hours available as they avoid long commutes.  It’s also true that a seller can make an appointment to meet a customer face-to-face and then return home.  However, putting themselves out there day after day and hearing “no” much of the time can be discouraging.  I think that salespeople need to be able to return to a positive environment to find motivation and do it all over again each day.  Home needs to be the place a salesperson goes to decompress and relax after fighting the good fight all day.

In the next two weeks, FIPP Insider Webinars will feature Simon Leslie, CEO of INK Global, Kate Spellman, CMO of Questex, and Steve Grossman of Steve Grossman & Associates, a prominent sales consultant, in a webinar hosted by John French of French LLC and me, talking about managing salesforces as we rebound from the pandemic.  To receive notice when this webinar is scheduled, just sign up to receive emails from James G. Elliott Co. using the form to the right.