Over the last year and a half, companies have shifted toward a remote work experience – some were more enthusiastic about it than others. Fortunately, Bandalier was built with remote work as part of our culture. While we didn’t anticipate shifting into fully remote roles, we were lucky to have a launching pad. According to a recent article from McKinsey, up to 40% of the American workforce could efficiently work remotely. As Bandalier looks toward building the new American workplace, we’ve looked at how to tailor our training to a remote environment. Last week, Matt Scanlon, our head of office, sat down with Frank Frisbie, director of Sales Enablement at SalesIntel, to discuss some tips for remote training.
You can check out the recorded webinar by following this link, or keep reading below.
Clear communication lines early on.
Make sure your new team members understand that you want them to ask questions, and make sure they know who to take those questions to. Prompting folks to ask questions also helps them build relationships with their new colleagues. Keep an eye on where information is coming from and where it’s going, and make sure that you don’t have great information languishing in an under-used Slack channel. Cross-post information to get folks’ attention.
Involve new team members in the learning process.
No one likes to sit through mind-numbing training videos alone. When we have a new rep joining the team, they start with an onboarding call with Matt, who sets the stage for Bandalier University. As our trainees work through the sales curriculum, they have periodic check-ins with their team lead to review the concepts and answer questions. Every few modules, they meet with Matt to practice the skills that they’ve learned. New reps will also work together to practice their new skills and give each other feedback. By incorporating conversations, practice sessions, role plays, and shadowing, our training process is built to help new team members retain more information. We also ask for feedback on the training process once folks have wrapped it up, and we’ve made tweaks based on what we’ve heard from the team – it’s all part of our culture of kaizen.
Make them feel like part of the team.
Starting a new role can be nerve-wracking enough – never mind when you can’t chat with folks in-person to casually find common points of interest. When we have new folks join the team, we introduce them to more folks across the company. They meet our recruiting team first, then some folks on the leadership team, then their manager, then other folks on their pod, and then the rest of the Bandalier team! It can be daunting to meet a ton of folks at once
There are way more “do’s and “dont’s” covered in the webinar – follow this link to check out the recording on SalesIntel’s site and see the slide deck.
