Many companies worldwide were forced to implement the work from the home model in order to keep their employees safe after the Covid-19 pandemic. Working from home may sound like a great idea for some people, although it might be very challenging for some employees, business owners, and HR managers. One of which is that working from home is not suitable for all jobs and employees’ personalities, especially employees with professions that require face-to-face interactions and meetings with colleagues as well as clients.

    Sales employee's duties are always split into contacting potential clients and meeting interesting leads to close deals. Face-to-face communication is mandatory for sales employees in the sense of exchanging information and the ability to see and interpret body language as well as facial expressions. Lack of communication affects the performance of salespeople in a negative manner.

    We will tackle Five challenges that business owners and HR managers face when it comes to working from home for sales employees.

1. Difficulty in monitoring sales staff performance

    Monitoring sales employees' performance while working from home, is not an easy task. You are fully dependent on the employee’s integrity and self-motivation, which is not a hand that you can gamble on blindfolded. In this case, monitoring sales employees will be taken to another level by requiring them to attend more daily meetings to discuss their progress and demanding additional reports. This will consume more effort and time from both employees and the HR management. Also, you might meet a problem, which is that not all employees' personalities will respond positively to this kind of monitoring.

    To avoid this problem, you might be able to measure the employees’ performance by setting targets and goals for employees that you know are easily measured and see if their targets are met, and then take an average measurement on the performance for the rest of the team.

2. Staff skills development problems

    Working from home, you might notice that your sales team's progress and skills development is a little bit slower, due to a lack of personal interaction with other team members and attending fewer meetings. Not to mention that the employees’ spare time, which was used in an office to research work-related issues, now can be used for grocery shopping.

    In order to maintain and encourage staff development, you should set a plan to motivate your team members to develop their skills by setting goals and targets for taking online courses, and online events.

3. Data security risk

    Sales employees are responsible for client's data, especially private clients’ information that can be leaked to competitors. Information security problems could be more likely to occur when staff is working from home due to the need for staff to access servers remotely which increases security risks.

    Extra security measures should be ensured to protect company data by installing encryption software and remote-wipe apps in case of mobile devices go missing. This helps keep your files and data secure yet accessible to your staff.

4. Lack of team harmony

    The sales team, like any team within your company, requires maintaining a certain level of harmony between the team members, which is essential for the success of your company. It is harder to build and maintain team spirit while your team members are working remotely from home by themselves.

    Scheduling team-building meetings, and splitting work time between home and work, enabling team members to rotate and meet each other maintaining required safety levels, could be the best solution to overcome this problem.

5. Additional costs

    Sales teams require additional costs when working from home in order to carry out their tasks, providing devices such as encrypted laptops & mobile phones along with providing workers with internet access. Charges your company additional costs that were necessary while working from the office.

    In return, some running costs like office electricity and water bills will be cut off.  Working from home challenges can be overcome in different ways, but as with any new method adaptation is required to find productive solutions to benefit from the situation.