Here's why we think sales telecommuting is the future... a Pros and Cons analysis.
While remote work is expanding due partly to the fact that contracting itself is expanding, (as previously posted) sales positions remain exceptional in a few ways.
Personalities of sales people tend toward outgoing and social, making remote work less appealing. However, outside sales people, and traveling sales people already work alone much of the time anyway.
Let's look at the pros and cons of a remote sales force.
Pro - Company saves money on office space and can allocate more margin to sales commissions and bonuses.
Pro - Company can expand its talent search beyond the commuting radius of its physical office.
Pro - Company can scale faster and employ more people (not limited to available office space).
Con - Much more difficult to train staff from a distance.
Con - More antisocial atmosphere for social personalities.
Con - Collaboration and cross-pollination is also more difficult at a distance.
While the pro arguments will strengthen or remain constant with time, the cons will weaken. Training and collaboration disadvantages can be mitigated through the gamification of training modules and interactive video conferencing. Furthermore as remote work becomes more common across all job types, sales people are likely to seek out these positions for the same reasons everyone does while overcoming their unique drawbacks.
And as mentioned with outside territory sales people pretty much work remotely anyway.
Does this change your long term strategy as a hiring company?
Begin now investing in processes that will enable remote training and management such as the gamification of your training and ramp up, and becoming acclimated to daily video calls.