Despite some of the perks that accompany remote work, telecommuting is still a foreign concept to many companies.
In fact, one study found that 44% of companies don’t allow remote work, despite the fact that 98% of workers say they would like to work remotely at least some of the time for the rest of their careers.
With the COVID-19 coronavirus spreading and businesses suffering, managers and CEOs have struggled to find the tools they need to manage remote teams overnight. While this unfamiliarity can present unexpected challenges, the technology exists to ensure that remote workers can close deals and continue to ensure customer success.
Here are the tools you need to keep sales coming in while your team members work at home.
1. PandaDoc
One of the problems that many business owners and remote employees encounter when taking their work home is a lack of access to the essential documentation they need in order to send proposals and drive sales.
PandaDoc does all that and more by allowing you to design and send proposals and contracts to potential customers. Because PandaDoc enables your team to capture legally-binding electronic signatures in a secure environment, your team can send contracts and get them signed all while avoiding a tedious commute to the office.
On top of that PandaDoc offers a template library with over 400+ ready-made, customizable templates to help you jumpstart the document creation process and build sales documents that your customers will love.
Give PandaDoc a try today by signing up with our Free Plan to enjoy unlimited document uploads, unlimited electronic signature capture, and an easy-to-use payment gateway.
2. Zoom
Whether you’ve got a full-time remote team or a part-time freelancer working with you, the ability to put a face to a name is critically important in remote positions.
Especially for team members who have transitioned from an office environment to a remote-working solution (even on a temporary basis), the sudden isolation in their work experience can be jarring.
A video solution like Zoom changes that by giving your team the ability to meet, connect, and interact over video chat.
Using Zoom, you’ll be able to hold regular meetings and record them so that remote employees who miss important gatherings can still review them after they conclude.
This is especially useful if your remote team operates on a flexible schedule or you work with freelancers in different time zones who need to stay apprised of changes to your business.
It’s also useful for standard business operations. Recruiters can review job seekers during an in-person video interview or sales and marketing teams can review strategy and performance even though they aren’t in the same room.
You can give Zoom a try by signing up for their free plan, which may be more than enough for small teams or semi-remote companies.
3. Pipedrive
Your sales team can only execute at a high level if they have a way to track leads and simplify their sales process. Pipedrive simplifies contact and sales management so that your sales team can focus on closing deals rather than managing records.
With Pipedrive, deals are fed straight into your sales pipeline directly from your lead sources, like chatbots and web forms. This means that all your sales team needs to do is log in and start their outbound process.
This is different from Salesforce, which acts as a full-blown CRM. Pipedrive does this, but it’s more immediately focused on getting your team to work.
Pipedrive tracks call, emails, and any kind of contact history so that your team knows exactly where they stand and what needs to happen next. It’s all made possible with Pipedrive’s slick user interface, built-in, AI, and insight-driven reporting.
You can try Pipedrive for free or check out their pricing plans here.
Did we mention that Pipedrive integrates with PandaDoc so that your sales team can seal the deal even faster?
4. Slack
As important as communication services can be for remote jobs, communicating exclusively by email or through video chat may lack the efficiency your team needs.
That’s where Slack changes everything.
For many remote companies, Slack is the all-in-one messaging solution that helps teams communicate effectively over any distance. You can send documents through Slack, have group calls or video chats, and even replace your email completely!
Slack works by allowing users to set up multiple channels (or rooms) to discuss topics. Administrators can then add members to those rooms. Growing businesses might have a Slack channel for customer support specialists, another for the human resources team, and a third for web developers.
Plus, you aren’t limited to only using Slack with your team. You can add members (contractors, freelancers, etc.) to your space as guests and collaborate with them inside the same space.
Give Slack a try by signing up for their free plan today.
Also, don’t forget: PandaDoc integrates seamlessly with Slack for a faster and easier sales workflow.
5. Stripe
Whether you’re running a fully remote company or just looking to get away from unforgiving merchant fees, Stripe is one of the most powerful payment platforms on the web for accepting digital payments.
Using Stripe allows your remote workers to minimize the number of tools and systems they need in order to close deals. In a traditional sales setup, customers need to sign the proposal, sign the contract, and submit payment.
Stripe changes that by integrating heavily with many online solutions. Because of this, it’s easy to connect Stripe to everything from your WordPress website all the way to your PandaDoc proposals. When you do that, your customers can review, sign, and pay all in one document rather than needing to jump across your entire tech stack in order to do business with you.
Remote work is hard enough without making the customer experience more difficult. Using Stripe and connecting it with your other software solutions ensures customer success by making it easier for buyers to commit to your team via easy payments.
6. SalesLoft
How does your sales team handle engagement with potential buyers? If you’re trying to build a better experience for your customers, Salesloft can help you get there.
With Salesloft, revenue teams can track, coordinate, and optimize inbound response time. This can be critical to generating a sales pipeline quickly or managing and reviewing deals before they close.
It’s also a huge benefit for remote workers because the platform can help you manage your sales pipeline from anywhere without forcing team members to head into the office in order to generate or review business intelligence.
Want to see how Salesloft can grow your business? Take a look at how we use it at PandaDoc!
7. Dropbox
So far, we’ve discussed documentation and workflow essentials when it comes to working remotely. But what about other necessities your business needs in order to continue running effectively?
Your social media and project managers may need content assets to drive customer engagement and push new prospects into the sales funnel. Your full-stack web developers or marketing teams may need to share larger files that other platforms will reject outright.
With Dropbox, you’ll never have to worry abound sharing or sending files of any size. Many remote companies use Dropbox as a method to store essential files in a space where they can have direct access to the file itself. In this scenario, Dropbox acts as a shared or networked folder where teams can store and hand off the documentation they need to do their job better.
Dropbox also outshines the competition in many ways because it focuses on file storage with a few extra perks and benefits. Using the Dropbox Professional plan or any of the Dropbox Business plans, your team can take advantage of collaboration tools that allow you to add comments and markups to any document.
That versatility makes Dropbox a powerful tool for remote workers as they contribute to a project. Plus, Dropbox integrates with all major services, including Microsoft, Google, and more.
8. Time Doctor
If you’re new to managing remote workers, you might be worried about productivity and metrics. That’s where time-tracking apps like Time Doctor come in.
Time Doctor allows you to track time, capture screenshots, monitor chats, and gather powerful reporting tools to ensure that your team members stay productive and maintain a healthy work-life balance.
While Time Doctor comes equipped with a ton of tracking features to keep employees on track, you don’t have to use every single feature in order to ensure that your remote workers are on task. Everything is customizable based on the work, the employee, and your company’s expectations.
Check out pricing here and sign up for a free trial.
9. LastPass
Passwords are sacred in today’s cybersecurity world. They’re also hard to track and easy to forget.
Without managing your passwords, you can expose your company assets to risk. Employees or contractors that you terminated last year may still have access to your company accounts with essential services like Amazon or Google.
LastPass helps solve this problem by putting your passwords on autopilot and reducing risk in your business while increasing productivity. With LastPass, your employees need to remember one password — the master password for their account — and that’s it.
Everything else, including the generation of sophisticated, encrypted passwords, is handled through LastPass. Your employees won’t waste time trying to think of clever passwords. The system can generate the password for them, help them fill it quickly in the browser, and get them logged into key company services faster than ever before.
Sign up for a free trial and check out pricing right here.
Building an effective workflow for remote work
Whether your sales team works remotely at home, in a coffee shop, or in a We Work coworking space, you’ll need a comprehensive set of tools to make sure that they can access critical business information, create essential documents, and communicate effectively with one another.
We hope you find each tool on our list helpful.
Find out how PandaDoc can help you change the way your business handles contracts, sales documents, and more by signing up for a free plan today.
