Attract and Retain High Caliber
Sales Talent

By Promoting Work-Family Balance
For Road Warriors

When your sales team is constantly on the road serving clients and winning new business it’s only natural they’ll face challenges when attempting to create a healthy work-family balance.

While there is certainly plenty of information out there to help point them in the right direction, your sales reps are on the road chasing revenue goals, and don’t have time to be reading twenty different articles or books on how to be both a top producing provider as well as an involve parent or spouse.

That is…

Until their family starts to fall apart.

Of course, that means your salesperson might also need personal time off or to leave your team all together in a too-little-too-late attempt to mend something that might already be gone for good.

In this article I’ll provided you with actionable ways for you to help your sales force keep their relationships and family values intact.

If keeping families together and happy is motivation enough for you to implement these things in your business, then you’re good person. Go you!

BUT – If you still need a business case to be mindful of the how healthy your sales reps’ home life is, how’s this one for you?

When your sales team is capable of managing both their work and family lives in a healthy way they themselves will be healthier. They’ll also be able to better focus on the job, rather than being distracted by the problems they’ll eventually have to go home to.

PLUS – When your salespeople see the company going out of their way to make their health and family a priority, they’ll be more loyal and driven to see the organization succeed as whole.

 

How Sales Leaders Can Promote
Work-Family Balance
Among Their Traveling Sales Force

 

Champion Family Use of Technology

As we all know, technology is everywhere, and continues to evolve. The best part of technology is that it allows us to communicate, not just with prospects and customers, but with the loved ones salespeople leave at home.

In an article for Entrepreneur, Robert Connors, VP of Brand Marketing for National Car Rental writes that technology offers a variety of ways to keep in touch with family.

Here are four of Robert’s favorite ways of staying connected to his family while he’s on the road. Suggesting these to your sales reps and making these things available to them if you haven’t done so already will help them know you and the company care.

1. The Virtual Dinner Table – Using a simple group text in combination with apps like facetime, skype, or Zoom allows everyone in the family to keep in touch and express their individual personality.

A group text or even a slack channel is convenient for short communication and jokes throughout the day, but the use of video calls after business hours – like at dinner time – will help replace the non-verbal communication lost when using text or phone. As someone in sales you know how important non-verbal communication is to deepening relationships.

 

2. Post Card Apps – Another inexpressive way for your sales reps to stay connected with their families is by sending thoughtful notes or postcards. Robert Connors suggest TouchNote, which is available for both iOS and Android. It’s an app that allows you to take photos with you smartphone and with a few clicks have them mailed as post cards to anywhere in the world.

Of course, if you’ve read our article on growing your business through the use of personalized gifts and notes, you might already be using similar tools like Handywrytten, Bond, or Thankbot.

Handywrytten – Is an app option for iOS and Android, Handwrytten offers a range of classy handwritten cards starting at $5. Just type your message in the app, check out, and let the machines write it for you! There are multiple shapes of each letter to create what Handwrytten describes as “a truly organic effect.”

Bond – Starts at $2.99 and allows you to send elegant handwritten note cards. With a choice of five handwriting styles to be delivered to the recipient in a classy envelope.

Thankbot – What makes Thankbot different is that for $5, you can send them a typed note and they will carefully recreate your note by hand, with no machines.

If you already have accounts set up for your reps to use any of these apps to send messages to clients and prospects, you know that they provide a huge return in relationship equity for such a small monetary investment.

Allowing your sales team to send messages home to their spouses and kids on the company dime will have a similar effect. Not only will it do great things for the relationship between your reps and their families, but for the relationship and loyalty your reps will have with you and the company.

 

3. Social Media – It’s a no brainer that your team can use social media to get and share updates.

When your salespeople scroll through photos of their kids and their kids’ friends on Instagram or Snapchat, they’ll be able to pick up on a lot of the highlights from home while still on the road. This will arm them with context for more quick and seamless catching up when they do finally get home.

 

4. WiFi Everywhere – Free WiFi is like gold for those of us traveling frequently. As a sales leader you might have reps making use of WiFi finder apps, like Osmino. Apps like these are available on both iOS and Android and serve as a great way to stay connect on the road.

Of course, some public WiFi domains carry some security risks unless you have a virtual private network [VPN]. For this reason you might have already equipped your team with mobile WiFi hot spots or tethering capabilities from their company phone to keep them constantly connected.

 

While you’d be wise to set limitations and guidelines on how company subscriptions, data services, and technology is to be used, if you’re committed to retaining sales talent with families you’d also be wise to also encourage their use of these company resources for keeping connected with loved ones.

Ensure Your Sales Reps Are Getting The Most Out of Their Time at Home.

Families, much like a business unit, are comprised team members. Each team member has responsibilities to fulfill, but they also have needs that must be met in order for them to be able to fulfill their responsibilities to the unit.

Laura Murphy, a certified parent coach, a mother of three, and the wife of a business traveler gave KC Parent a list of tips for both the spouse left behind and the road warrior sales professional.

Of course, her tips can also provide a wealth of insight into how managers and employers of frequently traveling salespeople can support the families that drive their revenue.

 

Make Self-Care Easier

Self-care is essential to supporting others in the family or the company. Your salespeople and their families probably know how a healthy diet, exercise, getting adequate sleep, or having a little personal time can impact their well-being.

Laura says, “Just like on an airplane where they tell you that you must assist yourself before you can help the person next to you if the oxygen mask drops, we can’t help our kids [or you spouse] until we help us.”

Of course, the demands of life can make these things hard to stay aligned with, and if your reps’ spouse is running on fumes, that’s going to impact the rep in one way or another.

And sure – as a sales manager you can’t make you reps’ families eat better, exercise, or unplug from work 100% by pursuing a hobby. You can however sponsor Date-Night Baby Sitting, HelloFresh gift cards, or gym memberships to make things easier.

 

Systematize Romance and Gratitude for Your Traveling Salespeople

“I knew of a soldier who went to Iraq and had flowers delivered every Friday for his wife.” Laura told KC Parent, “Showing thoughtfulness is so important. When parents do this, it’s a model for the kids that Daddy loves Mommy and Mom was thinking of Dad,”

When either spouse is on the road for work both get worn out. You might not be able to do much about how exhausting it can be to travel, but gifts of gratitude can put the partner that’s been home holding down the fort, and wrestling the kids into their pajamas every night, a lot more excited to welcome home a weary traveler.

Within the structure of your organization this might look like what Carly Trombley describes in her article about how to systematize gift giving to strengthen relationships with prospects and customers.

The reality is however, that a relationship is a relationship. Much of the tactics Carly shares for reinforcing business relationships are applicable to strengthening the relationships between your salespeople and the spouses they leave at home.

Here’s what Carly recommends:

“You might want to have your sales team plot out the card and gift worthy events in the lives of [their spouses] on a calendar. Then at the beginning of each month they can batch [their] gifting.

Better yet – after your sales team has identified the gifting opportunities you could feed that intel to your marketing department to fulfill.”

Of course, Carly warns against sending gifts on behalf of the company. How romantic would that be anyway, right?

If you’re going to have your marketing or internal communications department send out gifts to the loved ones of your salespeople they should be sent as if from the salesperson themselves.

When gifting between romantic partners it’s also important to not overlook their love languages. While one rep’s spouse would be super excited to spontaneously receive flowers from their partner on the road, another might get more excited about receiving a gift certificate for a couples massage that they can enjoy together once reunited.

These nuances are things you’ll want your traveling sales reps to spell out for whoever in your company is going to be in charge of gift fulfillment.

Increase Face-to-Face Family Time

Up to this point we’ve focused on ways to make up for being away from the family, but there is a certain amount of in-person family time that no amount to technology or gift giving can account for. That’s a reality family minded sales professionals and sales leaders have to acknowledge.

So how do companies work around the need for in-real-life family time?

Here are a few ways I came up with:

1. Encourage your salespeople to invite their families to stay with them at multi-day conferences held at resorts.While the sales rep is working the conference during the day their family can enjoy the amenities.

This requires paying for each rep with a family to have their own room, but gives them family time in the mornings and evenings. A lot of conferences end on Friday mornings which means they can enjoy the pool with the family all Friday afternoon.

 

2. Allow your reps to accumulate personal frequent flier miles when purchasing company funded travel.This is an easy way for them to fund family visiting them on the road at no cost to you as an employer.

 

3. Enforce a travel limit per sales rep each month. That is to say, only allowing reps so many days on the road per month.

While this might seem limiting because a career in sales often implies that a salesperson is supposed to be willing to drop their life at moment’s notice to meet with a client upon request. However, a travel limit might actually help attract more desirable sales talent in addition to promote healthy living among your current sales reps.

Having a travel limit can also help your company keep travel costs under control by eliminating trips and meetings that aren’t really required to close new business, offsetting some if not all costs associated with additional hotel rooms, gifts, and family-oriented incentives mentioned above.

 

Attract and Retain High Caliber
Sales Talent

By Promoting Work-Family Balance
For Your Salespeople

So again, if keeping families together and happy is all the motivation you need to champion family use of company technology, to ensure your sales reps are getting the most out of their time at home, to systematize romance and gratitude on behalf of your salespeople, and to find creative ways to increase the amount of time your salespeople actually get to spend with their loved ones in-person, that’s great. You’re awesome!

BUT – There is a business case here too.

When your sales team has a healthy home life they’ll be more focused and effective in how they contribute to your company. They’ll also be more motivated to see the organization succeed as whole, especially if it was your organization that made their healthy home dynamic possible.

 

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About the Author: Brandon Jamil Kemp is a Freelance blogger, content, copywriter whom partners with CEO’s, executives, and solo entrepreneurs to expand their personal brands. After spending several years developing his writing career Brandon is now contributing his work ethic, skills to non-profit companies, and organizations, personal development brands, and business coaching companies.

In the interim of gaining experience within his career, he built his brand Brandonjamil.com. It’s here where Brandon learned what truly drives our competitive, demanding market; which he has the ability to create content that truly converts to sales, increasing the bottom line, while keeping brand integrity.

Brandon Jamil Kemp is now accepting opportunities, for further information please contact him www.brandonjamil.com email: info@brandonjamil.com

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