Staging a Remote Revolution in Sales

David Trotter has an eye for building the right sales teams, and the ability to work remote is central to how he views them being able to excel. His experiences have seen him work in situations ranging from sales teams of hundreds of staff to working in start-ups where he was the only salesperson around.

Serving as Senior VP at Wysdom.AI, he has had over 20 years of work rooted firmly in the tech sector, which has been a transformational time for the industry, through the digitisation of sales work, the global financial crisis and the COVID-19 pandemic.

 

Success as a sales leader

David credits his success in sales on his work back in the day, understanding his customer’s business before even entering sales.

In the pre-Internet days, David recalls seeking out annual reports for businesses to gauge what the strategies of customers were, to help inform how he could best-help them.

He credits being surrounded by good people as being another reason for succeeding in sales to the present.

However, this is surely more a sign of David’s ability to select the right players to join his sales teams over the years, suggesting good judgement when it comes to candidates.

 

Going Remote

Based in Canada, David has some insights into how the Canadian tech sector has been ahead of the curve when it comes to remote work. The country has a low population density and its software market is predominantly angled towards the US.

By necessity, Canadian firms have had US-based HQs with manyof their staff working emotely from the US, forcing more businesses to embrace the idea of teams having to communicate virtually for much longer than other countries.

COVID simply accelerated the trend towardstech teams embracing remote working, but the transition wasn’t so extreme for Canadian sales teams, in part thanks to the existing culture and advances in technology.

 

Knowing Your Numbers

For David, a key moment in inteviews with sales candidates comes down to demonstrating an understanding of pain points of customers. He is also mindful of red flags during the interview process and the job in general.

Knowing one’s numbers is crucial, David believes, as he recalls, in a former job, the CEO famously stopped salespeople in their tracks to quiz them on numbers, targets and deals.

If they stumbled, the CEO would tell David a salesperson wasn’t right for the job, leaving to David encouraging his teams to know what they were working towards. Great personal skills are one thing, but having pipeline skills (specifically micromanaging pipelines) are also essential for success, in his view.

Want to hear more about James and David’s discussion?

Watch the full episode of Tech Salescraft on YouTube, or across all major podcast streaming platforms.