Anna Phalen from Jellyvision shares how to keep remote sales reps motivated: schedule 15-minute one-on-one check-ins, run lighthearted virtual competitions like prize selections for closed deals, and balance persistence with self-care. She emphasizes patience, resilience, and drive as the core mindset.
All right. Hello, everyone, and welcome back to the sales assembly study break. I want to give a quick shout out to Vidyard, our sponsor, for allowing us to do these awesome little nuggets of content. I'm here today with Anna. Anna, tell us a little bit about who you are and what you do.
Yeah. Hey, everyone, My name is Anna Phelan. I'm the VP of Sales and Account Management at Jellyvision. I've been there for about six years and we are the creator of Alex, which is a software that helps explain healthcare benefits to employees all over the United States. And we're located in Chicago and it's great to talk to you today.
Awesome. I'm so glad to have you here. Jellyvision is definitely a big name in Chicago and so would love some of your insight right now. What a lot of people are thinking about is how you keep that frontline motivated, how you keep sales reps wanting to work and feeling encouraged to work and confidence. So what are some quick tips you have in terms of just how to keep that frontline motivated?
Sure. So it's an interesting question because it's something I'm thinking about daily, weekly, and to be honest, what I say today might change in two weeks or in two months, given what happens in the world and the economy and everything. But the big thing that I've been focusing on with my reps is, number one, patience. I have these reps that are highly motivated, that just want to succeed and just want to win. And I think that is the mentality that people in sales have. And for example, I had someone that come to me and they're like, look, I did all this outreach last week. I did research, I did these personalized phone calls, I did these emails, LinkedIn messaging, and I didn't get any responses. So initially I'm thinking, okay, well what can we do differently? But then I started looking into the content and I was like, you know what, we gotta take a pause. First of all, what you did was really, really good. It's just really hard right now and it's not surprising that maybe you didn't get a response. So I've been talking a lot about self care as well. It's just like, go outside, take a walk, take a deep breath, and then come back and let's think of another way to approach this. Let's think of another way that we can kind of change up the messaging. So I think patience is number one. There's that resilience of, hey, I've done this 100 times and nothing's happened, I'm going to go do it again. So that's what I'm really kind of looking to talk through with the reps. And then final, like finally that drive. Like we just have to have that motivation to finally get that deal moving forward and closed. So I think it's like talking about this healthy balance of all three. Patience, resilience and drive.
I love that and I love grouping it into like an easy 3. 2. Because speaking in terms of sales leaders, I think a lot of leaders are thinking about how can I be the best advocate for my people and helping them when I'm not there in the office. So what do you think is the best way for managers to be able to lean in and sort of facilitate those three things in a virtual working world?
Yeah, so that's, that's a really interesting question because I think it is something that I struggled with recently because I was really used to that drive by. I loved that opportunity of just walking by someone at their desk and being like, hey, how are you doing? What's going on? And having that interaction. And I went, when? Since we were at home since March, I think I went through May and I realized I have about 50 people under me and I hadn't had one on one conversations with those folks I had with my direct reports. But I hadn't really been able to, you know, skip a level and have that interaction. So I've now been trying to schedule just 15 minute sessions with people on a rolling basis just to say, like, how are you doing? How is everything okay? To have that personal connection? And it at first it feels forced because you're like, I have to schedule time with you. However, it's been really nice just to have that personalized interaction with people and just actually hear what they have to say. I have thoughts in my own head of how things are going, but my perspective has changed a lot from these personalized interactions. The other thing that we're doing, we're just trying to have some fun competition and games just to keep the sales season light. For example, anybody on my team that closes a deal in July gets to pick a prize. They're all virtual. One of them is all the sales managers taking a pie in their face on a live zoom. So we're excited to roll that out and I hope it'll just kind of provide some fun and excitement to a season that has had a lot of ups and downs.
The creativity that is born from this, I feel like those are the things that we have to highlight is there are new things that you're doing and that everyone is doing that we may never have done.
It's true. Yeah.
Yeah. We're learning to connect, and we're all learning to be a lot more creative. So thank you so much for sharing the advice and for your time. I once again want to thank Vidyard for sponsoring our content. Thank you, Anna. And join us next week for another sales assembly. Study break. See you soon.
