The Sales Virtual Ridealong: Everything You Need to Know

In-person ridealongs aren’t always fun for field sales managers. They’re time-consuming, you could face scheduling conflicts, and they often pose logistical puzzles. Coaching in real time is important to your reps’ processes and sales success — but it’s not always convenient and it’s impossible to do constantly. Until now.

Virtual ridealongs are the future of field sales coaching. It’s important for managers to build trust with their reps and their teams, and coaching can help establish this. It shows reps that their managers are there for them — and shows managers that reps are learning and growing as coaching progresses.

More importantly, though, are the physical limitations posed by physical ridealongs. Consider the amount of training and investment that goes into marketing — only to be completely in the dark when your team goes into customers’ homes. With physical ridealongs, a manager may only be able to do 10 per week if that were their only focus. And if they have a team of five reps, each running four leads per day, that’s 100 leads per week. Physical ridealongs would only allow visibility into 10% of the leads you’re running. This is revenue left on the table due to rep training limitations.

Virtual ridealongs offer a flexible and efficient way for sales managers to coach every rep’s sales conversation. They are an AI-powered solution for one-on-one field sales coaching that can scale along with your business. Discover everything you need to know about sales virtual ridealongs and find out how you can put them to work for your field sales team.

What are Virtual Ridealongs in Sales?

Virtual ridealongs are modern sales coaching techniques in which managers monitor and coach reps remotely using technology like call recording, AI transcripts, and real-time analytics. Unlike traditional, in-person ridealongs, virtual ridealongs enable managers to provide input and feedback without being physically present. And because of this, they’re scalable for your team’s needs.

Technology allows virtual ridealongs to not only mimic the benefits of in-person ridealongs, but deliver increased effectiveness and scalability.. With AI on their side, managers can efficiently collect sales conversation data, develop insights, and improve reps’ overall performance in dispersed sales teams.

In-Person Ridealongs vs. Virtual Ridealongs

In-person ridealongs allow managers to spend quality time with reps, building rapport and developing trust. In traditional ridealongs, managers can observe reps’ body language and non-verbal cues with customers. Then, managers can coach reps on soft skills along with their sales scripts. 

In-person ridealongs, however, are bound by constraints like time, distance, and visibility. Plus, with dispersed teams, in-person ridealongs pose scheduling and coordination challenges; further, managers must be reliant on their (maybe-not-always-reliable) memory to provide feedback for reps. And, perhaps most importantly, physical ridealongs may not be the best representation of actual rep performance. Since they’re bound by limitations, reps may only experience physical ridealongs once or twice per month — and this could mean they’re on their best (or worst) behavior during these times. Virtual ridealongs remove all of these barriers.

Sales virtual ridealongs offer sales teams a lot of flexibility. With the right tool and technology, managers can record reps’ sales conversations with customers and use AI to track specific language and data. This allows managers to coach reps in real time rather than long after customer interactions are over. Plus, you can then store your recorded material in a library and use it for enhanced new-hire sales training.

Why are Virtual Ridealongs Important?

Virtual ridealongs are important because they enable most of the benefits of in-person ridealongs combined with the versatility of digital tools. They provide managers with real-life, real-time data so they can monitor and coach reps from anywhere. 

They’re also much faster — AI can immediately flag your reps’ problem areas. A physical ridealong may take you two hours to find out that your rep isn’t properly presenting financing options at the end of the sales conversation. AI can tell you that immediately and automatically direct you to the areas in which your reps needs coaching.

With virtual ride-alongs, managers can provide instant feedback to reps. This teaches reps the “right way” to handle sales interactions so they can immediately apply these skills to their next in-home customer meeting.

Sales virtual ridealongs also let managers:

• Identify reps’ strengths and areas for improvement
• Help reps develop skills faster
• Dig into analytics and make data-backed decisions
• Track reps’ performance over time
• Scale their coaching across teams and sales regions
• Save money over time due to reduced travel and logistics issues
• Improve training efficiency
• Double sales percentages

Virtual ridealongs have also been shown to improve close rates and boost average ticket sizes when implemented. 

How do Virtual Ridealongs Work?

In order to conduct a virtual ridealong, you'll need the tech to support it. Virtual ridealong software, like Rilla, can help.

Rilla records and transcribes sales conversations between reps and customers, allowing managers to monitor and coach remotely. Then, through AI, the tool analyzes these interactions and offers insights into key performance indicators (KPIs) and metrics like talk-to-listen ratio, adherence to sales scripts, and sentiment analysis.

Managers can review sales conversation insights and provide reps with specific, targeted feedback. They can also identify opportunities for coaching and track overall trends within reps’ performances. 

But before you begin using a tool like Rilla, make sure you talk to your reps about it and get their buy-in by framing it as the skill enhancement tool it is. Then you can use it with your teams and oversee multiple reps simultaneously without ever needing to get in the car.

How to Make the Most of Virtual Ridealongs

To make the most of virtual ridealongs, you need to have a strategy. Here are some steps you and your reps can follow to build out your strategy before you begin:

• Pre-customer preparation: Make sure you align your customer-specific and overall sales goals and expectations prior to the virtual ridealong.
• Customize your dashboard: Create a rep-specific dashboard to track their personal KPIs; this will help you pinpoint areas for improvement.
• Reinforce active listening: Emphasize the importance of eye contact, nodding and other non-verbal cues, and restating customer needs during the conversation.
• Post-conversation debrief: Develop a structured debrief to use with your rep after the ridealong. Determine the areas in which you’d like to offer specific feedback and provide actionable next steps.

Now that you have a plan of attack, make sure you’re also doing your part to support your reps:

• Steady scheduling: Put your reps on the calendar at regular intervals — consistency in coaching will lead to the best results.
• Customize coaching: The best input and feedback will align with hard figures; use data to customize your coaching sessions for individual reps.
• Set clear objectives: Define rep goals for each virtual ridealong session.

Managers’ primary goal for virtual ridealongs should be observation, not interference. Sales reps should be free to operate naturally during their customer interactions — this will help build a trusting relationship. The name of the game should be support, not micromanagement. 

Once you and your reps are ready for the ridealong, make sure you keep a few more things in mind:

• Improvement is a continuous process: Consistently refine your virtual ridealong practice based on customers’, reps’, and your own feedback.
• Use high-performers to teach others: Once you log enough sales conversations, use top reps’ interactions to help others learn the ropes or refine their skills.
• Don’t over-rely on technology: Explain to your reps that virtual ridealong technology is meant to complement, not replace, personal engagement and active participation during their sales sessions.
• Maintain reps’ motivation: Create and maintain positive feedback loops so reps consistently feel supported and receptive to coaching. 

Keep in mind that manager feedback should be provided as soon as the virtual ridealong is finished so reps still have the interaction fresh in their mind and can take immediate action on improvements.

Make the Switch to Virtual Ridealongs With Rilla

Virtual ridealongs offer a game-changing solution for field sales coaching. They combine the real-time benefits of traditional, in-person methods with the efficiency and scalability of modern technology. 

With virtual ridealongs, managers can provide immediate, data-driven coaching. This helps reps refine their skills and hit their sales targets more effectively. And Rilla is the go-to tool to help your team achieve these goals. 

Rilla’s features and easy integration into your existing workflows can turn your sales con-versations into sales proversations. (Sorry, we had to.) Sales management practices are constantly evolving — so now is the perfect time to discover what Rilla has to offer. When you’re ready to take your ridealongs into the modern era, contact us to book a demo.