How to build a remote sales team: An in-depth guide for employers

If you’re looking to put together a genuine sales dream team, you need to expand your horizons. Global hiring gives you access to an entire world of top sales talent — often in overlooked, underserved talent markets — and allows you to build a diverse, knowledgeable, and productive group.

But to make it work, you need to know how to navigate the challenges of international hiring — with the right support. 

In this comprehensive guide, we’ll leverage our own expertise and experience, and explain how to recruit a global sales team. So let's begin.

Part 1: What are the benefits of hiring remote sales reps?

The benefits of hiring remote team members are huge. From access to a wider talent pool, to increased diversity, companies that hire abroad have a distinct advantage in the talent market.

This is especially true for salespeople. A global sales team offers an unprecedented opportunity to tap into diverse talents and perspectives, giving your business a dynamic, competitive edge.

Here are some of the main plus points of hiring remote sales reps:

Access to the best talent

With a bigger pool of talent to choose from, you can handpick individuals who bring top-tier sales skills and experience. Your office-based competitors, meanwhile, are restricted by geography.

By offering the flexibility of remote work, you’re also more likely to attract better talent. According to a recent Forbes Advisor survey, 98% of workers favor the option to work remotely (at least some of the time), putting you firmly in the recruitment driving seat.

Higher productivity

According to Salesforce, 83% of remote workers in the US say that they maintain or exceed their in-office productivity.

This figure reflects a broader shift in the workforce towards autonomy and work-life balance, which is central to attracting and retaining top-tier sales talent. Shifting your sales team model to accommodate remote work makes for a sales force that is not just more productive — it is happier, healthier, and more committed to your organization.

Remote sales models aren't just a trend, either. They meet the shifting demands of the workforce and recognize that work arrangements can boost productivity and performance.

Localized expertise

Global hiring enables you to onboard salespeople with localized expertise and a nuanced understanding of local cultures and business practices. This can be an absolute game-changer, especially if you are aiming to expand into new customer markets.

As a result, your sales reps can craft messages that resonate deeply with local audiences, allowing you to build trusting and potentially lucrative partnerships.

Better coverage

With sales reps spread across the globe, your company can provide unparalleled coverage around the clock.

With someone always available to provide information, follow up on leads, or answer questions, you can maintain a high level of responsiveness that your customers will appreciate. This can help generate a sales momentum that is reflected in your bottom line.

Increased diversity

A diversified team brings together varied perspectives that can lead to groundbreaking strategies and solutions.

From geographical knowledge to particular cultural backgrounds, experiences, and thinking styles, bringing together international teams helps propel creative problem-solving and adaptability. A diverse sales team can also help more effectively anticipate the different needs and expectations of customers, providing a more personalized, valuable service.

Part 2: Where can you find the best remote sales talent?

There’s a wealth of sales talent in traditional IT and tech hubs like San Francisco, London, and Tokyo. However, competition and salary expectations in these locations are often high, restricting access for smaller businesses.

Fortunately, there are huge pools of top sales talent in emerging and underserved tech hubs, such as Manila, New Taipei City, and Kolkata. In this section, we’ll take a look at some of the top locations to target.

Guadalajara, Mexico. Known as Mexico’s Silicon Valley, Guadalajara is an international nexus for household IT names such as Intel and IBM. Its thriving scene of software innovation draws tech talent globally, carving out a dynamic tech ecosystem.

Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. Home to a burgeoning startup scene with over 700 enterprises, Rio De Janeiro is a regional leader in tech innovation. Hosting major industry events and developing tech parks, Brazil’s second city is on its way to becoming a tech stronghold — and it is still yet to tap into its full potential.

Buenos Aires, Argentina. Buenos Aires is another notable growing tech hub in South America. Its dynamic startup ecosystem, coupled with governmental support for entrepreneurship and access to venture capital, positions the city as an attractive locale for innovation. Serving as the regional headquarters for over 30 global companies, the Argentine capital is one of the continent’s largest entrepreneurial ecosystems.

Helsinki, Finland. Over recent years, the Finnish capital has emerged as a formidable force in the tech sector, with over 2,000 startups and scaleups injecting vibrancy and a can-do ethos into the city. In 2021, Finnish startups secured €1.2 billion in investments, solidifying Helsinki's reputation as a leading startup haven in Europe and a key player within the international tech community.

Warsaw, Poland. Warsaw is making its mark on the tech map with a growing prowess in data science, machine learning, AI, e-commerce, gaming, and deep tech. With more than 60,000 tech firms and ten unicorns to its name, the Polish capital is rapidly becoming a European tech nucleus, accelerated by endeavors such as Google's Campus Warsaw.

Budapest, Hungary. Renowned for its proficient workforce and business-friendly climate, Budapest is a magnet for international talent, making strides in AI, fintech, and cybersecurity. As the leading European choice for post-Brexit business ventures, the city's startup ecosystem is compelling and dynamic.

Ahmedabad, India. Poised to follow in Bengaluru's footsteps, Ahmedabad is on the brink of becoming a significant global tech hub. The city is home to over 30 Global Capability Centers and around 3,700 technology companies and, with close to 95,000 professionals in the tech industry, it's clear to see why it’s grabbing global attention.

Johannesburg, South Africa. Johannesburg’s tech scene is swiftly making a name for itself within Africa, particularly Tshimologong Precinct. Despite the funding prowess of cities like Lagos and Nairobi, Johannesburg distinguishes itself through the notable exit success of its startups.

Mexico City, Mexico. Mexico City’s tech sector is also on the rise, paralleling Guadalajara's acclaimed status but with its own distinct pulse. As the regional home of tech giants such as Intel and Oracle, as well as a thriving startup base, the Mexican capital is carving a niche as an IT powerhouse.

Campinas, Brazil. Campinas, nestled in São Paulo state's highlands, is leading Brazil’s tech charge with 32 top IT firms. It's a hotbed for cutting-edge endeavors, including a notable food innovation center by industry leaders Givaudan, Bühler, and Cargill, showcasing its expansive impact beyond IT.

Shenzhen, China. Shenzhen epitomizes China's meteoric rise in the tech world, having evolved from a humble fishing village to a significant global hub. With over 14,000 tech firms, Shenzhen is a breeding ground for both leading tech companies and a burgeoning startup scene, all thriving on significant support and global talent attraction.

New Taipei City, Taiwan. New Taipei City’s tech landscape is rapidly ascending the ranks in Asia's tech scene, underscored by Google's evolution into a key player in Taiwan. The inauguration of Google’s new campus, the first significant hardware engineering hub outside the US, heralds New Taipei City's rise as a crucible of innovation and a strategic site in the tech world.

Manila, the Philippines. Home to industry giants such as Accenture and Google — as well as a host of up-and-coming startups — Manila's tech arena is thriving, thanks in part to government initiatives and strategic partnerships aimed at nurturing tech talent. With educational driving forces like coding bootcamps, the city is cementing its status as a burgeoning hub of digital innovation and technological progress.

Want to know the best places to hire?

Our free Global Hiring Planner tool provides real-time analytics on talent pool depth, salary expectations, employment costs, and expected employee benefits by region and country, allowing you to make informed hiring and budgeting decisions.

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Part 3: How do you identify top sales candidates?

In going remote, you know the talent is out there — but how exactly do you find it? Here are some proven ways to find the best remote salespeople.

Identifying candidates

When starting your search, the following approaches can be effective:

Leverage your internal teams and networks

Referral schemes are commonplace in most companies, but they are especially valuable when looking for sales talent. This is because salespeople tend to have extensive personal networks, and can recommend strong potential hires. If you haven’t already, set up an attractive referral program.

Make use of internal talent marketplaces (ITMs), too. Advertise open sales positions within your company, and aim to match your employees' skills and aspirations with your organizational needs. By looking for opportunities to better use your employees’ skills, you may just uncover some hidden sales gems.

Monitor companies undergoing layoffs

When businesses undergo layoffs, sales and marketing personnel are often at the forefront. Keep an eye out for companies who are downsizing, as they can be a potential goldmine of top talent.

This pool of job seekers is not just actively looking, either: they're primed to engage. Their readiness to jump back into work makes them eager candidates who can quickly adapt to new roles.

In particular, keep an eye on competitors or industry peers who've recently downsized. Individuals from these companies possess not just sales skills, but insightful knowledge and experience of your industry.

Be inclusive in your approach

As mentioned, a diverse workforce enriches your cultural fabric and drives success. To ensure you appeal to a broader range of sales candidates, you should:

• Use inclusive language. Ensure your language appeals broadly, and encourages candidates from all backgrounds to picture themselves in the role.

• Automate your sourcing. Where possible, leverage technology to minimize bias. An automated sourcing process also makes it easier to handle larger volumes of applications.

• Be proactive in your outreach. Engage with platforms dedicated to underrepresented groups, participate in diverse job fairs, and collaborate with organizations rooted in serving these communities.

Target remote-specific job boards

Remote-specific job boards like Remote Jobs and LinkedIn are a great place to find remote sales talent. Candidates on these boards are actively targeting remote roles, meaning there is already an alignment in how you both want the relationship to work.

You can still advertise on local job boards, of course, especially if you are looking for sales talent in a particular country or region. Either way, ensure that you are transparent and open in your job posting, and that you provide a full and honest description of how your company works.

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Assessing candidates

Once you have a robust pool of applicants, the following steps can help you narrow your search:

Emphasize expertise and product knowledge

Focus on identifying candidates with deep vertical know-how and a knack for problem-solving in their field. These are potentially invaluable assets in driving sales innovation and forging stronger customer relationships.

Functional experts — be they from product development, customer service, or data analysis — possess a depth of knowledge that's often underutilized in traditional sales contexts. They're the people sales teams go to for answers and their expertise allows them to see beyond the usual transactional dynamics of selling, offering solutions that resonate more deeply with customers' needs.

According to Harvard Business Review, this is actually a common critique among CEOs, who believe their sales teams lack consultative depth. Incorporating functional experts into your sales teams doesn't just fill roles — it enriches your whole approach to customer engagement.

Focus on the right soft skills

If you’ve never hired salespeople before, it’s important to look for the right characteristics. As mentioned, these can often be more important than experience. Some of the essential qualities of sales talent includes:

• Bias towards action

• Emotional maturity

• Effective communication

• Persuasive advocacy

• Intrinsic motivation and independence

Through interview screening questions, you can uncover these key attributes, and get an idea of whether the candidate is suitable.

Refine your interview process

Crafting an interview process that consistently identifies the highest-potential sales reps requires precision, insight, and a bit of intuition.

During the interview process, ensure you:

• Have planned meticulously

• Ask probing questions that dig deeper into your candidates' responses

• Incorporate behavioral and situational questions that offer invaluable insights into the candidate’s problem-solving abilities and adaptability

• Have a diverse interview panel with varied perspectives

Part 4: What are the best salespeople looking for?

To attract the best sales talent, you need to offer the perfect package, including compensation, benefits, and a supportive, progressive culture.

Here’s what you should focus on.

Compensation structure

In general, compensation structures are often different for sales teams due to the nature of the industry. As a result, your compensation offer should be competitive, robust and — most crucially for a global team — equitable. It's this commitment to fairness that transcends geographic and cultural boundaries, while still staying attuned to local market realities and regulatory landscapes..

As a general tip, make sure to benchmark your compensation packages against different international markets to guarantee competitiveness. You should also perform annual reviews to guarantee your strategy remains relevant amid evolving market dynamics and workforce needs.

Here’s how you might want to break down your compensation structure for your salespeople:

Base pay

Base pay can be either role-based or location-based, although most companies with distributed teams opt for location-based base pay.

When determining your base pay, consider:

• The employee’s living costs, based on their location

• The local market wage rates in their location

• Their experience and skills

To make fair, informed compensation decisions, ensure you:

• Benchmark your salaries using reliable local market data

• Are consistent in your compensation philosophy, whether it’s location-independent, cost-of-living adjusted, or performance-based

• Factor in total rewards

Remote's Employee Cost Calculator can give you a detailed estimate of the total employment costs in a given country, including taxes, benefits, and other employer contributions.

Commission and incentives

Incentive programs are not just about motivating your team. They also help steer sales behaviors in desirable directions, with rewards that resonate on a personal level.

Most salespeople expect to earn commissions alongside their base salary. While there is no benchmark rate, industry averages are between 5% and 10% for higher base salaries, and 20% and 30% for lower base salaries.

However you opt to structure your commissions, they should:

• Be clear, transparent, and standardized across the board

• Reflect variations in market dynamics and living costs without adversely affecting any region

• Incorporate performance milestones that reflect both local and global sales targets

This way, team members are rewarded equitably for their contributions to revenue growth, no matter their location. This helps drive continued performance, encourages healthy competition, and helps retain high achievers by recognizing and rewarding their efforts fairly.

Bonuses

Bonuses are an excellent way to reward individual or collective achievements, and can be instrumental in building loyalty and encouraging sustained high performance.

Note, however, that taxation laws on bonuses can vary significantly across different countries. This can impact the fairness factor of your rewards.

To learn more about giving bonuses to global teams, check out our in-depth guide.

Benefits

Like all employees, salespeople expect to be offered competitive benefits. With a global sales team, though, this can mean different things in different locations. As a result, your benefits should be localized and aligned with the cultural expectations — and employment laws — in their domestic markets.

For instance, your US-based hires will expect an extensive health insurance plan, but this doesn’t hold as much weight in the UK or Australia. In a similar vein, you might consider 15 days of paid time off generous in the US — but this would actually be below the legal minimum in Germany.

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To ensure that your benefits are compliant, equitable, and relevant in every single country you hire in, it’s advisable to work with a global benefits provider like Remote. Our local, on-the-ground benefits experts can help you cherry-pick the perfect package in every country, and allow you to manage them all on one platform.

This avoids the need to find and partner with local third-party providers across the globe, saving you time, money, and people hours.

Stock options

Remote can also help you offer equity incentives to your globally-dispersed team. This is a powerful way to include everyone in your company's long-term success, and can serve as an effective retention tool.

To see how it works, check out our in-depth guide.

Culture

Candidates often seek roles where they can fully endorse the company's ethos and mission, and this is especially important in sales.

In remote sales, people are empowered to work autonomously, which can be a big draw. Emphasize this in your recruiting materials and demonstrate how it helps foster a culture of trust and self-responsibility within your organization. Explain how your hires are encouraged to take ownership of their success, and how this can help them progress their career.

You should also outline a specific diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) policy. This shows your commitment to providing an inclusive culture, and will help persuade high-caliber candidates from all kinds of backgrounds to be part of your team.

Professional development

To appeal to the ambitious spirit innate in most sales personnel, outline how they can progress within your organization from day one. Don't just map out potential career trajectories: actively provide opportunities for professional development, training, and advancement.

Emphasize your commitment to helping each sales professional grow by highlighting mentorship programs, ongoing training sessions, and regular review cycles focused on career goals. By demonstrating such a high level of investment in your people’s future, your company becomes more attractive to prospective talent.

Part 5: How do you hire, pay, and manage your remote sales team?

In this guide, we’ve shown you where (and how) you can find top salespeople, and explored what your compensation structure should look like. But once you’ve identified a suitable candidate, how do you actually hire and pay them?

Hiring remote team members

When hiring anybody in a different country, you need to do one of two things. You can either set up your own legal entity in that country (which can be costly and time-consuming), or you can simply partner with an employer of record (EOR) provider, like Remote.

What is an EOR and how does it work?

When you hire someone abroad, Remote acts as the on-paper legal employer. We do all the heavy legal and compliance lifting, and handle all key HR elements including payroll and benefits. Crucially, we fully own all our legal entities in the countries we operate in, so there are no hidden fees or nasty surprises.

If you opt to set up your own legal entity, you will be responsible for doing everything yourself — although Remote can still manage your payroll and day-to-day HR needs. It will also be more difficult to scale if you plan to hire in multiple countries, whereas Remote enables you to onboard people across the globe in a matter of days.

As mentioned, our EOR service also enables you to tailor and offer localized, competitive benefits to your hires.

Partnering with an EOR provider like Remote simplifies the entire process and removes all the administrative burden from your plate. All you need to do is focus on finding the best candidates — and we do the rest.

Paying and managing remote team members

During the onboarding process, we take on all the relevant administrative tasks, freeing you to focus on welcoming your new hire into your team.

We handle payroll and ensure you’re fully compliant with all local employment and payroll tax laws, and our free HRIS platform makes it quick and easy for your team members to self-serve.

Otherwise, you manage your team as normal, in line with your own approach and culture. 

To see how quick and simple it is to hire, pay, and manage a remote sales team with Remote, book a demo with one of our friendly experts today.

"If we had to coordinate everything in-house, I’d have to hire an extra four people to manage the entities, local solicitors, tax firms, accountants, payroll and translation services. It would cost upwards of $500,000 extra per year. Remote takes that burden off of our plate."

Luke McKinlay, VP of Finance at Fountain

Part 6: Should you hire salespeople as contractors?

When looking for salespeople abroad, independent contractors are another option. However, there are several pros and cons to this approach, depending on your goals.

Advantages of working with sales contractors

If you’re aiming to be flexible or non-committal for a short period of time, there are several factors that work in the favor of contracts:

Commitment. If you’re exploring the possibility of entering a new customer market, you might want to try the waters there before fully committing. Hiring a contractor might be the smart play in such a case, as you can easily part ways if things don’t go to plan. Conversely, if you’re already established in a region and you want to build a long-term working relationship with your people, hiring an employee is likely more advantageous.

Cost. Contractors can be more cost-effective, as — in most countries — you don’t need to cover statutory benefits such as social insurance, health insurance, or retirement contributions. This can be particularly attractive for short-term projects, or if you’re seeking specialized skills without a long-term commitment.

Flexibility and autonomy. Contractors offer a higher degree of flexibility and are usually hired to manage specific projects (or to add depth during peak times). They maintain autonomy over their work process, which can inject fresh perspectives into your sales strategy without the need for direct, daily supervision.

Compliance. In almost all countries, independent contractors are responsible for calculating and filing their own taxes and benefits, saving you time and resources.

Disadvantages of working with sales contractors

On the flip side, you need to consider:

Committment. Commitment works both ways, and contractors have no obligation to be loyal to you. By definition, contractors can work with multiple clients at the same time, and you may not be their priority.

Misclassification. By far the biggest concern when working with contractors is misclassification risk. The legal definitions around misclassification vary by country, but generally it occurs when you treat contractors as employees — without any of the protections or benefits. Misclassification can result in severe penalties, including:

• Large fines

• Local-level sanctions

• Punitive measures (such as restrictions on doing business)

• Loss of intellectual property rights

• Payment of back taxes and contributions

• Costly lawsuits

• Significant reputational damage

Remote can help ensure you don’t misclassify your team members, intentionally or otherwise. Our Contractor Management Plus platform includes indemnity protection against misclassification, and we can easily convert your contractors into employees if both parties agree.

Hire the best sales talent with Remote 

As we’ve discussed in this guide, hiring across borders doesn’t have to be complex — it can be quick, simple, and secure.

With Remote’s EOR service, you can:

• Hire and onboard top salespeople in days — no matter where they are based

• Easily run payroll in full compliance with local employment and tax laws

• Manage their employee data safely and securely in one centralized platform

• Handpick and offer localized, competitive benefits

• Get 24/7 customer support, and tailored information and advice from our local, on-the-ground experts

If you want to hire contractors, our Contractor Management platform also enables you to manage invoices and send payments in just a few clicks, in multiple currencies.

Don't limit your sales potential.

Start building a world-class remote sales team today. 

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