January 15, 2025
It wouldn’t be a stretch to argue that the sales industry is uniquely positioned to benefit from remote-work options. As Amy Collins puts it on Cognism, “Outbound sales isn’t exactly a quiet activity…People making phone calls can be loud and distracting.”
A LinkedIn post by MapproGlobal Consulting makes the point that, in addition to employees’ relationships with their employers, work-from-home options can improve sales professionals’ relationships with their clients: “they can communicate with them more frequently and in a more personal way. Salespeople can use video conferencing and other technology to connect with customers, which can lead to better communication and stronger relationships.”
When I asked Mike Valade, Maestro’s chief client officer, about the benefit work-from-home jobs offer companies, he answered without hesitation: access to talent. This echoes the findings of many of the sources I’ll share with you in just a few, not to mention Maestro’s. The company has worked with sales professionals from all over the world in an array of different situations. A more diverse talent pool means a more expansive set of tools. Buyers are not homogeneous. Why should sellers be?
In a USA-Today survey, 36% of respondents “would prefer working from home full-time instead of having a hybrid schedule, and 41% of respondents would be willing to consider a full-time, remote position if they were looking for a new position.” That same survey showed that the earnings bracket in which hybrid work was most common was between $75,000 and $100,000 per year.
And, as an economic letter from the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco put it, “After controlling for pre-pandemic trends in industry productivity growth rates, we find little statistical relationship between telework and pandemic productivity performance. We conclude that the shift to remote work, on its own, is unlikely to be a major factor explaining differences across sectors in productivity performance.”
It’s not exactly news that the vast reservoir of ‘work-from-homeness’ that Covid-19 indirectly produced was, in some ways, a democratizing factor for certain communities. Jeffrey Howard, a senior inbound content developer, had this to say on InclusionHub: “Work-from-anywhere policies have mitigated accessibility barriers and created more opportunities for professionals with disabilities to find gainful employment.” In a LinkedIn post, Jonathan J. Kaufman, a consultant, writer, and executive coach, wrote, “This shift has the potential to reduce the employment gap between persons with disabilities and their non-disabled counterparts, ensuring that more people with diverse abilities can participate fully in the economy.” And this past October, the AARP shared a study by the Center for Retirement Research at Boston College showing that older adults with disabilities, in particular, gained a valuable increase in job opportunities.
Another cohort that has a stake in work-from-home developments is rural America. In a 2024 report, the W.E. Upjohn Institute for Employment Research found that “The declining demand for office space in central cities such as New York and San Francisco has drawn both scholarly and popular attention. However, more quietly, the trend of working from home has given many rural communities in the Midwest their first population boost in years.”
This is especially important within the wider context of Midwest population trends. As Urban C. Lehner notes in DTN’s Progressive Farmer, “Between 2010 and 2020, rural America’s population fell for the first time in history.” These figures do not exist in a vacuum. “More people,” says Lehner, “mean more schools, more hospitals, more grocery stores—things that have been disappearing from rural areas, diminishing the quality of life. Rural counties account for 70% of the nation’s land mass. Most can absorb more people without fear of overcrowding.”
Conclusions on remote work and rural communities are not one-note, of course. For example, the FDI Intelligence wrote, “Rather than spreading work more evenly across space, our research at the Oxford Internet Institute shows that remote work conducted via online labour platforms mirrors existing urban-rural divides.” (That was written in 2022, so take that with a grain of context, though it does not necessarily render the finding untrue.)
Nor is the relationship between Covid-born remote-work increases and the disability community without any ambiguity. Jennifer D. Brooks and Sarah von Schrader from the School of Industrial and Labor Relations (ILR) at Cornell noted that viewing remote work as a “silver bullet” doesn’t tell the whole story. “This view fails to recognize that not all workers with disabilities can obtain jobs that can be done remotely or on a flexible schedule.” In fact, they said, “Findings indicate that compared to their non-disabled counterparts, prior to the pandemic, workers with disabilities reported similar rates of flexible and remote work. Workers with disabilities, however, had lower rates of remote work after the start of the pandemic. Regardless of year, flexible and remote work rates vary by demographic group, with disabled workers who are white, female, and college-educated more likely to access these options than multiply marginalized disabled workers.”
As an aside, whether you do so remotely or not, hiring workers with disabilities helps employers (not to mention the fact that inclusion is, plainly, good.) “By embracing remote work,” says Jonathan Kaufman, “companies foster a culture of inclusivity and diversity. A diverse workforce, which includes persons with disabilities, can offer unique perspectives that drive innovation and creativity. Businesses that prioritize accessibility and inclusivity are better positioned to attract top talent, leading to improved performance and a competitive advantage in their industries.”
Would your remote sales team benefit from coaching or training? Reach out to us at mastery@maestrogroup.co.
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