These days at Rocket Farm, we’re focusing a lot of energy in the area of mobile sales enablement.
It’s pretty tough not to notice how many companies have begun equipping their sales forces with mobile sales enablement apps. Forward-thinking sales managers and marketing directors are making the move to mobile apps because they improve their sales teams’ results by enhancing Customer Relationship Management (CRM) and help their marketing teams design and deploy collateral that better supports their company’s goals. Sales forces become more of a force by being more profitable, productive, and efficient as a result of the dynamic, real-time content management systems and interactive presentation tools made available by these mobile apps.
Here’s our very simple conclusion: mobile strategies will continue to rock the B2B sales world.
Let’s start by taking a quick peek at some data on tablets:
Forrester predicts that 375,000,000+ tablets will be sold in 2016 alone, 1/3 of which will be to businesses, and that by then, 760,000,000+ tablets will be already be in use, clearly demonstrating that mobile is progressing rapidly, and will continue to into the foreseeable future.
In Q1 2012, the iPad made up over 97% of all enterprise tablet activations. And in Apple’s Q2 2012 earnings call, Tim Cook reported that 94% of the Fortune 500 and 75% of the Global 500 are testing or deploying iPads. However, iOS isn’t the uncontested champion of tablets anymore. More recently, other tablet manufacturers that support the Android OS have managed to close the gap on the iPad. You can expect this platform duel to continue through the next few years at least.How many of those tablets are being used to help sales teams? One recent survey by Accenture reported that nearly 90% of companies are testing and deploying iPads to their sales forces. Why? Because mobile is driving the future of sales.
While it’s a fairly safe bet that a mobile strategy will help improve your sales team’s results, you’ll want to ask a few questions:
- What kind of app (or apps) will best help you to reach your sales goals?
- What makes for an effective sales support app?
- How will mobile sales enablement apps improve performance?
The answers to those questions can be really complex and are very dependent on your organization, your sales process, and what you’re selling. But here’s what we think are the foundations of an effective mobile sales enablement solution.
The customer comes first (where would you be without them, right?). The customer benefits when sales reps have access to simple CRM tools that allow them to contribute to CRM intuitively and effectively. Mobile CRM integration drives transparency and accountability, optimizes sales processes with the help of well-designed analytics, and reduces physical waste with paperless integration. The improved data provided by these features will strengthen your relationships with your customers and boost overall customer satisfaction.2. Stay Up to the Minute through Dynamic Content Management
Real-time, bidirectional information gives your sales force immediate access to the data they need to close more deals. Quick access to current company, customer and competitor information; product catalogs; order information; and statistics about costs means your sales reps can give your customers everything they need to make informed buying decisions.In addition, dynamic content management systems streamline the sales process by reducing errors and ensuring the use of compliant, up-to-date, marketing-approved collateral, allowing your sales reps to spend less time fumbling through papers (and their brains), and more time selling smart.
Mobile devices have beautiful, high-resolution screens, and touch interfaces that can bring product demonstrations to life and get your customers actively involved. But only if you use them to their full potential (obviously).When people participate in a learning process they retain more knowledge and become more invested. This principle underscores the value of not only using video, animation, and 3D to build interactive visual explanations of your products, but also to get them to input data as part of the sales process. This ensures that your customers will understand the value of your products and see themselves using the solutions you’re offering before spending any money. These tools will help your sales force to both keep sharp and look sharp as they offer unique, polished customer experiences, leading to more closed deals.”In terms of the objectives of the modern day sales professional, it is about making more sales, doing more in less time, and having immediacy of information.” —Sean McPheat, best-selling author and sales authority
The #1 concern for most Chief Sales Officers, as cited by the Accenture study, is increasing sales effectiveness. What’s the best way to do that? Go mobile! (You probably saw that one coming.)
At Rocket Farm Studios, we design mobile experiences for your sales team because we
understand that mobile devices allow customers to visualize problems and solutions in a way that traditional conversations and selling aids can’t. The core components of an effective B2B sales enablement app include a more proactive and engaging customer experience, real-time insights for the sales rep and the customer, tools that quantify the “cost of doing nothing” vs. “the value of change,” and, most importantly, an intuitive interface that makes the sales process easy for everyone involved.
Apps can be beautiful, dynamic means of showing off your products. Putting beautiful tools into the hands of your sales team sounds like a great way to improve your business.
Contact us to get started.
