Why Mobile Rules for Sales Teams
Embracing the latest mobile technology is one of the most powerful ways for your sales team to maximize their performance in today’s marketplace. A recent survey from Salesforce found that 60% of high-performing sales teams use or are planning to use a mobile app, while only 9% of under-performing teams use mobile apps. Mobile technology has quite simply become a necessity.
Mobile apps and mobile users’ expectations have also become much more sophisticated since the days of flimsy HTML mobile apps that did nothing more than provide a slimline version of a desktop app. Today’s native mobile apps provide much richer functionality that enable enterprise knowledge sharing, boost workplace productivity and measurably improve sales effectiveness.
Mobilizing the Enterprise Sale Force
Today’s sales teams are facing pressures like never before, from the globalized marketplace to the dramatic increase in the need for speed in engaging customers. How can you help optimize the enterprise to face these challenges and stay ahead of the competition? Mobile offers distinct advantages, such as:
Just-in-time training that can be delivered anytime, anywhere.
A single point of truth across the enterprise. Everyone on a team can have access to the most current information delivered to their phone or tablet.
Functional tools like pricing calculators or comparative devices that can run within a presentation in real time.
The ability both to pre-populate information and capture information automatically within an app, decreasing the time that sales reps spend on administrative tasks and increasing their time in the field.
Analyzing the Team
Do you know which sales content is most effective? Which processes produce the best results? What your top performing sales reps do differently than others? Traditionally best practices for sales teams are difficult to measure.
Even digital tools typically require a lot of data entry. Mobile makes measuring performance much easier. Authenticated native mobile apps can track interactions (every tap, swipe, click, etc.) down to the individual level. What if you knew not only which reps used your app, but how they used it? What if you could gain visibility into how those differences tie out to performance and use it to continuously improve your processes and your people?
Future Proofing The Company
As millions of baby boomers exit the workforce, many companies are grappling with how to address the ensuing talent gap. According to a 2015 Gallup Report, one of the ways to future proof your company is to institute a knowledge management system that can capture everything from important contextual information such as the history of the company, its products and customers, as well as best practices.
A recent blog post from David Smith, Microsoft vice president of Worldwide Small and Midsized Business Sales, revealed the results of a Microsoft-commissioned study that found 93 percent of Millenials said that working for a company with updated technology, services and solutions was important to them, while 48 percent said it was “extremely important.”
Mobile technology best supports the next generation of workers and the way they work. This is especially true for sales reps who are often distributed in many locations or working away from an office environment.
The sales reps who are winning deals are the ones who are recognizing opportunities sooner and driving deeper customer relationships throughout the course of the sales process. In today’s fast-paced, “always-on” sales environment, mobile apps are absolutely integral to sales success.